I have received a phonecall from my publishers who have offered some FREE copies of both Sage 50 Accounts for Dummies and also Sage One for Dummies, to anyone who might be interested in reviewing a copy.
If you are interested in either Sage 50 or Sage One (or both for that matter) please drop me an email with your name and address and I will forward your details to John Wiley Publishers.
I really appreciate your help.
Kind regards
Jane
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Author of Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies, Sage One for Dummies and Bookkeeping for Dummies
don't think that publishers would want my review of Sage.... Although to be honest my issue is more with their licencing than their product... But the product to my mind isn't a patch on VT.
Now there would be the title for me to review. Dummies guide to VT Accounts (also covering VT Transaction+). Sign Bill (Wella) and myself up to reviewing that one straight away.. Jane, authoring opportunity there for a product that's got very little coverage in the marketplace but with a bit of support material could be huge and maybe make Sage wake up and smell the coffee.
As for reviewing a book, there are some very good books on awful products and some very bad books on good ones. A review of the book would surely be a reflection of how well the book guides one through the product rather than how good one peceieves the product as.
I'm not putting myself forwards for this one but if I had it would have been totally impartial as far as the product went and based only on the book.
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Thanks Shaun for your honesty! Maybe there is an opportunity for a VT book - not sure how many users there are. Maybe this forum can provide some info on users.
Hope your enjoying the holidays. I'm up to my eyeballs with puppies !! 10 to be precise - the summer hols have never seemed so exciting!
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Author of Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies, Sage One for Dummies and Bookkeeping for Dummies
I'm up to my eyeballs with puppies !! 10 to be precise - the summer hols have never seemed so exciting!
Hi Jane,
it's Rabbits here. We've got eight of them. They're all from the pet recycling centre at Pets at Home.
We're just sucka's as everytime we go there to pick up another 15kg of rabbit food (now twice a month!) we look at the new interns and you can see that the more intelligent ones are just waiting thinking that their owners are coming back for them.
I've noticed that it always seems to be the larger ones that get dumped. Probably when people realise that the little bundle of fluff they bought doesn't stay that size for very long.
We've ended up with a couple of house trained bunnies that think that they are dogs and the rest all get at least two hours out in a huge wooded garden everyday which must seem like heaven to rabbits. When they've done they come back to their hutch and the next one(s) go out. (Doe's all go out together. The Bucks would kill each other).
One of the rabbits we thought was fully grown when we got it as it was pretty big we think is actually a French lop as it's currently about the size of a Bulldog and it's only about a year old! If you go out and whistle he will come to you from whereever he is tin the garden. Recently a cat made the mistake of venturing in whilst he was out... First time that I've ever seen a cat do a verticle climb up an eight foot wall!
And now back to bookkeeping.
On the VT question a lot of accountants use the accounts part with or without the Transaction+ (My understanding is that a lot of Sage users do the final accounts using VT).
If you got in touch with them they might be quite supportive as I feel that many bookkeepers do not go down that path purely because of a lack of available training materials for it.
Going down the Sage path it's a safe bet that you will get a lot of sales of your book but people will still be choosing from a good selection of titles in the market place.
With VT yours would be the only viable option.
That said of course, part of the Sage market in training materials may be worth much more than all of the VT market? I really don't know the figures but I do know that a dummies book on the product would help to make it more mainstream than it currently is.
In some ways you would not merely be providing training materials but rather helping to change the software landscape if you wrote that book.
Anyway, hope that you are having a great summer break,
kind regards,
Shaun.
p.s. Still not seen a copy of the other book yet.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I am one of the VT final accounts users that doesnt use VTT+ due to lack of knowledge.
I have always used SAGE when doing bookkeeping mainly because that is what i have used for 15 years (so i am comfortable using it). Also teach SAGE at a local enteprise company.
I would welcome an idiots guide to VTT+ if someone could do one or if not then put on a course that could be attended like you see with various SAGE courses.
I think that someone doing a VTT+ book would be less lucrative than someone doing a SAGE book. In 15 years experience those clients that have used an accounts package have tended to use SAGE (about 90-95%) with the remainder using Qbooks and to a lesser extent VTT+
MarkS wrote:In 15 years experience those clients that have used an accounts package have tended to use SAGE (about 90-95%)
I can't disagree with that statement although I think that such is more down to new business owners not realising that there are viable alternatives.
Conventional providers seem to be doing a shoddy job of shoring up that lack of knowledge and now we have the new generation of cloud offerings stepping in to put themselves forwards as the Sage alternative to a buying public that had no idea that another alternative already existed.
With VT I regard it as a product for Accountants and bookkeepers rather than end users although the free cashbook software can be useful for the owners of Micro businesses.
Maybe if a Dummies book existed more end users would pick VT Transaction+ up as it's an awful lot more forgiving of minor mistakes than Sage.
As for Sage being so far ahead of the game... Well, I think that many of us remember back in the 1980's that Lotus 1-2-3 was THE spreadsheet package. What could possibly compete against it?... Enter Excel Stage left.
With accounting software will change come from a new entrant or will the likes of SAP get there act together for the smaller clients that they seem to hardly notice. Whatever the future Sage are doing themselves no favours with their licencing which is alienating a growing number of accountants (sure that you've read some of the threads over on Aweb).
As I've said before, my complaint is not against Sage software, only their licencing which is based on clients rather than users.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Nothing wrong with MACs ('cept the lack of accounting programs which can be used on them without parallels or using bootcamp). I remember Lotus 1-2-3 and DOS - actually the first version of Sage I ever used was a DOS version, something like 5 I think - still have the floppy disks somewhere!!!!
At the risk of upsetting Shamus, you can use Sage One with a Mac!!
Whilst it is a basic accounting programme, it is Sage's latest online offering. As bookkeepers, you woud have access to the Accountants Edition, whereby you can access your clients accounts and make adjustments remotely.
I don't think you will find any licensing issues here Shamus!
By the way lol with the bunny rabbit story!!!
Kind regards
Jane
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Author of Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies, Sage One for Dummies and Bookkeeping for Dummies
I know that Sage will work on a Mac... Just not a big fan of Mac's... Or Sage... And don't even get me onto management consultants! lol
kind regrds
Shaun.
p.s. I am a management consultant but I'm getting better... Got Morals and ethics and everything now.... Now loan me your watch so that I can charge you to tell you the time
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
