Sage 100 uses an intermediate program known as Sage Exchange Desktop to manage credit card transactions. This is part of Sage 100’s PCI compliance to ensure that credit card information entered into Sage 100 is secure. Rather than store any credit card data inside of Sage 100 the program encrypts the data and sends it offsite for secure processing.

Even if you are not processing credit cards within Sage 100, you may still be using Sage Exchange Desktop since it is required to manually store a customer credit card number in the Sage Vault.

Sage have announced that Sage Exchange Desktop 1.0 will be sunset on June 2018. After that time all users will need to be updated to Sage Exchange Desktop 2.0.

One concern is that only Sage 100 v2015+ are compatible with Sage Exchange Desktop 2.0. If you are on an earlier version you will need to upgrade prior to June 2018 to maintain functionality with Sage Exchange Desktop.

Tip: How to view the Sage Exchange Desktop version

Within the past few days, customers have started calling to indicate they received a notice of:

“Sage Exchange: A mandatory update has been detected. The application will now install the update and restart”.

 

Once that prompt was accepted (ok is the only option) then a dialog box similar to below was presented – “Sage Exchange Desktop – New Version Available”:

At this point, users have two options – either install now or later. Some users choosing Install Now either received a message that the operation failed or the installation never completed. Other users were able to install this Sage Exchange Desktop 2.0 update without issue.

One of the reasons we found the installation would fail is that the user was on a Windows version prior to 7 which is unsupported by Sage Exchange Desktop 2.0. The installer that was popping up automatically did not produce the error message however when we downloaded Sage Exchange Desktop 2.0 and attempted to manually install we got the following message.

 

 

 

It is increasingly important to maintain both your Sage 100 and underlying operating system on a supported platform. Sage publishes a list of all supported operating systems and supported Sage 100 versions online which you should review periodically.

Sage Exchange Desktop 2.0 is compatible with the following versions of Sage 100

• Sage 100 v2015 (with product updates) – link to patch
• Sage 100 v2016 (with product updates) – link to patch
• Sage 100 v2017

Sage Exchange Desktop 2.0 is NOT compatible with the following operating systems

• Windows XP (Server 2003)
• Windows Vista (Server 2008)

 

Sage Exchange Desktop v2.x
System requirements

Verify that your computer meets or exceeds the following system requirements before installing Sage Exchange Desktop v2.x:

• Microsoft Windows 7 or later
• Requires TLS 1.2
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6 (included in installer)
• Sage Payment Solutions Application Deployment (included in installer)
• Sage Exchange Desktop API (included in installer)

In this instance, you have until June 2018 before Sage Exchange Desktop 1.0 will become obsolete. Please note that some versions of Sage 100 may require Sage Exchange Desktop 2.0 so staying current with supported operating systems is strongly recommended for ease of upgrade.