Sage 100 ERP Upgraders: V4.5 vs V2013 – Which Should You Upgrade To?

 

Earlier this week I asked my private 90 Minds Consulting Group which is comprised of 130 experienced Sage partners from across North America whether they’d recommend Sage 100 ERP v4.5 or v2013 for a customer upgrade.

 

 

Here’s my exact question about whether it’s better to upgrade to Sage 100 ERP v4.5 or Sage 100 ERP 2013?:

 

Ok to go with Sage 100 ERP 2013 from v4.3 or are you still recommending 4.5?

I’m very hesitant to put a customer on a version (4.5) that’s already one level back when the upgrade fee is fairly costly to begin with.

If I hop to 4.5 then I will presumably still have a decent hop to 2013 (given the credit card upload which this customer is using).

 

What say everyone – 4.5 or is 2013 ready?

 

Notes:

1. Credit Card Upload is a reference to Sage 100 ERP 2013 requiring integrated credit card users to move to Sage Payments (if they are not already on the platform). During the upgrade all payment data is uploaded to the Sage Vault which can be time consuming depending upon the volume.

2. This information is general in nature and may not be applicable to your company. Please consult with your Sage Business Partner.

3. The responses are unfiltered and come from experienced Sage 100 consultants with a varying degree of experience with the Sage 100 ERP 2013 upgrade. Complexity of upgrades vary from company to company and it’s impossible to list every complicating factor from an upgrade which might have tainted one person’s opinion.

 

Is It “Safe” To Upgrade To Sage 100 ERP 2013?

(A compilation of feedback received from 90 Minds members)

I’m installing 2013 whenever I can. Because if not now, when? Before you know it 2014 will be released and your client will again be 2 versions behind.

We are going to 2013 as a rule, unless they have a third party that is not yet ready, such as JobOps. JobOps 2013 is out some time in June, so then we’ll recommend 2013 for most.

The real $64,000 question that the customer asks “will there be any bugs if we go 2013 v 4.5? ” … talk about setting yourself up to be blamed for making the decision if there are any v2013 issues that arise…….

Answer: Yes, but that is true with any software, no matter how mature. However, we will make sure all patches are installed on a timely manner, as needed, and we’ll help you as new bugs are discovered to mitigate any problems that arise. That is our job. However, we are not the publishers of the software and we can not, and do not, make any guarantees regarding the software.

We are starting to roll it out for smaller clients. For a 20 user wholesale distribution customer I would still be nervous, but if they were anxious to upgrade “now” I would probably go with it and do as much testing as possible.  Pretty sorry state of affairs when the software has been out for 6+ months and people have little confidence.

In the good old days… we would wait until the first fix collection came out.  I am not as close as I used to be, but it seems 2013 is having some underlying technical issues in our hosted environment which makes me wonder…

We also are running into situations where the Extended Solutions people still rely upon are taking time to be upgraded.

My biggest issues are all Crystal and workstation related.

I would go for it – we have a client, 100 advanced, Distribution BOM, a lot of custom fields/scripting, things have been running well.  My feeling is that it’s ready, and it’s a separate install, so you have the opportunity to do some good testing prior to a final migration.

I say 4.5, I had one upgrade from 371 to 5.0 (Sage 100 ERP 2013) everything went wonderfully with exception to Printing and Sage Exchange communication errors that were invalid and seemed to be locking issues. Spent several weeks dealing with it , Sage Support was involved but got the typical answer of Reinstalling the applications. I did not reinstall. However after …

 

 

Here is a nice collection of Sage 100 ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200) links which might be helpful to you as you try to decide on which version to upgrade your system to. This includes a link to Sage’s page showing what’s new in almost every version of Sage 100 ERP since the 3.x days. Sage 100 ERP Technical Resource Links for Upgraders