Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate Reviews

Very stable environment that is always striving to keep up with technology. The support staff have a vast knowledge of the construction industry and the various accounting needs that go along with that.

Can be hard to learn at first, but the support and training staff are able to bring users up to speed.

The visibility offered across all the financial modules. Job Cost reports give a project overview.
Accounts Payable is very user friendly and far superior to other programs I've used.

We are integrated with Procore Construction Software. It would be extremely helpful if Sage 300 was fully integrated across all the financial tools in regards to exporting data. The flow of A/R billing/payment data and A/P invoice/ payment data would greatly impact the ability to manage all aspects of the projects.

Widely universal so integration software more readily available with management systems and customer relation software.

We came from ComputerEase, which is very user friendly. Sage appears to be outdated. The installation and upgrade process is very time consuming and for most would require hiring their services to install or your IT personnel. The biggest issue we have is the font size. If you try to change the font size in your screen, the windows will distort and you cannot access certain information within Sage, so it strains your eyes to view the information. My other big concern, is that when processing applications for payment within Billing, it will allow you to go over 100% on a scheduled line. If you don't manually check via print preview, you can very likely overbill. Additionally, when voiding applications, there are some major hassles when it comes to stored materials on jobs that don't carry over stored each month. Lastly, if you do not post in the order and timeframe that you are trained to do, it results in a large hassle and time-consuming elimination process. There are several other items that are not favorable, but these are the top ones on our mind most frequently.

The separate modules work very good. Certified Payrolls are easily done thru the payroll module. Payables and Receivables modules work nicely, with some help. Has a ton of reports available.

Although it has a lot of reports, they are hard to find the one you want/need. The separate modules seem like they came from separate companies sometimes and without an expert help or customer support, it would be really hard to get what you need out of them. I have had to pay for custom reports to be done to get what I need several times.

AP - any errors could be corrected easily, CM - easy to set up new bank accounts, GL - Financial Statement Designer is complete

AP - Waiver Releases trail could be better; GL - I would like to be able to close a month any day of the month, not only "full periods", just to be able to see the Financial Statements progress during the month. I know I can see Year to Date Ledger, but a summary will help

I would have to say that 22 years ago when I starting using and implementing Sage 300 (Timberline) there were many pros with industry leading solutions for the construction industry, unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

Sage 300 CRE is stuck in a rut. There is always "promise" of updates and better user interface but literally nothing ever happens. The fact that you can't even use the system remotely on a standard laptop has been frustrating beyond anything I have dealt with this last year. Sage seriously needs to get current with user's expectations.

Job Cost module is very helpful. It could have options that are more easily accessible to add change orders and paid date on the job cost reports.

That the entries in one module don’t post to every other module.

user friendly and support always there to help and resolve issues quickly. everyone on staff has been most helpful and so easy to work with

sometimes you have to wait to speak to someone if its not first think in the am otherwise the wait time is not that bad

it is user friendly
Easy to use
I like the reports

Difficult to fix a mistake, takes too long

the ease of having to configurate the estimates to your liking and have all formulas ready to enter numbers.

It has some glitches that not even the support center have been able to solve for our company.

I like the Property Management side of Sage - our office manages a number of commercial real estate properties, and we are able to track the leases, and the PM side of things does link in with the accounting side of things. And I know there are more features in the PM side that we don't even use.

Sage 300 CRE does not mix well with any outside software. We recently took over management of a dozen new properties and we had to manually input all the data to get the new companies in our system. There was no reasonable import feature available. We could have paid someone thousands of dollars to bring basic information into the system for us, but what they could import was not everything we'd need, and there would be no previous year data option. That was frustrating.
And the accounting system is also lacking. As much as all of the modules to integrate with each other, the accounting system does not perform to my expectations. And if you want to export a report into Excel, forget it! Sure it will export the data, but not in any kind of usable format! The numbers don't export as numbers, the formatting is all skewed. I just found out that there is a 'third party' software to use as a fix, but I just spent $2500 on that fix and found out that if we want to export the income statement and balance sheet, that is an extra $800. I'm not happy with the accounting system.

We integrate other estimating and purchasing software for our home building division and that works fairly well. As a database repository, it works well. It is easy to get information in the system and you have a lot of ability to customize and create fields.

The reporting tools in Sage 300 CRE are not good. Getting information out of the system has always been our challenge. We end up extracting the data via other tools and creating our own reports in other tools (i.e. excel). The financial statement and other report writing tools are not easy to work with, and frequently have issues that need to be corrected (or acknowledged... still not sure why Sage can not figure out how to round properly to make a balance sheet balance)...

I like that in general you are able to import tables from other software or ones created in Excel rather than either not having history or having to manually enter it. There are many very sophisticated modules to help you manager your business. There are awesome video's with lessons that you can use (over and over) for a period of time to learn each module broken down step by step. The job cost is able to import estimates created in Timberline (SAGE) Estimating, another very sophisticated program. From those estimates you can actually create purchase orders for items estimated, and email them directly to your vendors. Very slick if the program is set up correctly.

This is a complicated system and not for the average AP person or Controller/Accountant. You will more than likely need to hire an expert to train and walk you through implementation. The reports are rarely exactly what you want, so you either have to pay the expert to change them or to learn to change them yourself. The whole implementation process is lengthy - there is a learning curve.

Our company uses Sage 300 exclusively for Construction, Job Cost, Property Management , Financial Statements and Payroll. Every aspect integrates with what we need. We do export and use Excel with the Sage 300 when needed.

Unless you really familiarize yourself with the report writing, that can be difficult.

The ability to create specific roles for users.

The upgrades are a nightmare. Have to touch all desktops while doing an upgrade is extensively time consuming.
The support is atrocious. I open a ticket online and get an answer that doesn't even relate to my question. I've already scoured the knowledgebase, but the response I get it just sending me to a knowledgebase article. Then I'm told to call in. When I do call in, I get to listen to a message for 1 minute that tells me to go online and look at the knowledgebase (waste of my time), than I sit on hold for an hour to get a first level support person that doesn't know the answer and I need to schedule time to get a call back from some one else.

Sage is a very extensive platform that can handle complex accounting functions. There are a number of integrations with other software platforms that provide even more functionality, such as paperless AP approval routing, cloud timesheet entry, reporting, etc. There is also an organization named TUG that provides training via webinars and conferences and serves as an excellent resource when problems do arise.

The software is on-premise and requires a VPN and Remote Desktop connection if you are attempting to connect from the field. It is also very dated and the user interface could use some serious updating. Many people lack the computer skills needed to modify Crystal Reports and Report Designer Reports.

The job costing of Sage 300 is phenomenal.

There was a significant learning curve when migrating from prior software to Sage.

Stability. Continued support. Customization to meet needs of construction accounting. Reliable. It just works 99.9% of the time.

Sage has done nothing to improve the product in the past 20 years. It is basically the same interface. The addition of desktop app was an attempt to bring a modern feel to Sage, but it is basically the same program. Upgrading the software costs me a full day of downtime to upgrade server and all of our workstations every year. Surely, there could be a better way to upgrade. Project management is light years behind other PM solutions out there.

The Sage Desktop makes it easy to maneuver in the software. It's fairly easy to import and export data.

Need separate software to print checks (not native to Sage). Not able to drill-down in reports. Difficulty with handling multiple users - when one user is viewing a report on screen, other users cannot login. Future period balance sheets which cross a fiscal year are difficult to create because of how retained earnings is posted. Unable to tell the current period when entering report parameters.

Some of the financials with rolling numbers and the ability to use intercompany functions. There really isn't much I like about it though.

It's very slow and antiquated. Using modules is very old school and not being able to drill down from one module to another. The pervasive database is horrible and we need to restart the server at least once a week.

I have been using the software for almost 20 years. As we learn more, we realize the software is capable of doing so much, but our knowledge is limited. We use all of the accounting modules and are happy with the ease of use for all users, even new ones. We use the inquiries and customize them to get information from live data. We like that we can pull our data out and use in Excel and Access.

Two users can not be accessing a bank account at one time. Our AP users and reconciler have to communicate before checks are printed to make sure no one else is accessing the bank in the software. Education is the key to learning the software. We have joined TUG, the Users Group. This group is made up of end users sharing their knowledge and experiences in a teaching/conference format.

Entering AP, PR etc. is easy to use and understand. It's nice that all of the modules work together.

There are just too many bugs. Some times the software just doesn't work. Example - we process a purchase order, when we finish we select to print the PO and it just doesn't happen. We have limits setup in payroll for deductions and the system continues to take the deduction past that limit. There is just a lot of quirks with the system that Sage refuses to fix.

The most common functions are easy to find.

Almost everything is harder than it should be. It allows modules to post that won't post in the GL. The direct entry options are not the same as the import options. The service department read the knowledge base. Support takes a very long time. Its not fair to say call volumes are higher than expected if that is the norm. The pervasive SQL backbone make it very unfriendly to connect to. Some upgrades rename fields instead of adding new ones within the database. Sage does a very poor job informing customers of needed upgrades until it is almost too late.

Easy to add multiple companies and track each separately.

Software is stale, interface hasn't been updated for as long as we've used it (since 1997). Instead of updating the software, they force you to buy additional modules, or programs written by other companies. Cost of annual maintenance is extremely high, considering there are really no updates to the software that a typical user would notice. Getting reports for what you need is difficult. Custom reports have to be done by others at a cost because the software is so difficult to use (Crystal). Canned reports are terrible and have to be re-written in order to get the correct information. Service Management was sold to us with the promise it would be updated and modernized. It hasn't changed a bit in 20 years!

The system is very easy to use and understand. It's very flexible to meet the needs of many types of users.

The 3rd party modules can be a little difficult to navigate and do not have the flexibility that the other modules have. Aatrix is annoying and we have no choice but use it! The technical support seems to have gone down hill lately too. Trying to keep up with the changes since we are not officially notified when things change.