Free Sage 100 Training Through May 31, 2020

April 7, 2020 by Wayne Schulz

Through May 31, 2020, Sage is offering a variety of free online training for many of its products – including Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud – via their Sage U online training site.

To access the free training you’ll need to create a Sage U account ( free ) and then access the Sage 100 courses via this link.

After completing the training, you can optionally take a variety of certification exams available for:

General Ledger Specialist
Accounts Payable Specialist
Accounts Receivable Specialist
Payroll Specialist
System Administrator Specialist

Available courses include:

General Ledger
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Payroll 2.0
Inventory Management
Purchase Order
Sales Order
Job Cost
System Administrator
Program and Data Files

Sage 100 Cloud Learning Series

Sage is also hosting a learning series that offers monthly courses designed for new customers or those who want a refresher.

Crystal Reports for Beginners – April 16, 2020, 12 PM EST
- How to create a basic report for Sage 100 using the Crystal Reports Wizard
- How to determine your data source which will be used to populate the report
Creating a Payroll Report that Shows the Employee’s Encrypted Data – June 18, 2020, 12 PM EST
- How to use Crystal reports to create a report that will allow you to see encrypted and highly sensitive employee information
Creating Dashboards Using Sage Intelligence Reporting – August 12, 2020, 12 PM EST
- Would you like to see a visual representation of your data with the ability to filter interactively?
- How to create a dashboard using Sage Intelligence Reporting
Using Business Insights Explorer to Work More Efficiently – October 6, 2020, 12 PM EST
- How to streamline access to critical data by creating default settings for data you regularly view and personalize it to meet your individual needs
- How to easily use drill down and drill around functions as well as how to access related tasks
Making the Most of Visual Process Flows – December 9, 2020, 12 PM EST
- Would you like to navigate easily through processes – perhaps those you use infrequently or to help new employees learn how to streamline their workflows?
- About visual process flows available to you
- How to modify a process flow and add it to your desktop

For more information about the free Sage 100 training opportunities available to you from Sage please visit the Sage U website here.

Sage Extends Support for Sage 100 Version 2017 To September 2020

April 1, 2020 by Wayne Schulz

Sage has officially extended phone support for Sage 100 2017 through September 30, 2020. Previously, official support for this release was slated to end with the release of Sage 100 2020 ( March 18, 2020).

Sage notes extended support is only for phone support.

Phone support only. We may not research newly reported defects in this version of the product

Important Considerations For Payroll Users Still on Sage 100 2017

2019 IRD (released in December, 2019) was the last IRD that will be released for Sage 100 2017, and the 2020Q1 Tax Table Update (released on January 30, 2020) was the last TTU that will be released for Sage 100 2017.

In order to stay compliant with Payoll and AP 1099 form printing, you will need to upgrade to Sage 100 2019.3 or higher and (if using Payroll, upgrade to Sage 100 Payroll 2.20.1 or higher).

Due to substantial changes to the tax code that materially impact the 2020 payroll tax year, the IRS released a new Form W-4.

Sage 100 2017 and earlier will not support the additional fields necessary to correctly calculate federal withholding taxes. If you are unable to upgrade to Payroll 2.20.0 or higher prior to needing to use the new Form W-4, you will need to manually calculate Federal Withholding for every payroll for employees who need to use the new Form W-4.

Sage Supported Platforms – Sage 100cloud Version 2020 ( 3/18/2020 )

March 24, 2020 by Wayne Schulz

Sage has released the Supported Platforms Matrices – aka SPM – for Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud 2020. Documents for the older versions do not appear to have been updated.

The SPM provides guidance on the exact server and workstations operating systems supported by the various Sage versions as well as their suggested memory requirements.

The Supported Platform Matrix for version 2020 has an update date of March 2020. Documents for the earlier versions still contain a May 2019 date.

A quick review of the prior and current SPM reveals that the main change appears to be the addition of Server 2019 to the list of supported network servers. Also, memory requirements have been boosted from a minimum of 3 GB to a minimum of 8 GB starting server RAM.

To download a copy of the Sage 100 Supported Platforms Matrices – visit the Sage support website here.

Sage 100cloud Premium ( SQL ) Frequently Asked Questions

January 16, 2020 by Wayne Schulz

Sage 100cloud Premium is a version of Sage 100cloud which runs on a SQL database. The primary benefits to this are (a) more secure data files and (b) faster reporting through external tools connected via native SQL drivers.

With Sage 100cloud subscription licensing there is no longer an additional cost for a user on Sage 100cloud Standard or Advanced to move to Premium ( SQL ).

To make the move to Sage 100cloud Premium you request new registration keys from Sage ( allow up to 7 days for this to process ). You can either contact Sage directly at 800-854-3415 or through your Sage partner.

Frequently Asked Questions About Sage 100cloud Premium

Note: This info is supplemental in nature and not intended to replace Sage’s official supported platforms or the advice of your Sage partner. These FAQ items were generated in 2019 and may not have been updated for subsequent changes to either Microsoft or Sage products. Use this information to supplement and not replace your own technical resources.

Sage OEM Runtime Version of Microsoft SQL

Sage promotes its OEM version of Microsoft SQL Server Runtime Edition as optimally configured.

The SQL Server Runtime license is a license that lets an independent software vendor (ISV) embed the complete SQL Server code into a solution for use only by the ISV application. The customers of the ISV cannot use this SQL Server product to run other applications or to develop new applications, databases, or tables.

The “optimizations” are actually listed on pages 99 and 100 in the Admin guide and it basically saves checking the right components and clicking Next a few times during the install.

“Optimized” is a bit misleading. It really means “configured for basic compatibility with Sage 100 Premium”. The installer defaults to Mixed Mode Authentication (required for Premium and prompts to create a ‘sa’ password) and uses the default collation method (basically it chooses Case Insensitive for you) and default language of English.

Sage recommends tempdb database should be at least 1/3 the size of largest database. Here is more information on best practices for tempdb sizing.

It does not “optimize” for performance since it does not, for example, ask you where to create the Sage 100 databases (like on a drive with more disk space), what setting to use for Database Recovery Model, etc. You have to move/set those things AFTER installing.

The OEM license is running SQL Server 2014 (2016, 2017 and now 2019 are available) and cannot legally use that SQL Server instance for anything other than Sage. If SQL Server is hosted in a data center there are license restrictions on the OEM SQL license.

ISVR licenses/Licensing Mobility Eligibility

The ISVR restrictions are outlined in the ISVR Agreement. It is not currently an option with ISV Royalty Licenses because LM (License Mobility) is a benefit of Software Assurance and ISVR does not offer Software Assurance, only Embedded Maintenance. The End Customer can have the Unified Solution running on Outsourced Servers, but not on shared (Cloud hosted) servers.

Several reports from consultants that the OEM download link only goes to the end-user.

How Many Microsoft SQL Licenses Are Required To Run Sage 100 Premium?

The short (and safest) answer is one for each Named user (not just the concurrent count) of Sage, plus the service account. The official Microsoft response is that any user that could access the environment (even temporarily) should be fully licensed.

Per Sage – Sage 100 Premium requires two licenses; one for the MAS_User account and another for the MAS_Reports account in SQL. You will need more licenses depending on individual needs: Administration, other databases or 3rd party methods of accessing Sage 100 data, etc.

However, the consensus among consultants seems to be:

I’m not sure the exact licensing for the Sage run-time, but as far as Microsoft’s concerned with SQL Server Standard or Enterprise, you either license by the processor core (all physical cores on the box or at least 4 if SQL is virtual) or per-User, and per-User means any user that could ever potentially touch the SQL server for data. If you have more than 30 users, per-core is usually cheapest. If you have less than 30, per User is the way to go.

So for per-User licensing, any Sage user would require a SQL CAL.

Additional Server recommendations:

Sage has the following MS SQL server configuration recommendations.

Server RAM:

A rough estimate for amount of RAM could be calculated as 1 GB for each concurrent user or size of database (in GB) whichever is higher but not less the 32 GB. There are more sophisticated ways to monitor this but minimum should be 32 GB or even 64 GB RAM.

SQL Server Memory Allocation:

SQL Server will allocate all the RAM to itself until the server is rebooted or the service restarted. To prevent the operating system from being robbed of RAM use the “Memory Allocation’ setting.

In Object Explorer, right-click the Server and select Properties.

Click the Memory node.

Under Server Memory Options, enter the amount that you want for Minimum server memory and Maximum server memory. Microsoft recommends the Maximum to be set from ½ to ¾ of the Server’s total RAM.

Tempdb:

The tempdb is a temporary global workspace for storing tables and processing queries. If your application is causing the tempdb to grow larger this will cause bottleneck until the tempdb is increased. Instead it is wise to bump up the size of this table.

The tempdb database should be at least 1/3 the size of largest database.

Hard Drives:

Hard drives with optimum speeds should be considered ever Solid State Drives. Also, the .mdf log files are competing for read and write access to the hard drive. There will be separate .mdf file for the data, transaction, and backup logs. To eliminate the competition these .mdf files can be place on separate physical drive letters. The location of these logs can be determine from Server Properties -> Database Settings.

Consultant Provided Additional Recommendations:

· Windows 2012 R2 Server or 2016.
· SQL Server 2014 or 2016 standard
with mixed mode authentication enabled.
Be sure to set the server collation method as SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS (if not, there will be data integrity issues).
This collation method is normally set by default when the server is setup with a default language of US English.
If using a different language setting, be sure to set this collation method as part of the SQL Server installation.
Default SQL data path should have sufficient space for the databases / log files.

Required access:
Full administrator control over the server.
SQL “sa” password.
Remote access using a method that allows us to reboot the machine and reconnect afterward.
We run the services under a Windows login. If there is a password policy that involves expiring passwords, we’ll want a utility Windows login with admin access over the server and a password that does not expire.

Recommendations

Work with your Sage partner to developer a list of current requirements – the information on this page has likely been updated as both Microsoft and Sage release new versions of their respective solutions.
Consult Sage’s Supported Platforms Matrix for Sage 100 which outline the very latest supported hardware and operating systems for each of the Sage 100cloud editions ( Standard, Advanced, Premium)
Most third-party integrations will work without change however you should verify with each ISV whether they are compatible with Sage 100cloud Premium ( SQL )
In order to upgrade to Sage 100cloud Premium all of your Sage modules MUST be at framework. Please discuss this FIRST with your Sage partner.

Support for Sage 100 on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Ends Today

January 14, 2020 by Wayne Schulz

On January 14, 2020, Microsoft ceased active support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Due to this change, Sage will also stop supporting these platforms for Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud. Users are urged to upgrade to a compatible operating system as outlined in Sage’s Supported Platforms document.

After January 14, 2020, if your PC is running Windows 7, it will no longer receive security updates. Therefore, it’s important that you upgrade to a modern operating system such as Windows 10, which can provide the latest security updates to help keep you and your data safer. In addition, Microsoft customer service will no longer be available to provide Windows 7 technical support. Related services for Windows 7 will also be discontinued over time. For example, certain games such as Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers as well as Electronic Program Guide for Windows Media Center are scheduled to be discontinued in January 2020.
Microsoft

Your existing Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud system will continue functioning on these platforms however you may have trouble loading Sage patches or obtaining future technical support related to these platforms.

Microsoft expected to patch major Windows security flaw today, and may NOT patch Windows 7
MSPoweruser

We recommend you upgrade your operating system to a supported level and avoid potential costly interruption in service.

Many existing users of Windows 7 might qualify ( still ) for a free upgrade to Windows 10 by using these instructions – How to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 free.