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Sage integration: keep the accounts right without retyping them.

Sage 50 runs the books in a great many UK firms, and it does that well. The work goes in getting orders and invoices into it, and out to the customers who need them. We connect Sage to the systems around it so your accounts team stops being a copy-typing department.

Where the hours go around Sage

Sales orders copied from a shop or an email into Sage. Invoices exported to PDF and uploaded to a customer’s procurement portal one at a time. Payments matched by eye. Month-end spent reconciling figures that should already agree.

Each step is a place for a typo, and a typo on an invoice means a rejection, a query and a later payment.

What we connect to Sage

Online shops, customers’ procurement portals and electronic ordering systems, warehouse and stock systems, and your own operations screens. We have kept Sage 50 in step with a customer’s procurement portal in both directions, so orders came in and invoices went out without being rekeyed.

Where a customer demands EDI, we produce the files it requires from your sales data and send them through its trading network.

Exhibit 1. Invoicing, before and after automation
MeasureBeforeAfterProof
Time from order to invoiceDays or weeksWithin 24 hours, every orderMiranda
Invoices to a national merchantBuilt to its rules by handProduced automatically in its required formatTRADACOMS invoicing
Checks before sendingWhoever had timeEvery day’s invoices reviewed and approved in one placeMiranda

Source: Miranda and TRADACOMS EDI case studies.

Invoices that get paid

Miranda supplies building and fencing products to Huws Gray, one of the UK’s largest builders’ merchants, which accepts invoices only in a strict electronic format.

  • Miranda

    Invoices are now produced from sales data in the exact format Huws Gray requires. A wrongly laid-out file is rejected, so exact matters.

  • Miranda

    Its client required automated ordering and invoicing at renewal. It was in place in time, and the contract was renewed.

How a Sage integration runs

  1. 1

    List what is keyed in

    Every document that goes into or out of Sage by hand in a typical week.

  2. 2

    Automate the biggest one

    A fixed price for the first link, tested with your real invoices before go-live.

  3. 3

    Review before it sends

    Your team approves each batch until you are happy to let it run on its own.

Questions

Do you work with Sage 50 desktop?
Yes. Older desktop accounts packages such as Sage 50 can be connected, as well as cloud accounts systems like Xero and QuickBooks.
Do we have to move to a new accounts package?
No. Your accounts team keeps using Sage. We change how information gets in and out of it.
Can you send invoices to our customer’s portal automatically?
Yes, and in the other direction too: orders from the portal can arrive in your system without retyping.
What if an invoice is wrong?
Each invoice is checked against its order before it is sent, and anything that does not match is held for a person.

How much of the week goes into Sage by hand?

A free call is enough to size it. For a wider look at where AI fits in finance, book the AI Profit Review.

Max RevittFounder and Director