For most of the business world, Year End is quickly approaching. In a perfect business world, ledgers would be tied up in a neat little bow and a New Year would start off with celebration. More often than not, Year End causes tons of stress for the same reason it does for the holiday season – a lack of preparation.
For the last few months, we’ve been telling both our Sage ERP and Sage CRE customers to start preparing for Year End. We tell them if they need help with any Year End-related projects to get with us early because our schedules will fill up quickly. Also, it’s the time of year when people are out of the office for a variety of other reasons, from attending kids’ Christmas pageants to being out with a cold.
Also, emergencies do pop up, and depending on the severity, they may take precedence ahead of or alongside scheduled projects. This year, our development team is swamped with four go-lives scheduled for the first of the year.
While it’s a bit too late to think about schedules now, there is another place that Sage customers can go to for that extra bit of help getting through Year End. The Sage Year End Center is still the best place for all Sage customers to go to when they need an extra hand up getting Year End processes done correctly.
Sage Year End Center provides detailed info in easy-to-use format
Nestled inside Sage City, the Sage Year End Center allows customers from all over the world to find the information they’re looking for quickly. Even on a computer that I don’t normally use for work, I was able to do a Google search and find the Sage Year End Center without any roadblocks — even before I was logged in.
The Sage Year End Center provides a hand-up for Sage users looking to close out 2021 and start a new 2022.
The front page lists all of the main Sage products segmented by the different regions Sage serves in alphabetical order (so the U.S. is the last one on the list). Every product that requires some sort of Year-End closure is listed, from Sage X3 and Sage 100 Contractor to Sage HRMS and Sage Fixed Assets.
From there, every software title is broken down into the different support options available to customers: FAQs, Checklists, Training, and Updates.
The FAQs section offers both product-specific help and generic help links. For example, all of the software titles have a link to the Sage Coronavirus Support Hub. On the flip side, the Sage 300 CRE section has a link for Payroll (which is a major factor for Year End for construction businesses) while Sage Fixed Assets has a link for Depreciation.
While the Checklists section is pretty self-explanatory, the folks at Sage City have given a couple of different ways to use their checklists. There’s a step-by-step checklist format that drives you to the next step after you completed each task. There’s also a printable version that allows you to see the whole checklist at once.
The Training section offers content from Sage University, Sage’s home for online training. And just like Sage University, this section offers anytime learning from pre-recorded videos and training classes for a more in-depth look at the subject matter.
The Updates section gives links to areas where software and product updates are given, mostly within Sage City. While product updates and Year End aren’t always hand-in-hand, it’s a good reminder to make sure you have your product updated before proceeding with Year End. It’s good practice for security reasons to keep your product updated, and most times your product must be on the latest version to run Year End correctly.
Then each product page in the Year End Center has useful external links, such as the IRS (or equivalent government agency for other countries) or Aatrix eFile Deadlines. There are also links to generic Sage help pages, such as the Sage Knowledgebase and Sage University. While there are more specific links to Year End content within each page, these will help you get to other areas of help you may need outside of preparing for the Year End close.
The Sage Year End Center is one of the most useful tools Sage has in its arsenal. You can tell how popular it is by the number of people joining Sage City in the past few weeks. (The first page of Sage City shows when new people join.) When people are signing up during Thanksgiving week, you know how much of a priority Year End is to the people who keep the books going for their business.