Sage Accounting

Sage Accounting is the cloud bookkeeping product from The Sage Group, a UK company founded in Newcastle in 1981. It is aimed at sole traders, micro-businesses and small limited companies. It handles sales invoicing, bank feeds and reconciliation, bills, and VAT returns that meet Making Tax Digital rules. In the UK it also supports Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) submissions on the higher tiers. There are three main plans. Start covers basic invoicing and VAT for one user. Standard adds quotes, bills management, CIS, a cash flow widget, custom profit and loss reports and limited receipt capture for three users. Plus adds budgeting, multi-currency invoicing with live exchange rates, stock management and unlimited users. Payroll is bundled into every plan, with one employee included on Start and Standard and five on Plus. Each extra employee costs a small monthly fee. Every plan also includes one user of the Sage Copilot AI assistant. Pricing is a monthly subscription with no commitment, and Sage often runs heavy discounts for the first few months. Non-VAT-registered sole traders can use a separate free Sole Trader product, but it cannot be upgraded directly into the main plans. Reviewers like the clean interface, the invoicing and the bank integrations. The main drawbacks are yearly price rises, uneven customer support, and occasional bank-feed problems. The product also lacks employee expense claims and time tracking, and key features such as budgeting and multi-currency are only on the top tier. Businesses that outgrow it are usually pointed to Sage 50 or Sage Intacct.