SAGE ACCPAC 5.6 BROCHURE

Sage ERP Solutions

Sage Accpac Extended Enterprise Suite Version 5.6 Release Guide

Improve Productivity. Streamline Operations. Increase Visibility.

December 2009

www.SageNorthAmerica.com

Overview

As the world of business is constantly evolving, so must your business management software.
At Sage, we work to continually improve your experience with Sage Accpac and develop new
functionality to help you get more out of your solution. We work directly with our extensive
customer base (over 45,000 companies and 200,000 users) to ensure our products work the
way you do to improve processes and enhance productivity. Led by dedicated User-Centric
Design teams, we strive to understand not only how customers interact with and utilize
our software, but also how their businesses work and how we can help to solve their core
business issues. This team collaborates with our customers through several data collection and
interpretation methods, making it easy for you to get involved and get your voice heard! Over
the past year, over 5,000 customers and partners worldwide have been consulted through
on-site visits, surveys, interviews, and observational studies in our state-of-the-art usability
laboratories. The results of this rigorous research are poured into the product development
process helping us to design and build better software.

In this guide you will find an overview of the updates you and our customers prioritized for
Sage Accpac Version 5.6, scheduled for release in December 2009. The key enhancements
developed will help to automate workflow and reduce costs throughout your organization,
helping you accomplish more in less time. You can:

Access decision-quality information and significantly improve your visibility into business •
measurements with the new Sage Accpac Intelligence application.

Better manage IT costs and facilitate secure system access through virtualization.•

Save money on your upgrade costs with free training, higher quality, and faster •
implementation procedures.

Accelerate your collections efforts and improve your cash flow utilizing the now built-in AR •
Inquiry tool.

Improve your customer experiences by providing faster and more informed responses •
through improved reporting, AR Inquiry and SageCRM.

Better manage growth expectations and create loyal customers through SageCRM. •

Improve the productivity of your workforce with the many user-requested enhancements •
throughout your software.

Gain a faster and more accurate view of your cash position with improved workflow in •
Bank Services.

Reduce the risk of penalties and fees through the new functionality in Payroll•

Lower operations costs through better management of your inventory•

As you journey through this resource guide, you may be wondering how you can get your
hands on all of the dynamic new features packed into this version. Great news! You are entitled
to software upgrades and maintenance updates as part of your Sage Accpac ERP Software
Assurance plan. If you need to renew your Sage Accpac Software Assurance plan, you don’t
have to miss out. Simply contact us at 866-709-2436 (615-777-6150 for international) today.

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New Enhancements and Functionality

“What’s New” Anytime Learning Training Course

You can quickly get all employees up to speed on the improvements in this release through
the “What’s New” Anytime Learning course specifically for Version 5.6. This online course
demonstrates how you can put all of the great new enhancements to work in your business.
Best of all, this course is offered at no additional cost to you. Visit www.SageU.com/accpac
for details.

Better Insight into Your Business

Increase insight into your business to realize your strategic vision! Take a look at how this new
functionality outlined below can enable your employees and partners to adapt successfully to
changes in today’s markets and make better, faster business decisions.

Sage Accpac Intelligence Provides Strategic Planning Tools

Sage Accpac Intelligence–a new product within the Sage Accpac Extended Enterprise Suite–
empowers you to quickly and easily obtain the information you need for operations and strategic
planning from your Sage Accpac solution. Sage Accpac Intelligence lets you effortlessly create
reports and analyze data, utilizing the familiar Microsoft® Excel® application. With Sage Accpac
Intelligence, you can spend more time focusing on information analysis and interpretation and
less time pulling the data together. Best of all, Version 5.6 provides you with the Sage Accpac
Intelligence application at no additional cost. You receive:

Sage Accpac Intelligence Application•
Connection to a single Sage Accpac company database•
Standard report templates for management, sales, purchases, and inventory (defined in the •

next section)
Sage Accpac Intelligence Report Manager•

One User License •

Author new reports (organizing, creating, editing), as well as filter and aggregate data and •
set permissions/security

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Standard Report Templates (Included in 5.6)

Get easy-to-use, in-depth financial, operations, and strategic planning intelligence so that you
are always in the know. Sage Accpac Intelligence provides several standard report templates
with your solution, so you can focus on interpreting information to make faster, better business
decisions, rather than trying to create custom reports.

Dashboard Analysis

The Dashboard Analysis report contains a one-page summary of key business information. The
report features “Top N” Reporting on customers, items, and expenses, and contains both text
and graphics to help with daily and long-term planning. In addition, comparative Profit and Loss
figures are displayed for both the current month and year-to-date figures from the start of the
financial year.

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Financial Analysis Reports

Three powerful financial reports are available out of the box. Each of these reports generates
comparative balance sheets and/or income statements for any specified financial year, period,
quarter, and budget. These reports are readily customizable within Microsoft Excel. It is possible
to drill down to the GL Transaction details for any of these accounts.

The Income Statement and Balance Sheet layouts are automatically generated, grouped, and
subtotaled by mapped financial categories.

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General Ledger Transaction Details

This fully customizable report displays the account transaction details and relevant date,
reference, description, and amount totals. It is possible to transform this report into a monthly trial
balance by simply manipulating the Pivot Table within Microsoft Excel.

Inventory Master Report

Displays item cost and quantity information over any given date range, as well as relevant item
location details. The report can easily be filtered by item number and location, or additional
elements can be added to the pivot table for further analysis.

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Purchase Master

This report lists relevant purchase information by vendor and item number for any given date
range. The report can be filtered by vendor, item number, or unit of measure. It is possible to add
additional elements to the pivot table for further manipulation and analysis.

Sales Master

This report highlights pertinent sales information including item sales quantities, costs, and gross
profits by customer and product. Similar to the previous reports, additional elements can be
added to the pivot table for further manipulation and analysis.

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Report Manager (One License Included in 5.6)

As defined above, the Report Manager allows you to author new reports (organizing, creating,
editing), as well as filter and aggregate data. This tool also allows you to set permissions/security
for reports. One user license is included with your 5.6 upgrade; however, additional licenses can
be purchased as needed in your organization.

Report Viewer

This tool provides you with basic editing capabilities (filtering and changing of parameters) and
drill-down functionality on existing reports/templates. You can provide Report Viewer licenses to
staff members who do not need to create new reports.

Connector

The Connector tool further simplifies the day-to-day operational tasks of financial managers
allowing access to the information they need from multiple sources and consolidation of data
from multiple companies. Purchasing this tool allows for consolidations and connectivity to
unlimited ODBC data sources.

Analysis

Support business strategy and decision making through advanced analysis of trends and what-if
scenarios. The Analysis product allows you to utilize built-in Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables to get
insight into information that goes beyond transactional data. You can create OLAP cubes, which
enable multidimensional analysis of your data. However, there is no need to start from scratch, as
purchasing the Analysis tool provides several reports, such as:

Inventory Analysis Cube

This report allows you to analyze year-to-date stock-on-hand quantities, purchase and sales
order quantities, and actual stock values by inventory group. You also receive the ability to
perform multilevel drill-down into the required level of detail and a Top N Items graph.

Sales Analysis Cube

This report allows you to analyze sales quantities, gross profits, and amounts by customer,
product, and salesperson over multiple fiscal/calendar years. It also provides the ability to perform
multilevel drill-down into the required level of detail and includes Trend Analysis Graph.

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Financial Analysis Cube

This report allows you to analyze G/L accounts by Account Group and segment over multiple
fiscal years. It also enables multilevel drill-downs into the required level of detail and includes a
Trend Analysis Graph.

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