Sage 50 Accounts - Checking environmental issues

Summary

How to check your computer environment to ensure Sage 50 Accounts runs correctly.

Description

There are different areas of your computer environment that you may need to check or amend, to ensure Sage 50 Accounts runs correctly, or to further investigate issues that may be caused by the computer environment.

Resolution

NOTE: Some of the steps may require help from your local IT administrator.

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Windows updates and required components
Permissions and user profiles
Anti-virus, firewall and security
Speed Issues
Clean installation
Reporting issues
Sage websites and servers within Sage 50 Accounts
3rd Party Applications
VPN Issues

Windows updates and required components

Windows Updates

New versions of Sage 50 Accounts are always tested on the latest windows updates. For any windows related errors during installation, we recommend ensuring all windows updates are downloaded and installed. Once these have been done, reinstall Sage 50 Accounts followed by a restart of the computer.

Internet Explorer

Internet explorer is not the most popular choice of browsers, with users preferring to use other such as Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox. Regardless of this, we would recommend that the latest version of Internet Explorer is installed.

Permissions and user profiles

User profiles

Log onto the computer with a different/new user profile to help determine if there is an issue with a specific user account
Log into a different computer with the same user profile to help determine if the issue is related to the actual computer or its registry as windows may be corrupt and need to be reinstalled
If the accounts issues don't occur on the same user profile on a different computer then it would indicate an issue with the first computer and a scan (sfc /scannow) may need to be performed

Data location

If your Sage 50 Accounts data is held on a server and is accessed through a mapped network drive, we advise changing this to a UNC path on each client that accesses the data. The current path to the data can be found in Sage Accounts by clicking Help then About and noting the data directory.

How do I change to a UNC path?

Browse to the Company file:

Version Company file location

v27 C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2021

v26 C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2020

v25 C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2019

v24 C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2018
Double-click the Company file and choose Open with Notepad.
Change the paths in the Company file to point to the new data location on the server. You must enter the relevant UNC path for this. For example, if your server is called Server and your shared folder is called Sagedata, the UNC path is \\Server\Sagedata
Click File, click Save then click File and click Exit.

If your data is held on a server and you are experiencing performance issues we recommend moving to a different location to test and identify if the issue is with the environment.

For example, if the data is relocated to the local computer and Sage 50 Accounts works as expected, it is not the program or the data where the issues lies.

What we would recommend is the following…

Relocate the accounts data to a different location on the same server
Check user permissions to the server

Do they need editing/heightened?
Do users have access to all Sage 50 Accounts related files and folders?

Is there a different server the data could be relocated to?

User/Administrator Access Rights & UAC

It is recommended that the windows user needs to be the Administrator or needs to have full administrator rights. This because Sage 50 Accounts needs the ability to read/write to certain files in the main areas of the computer. Permissions issues can usually cause settings not to be retained in accounts or favourites not being retained in the reports areas.

You can check if the user is logged onto the computer as the administrator by following this article.

Anti-virus, firewall and security

Unrestricted Access

If your computer is running antivirus software, you must configure this so it doesn't conflict with Sage Accounts.

Scheduled tasks

If the issue happens at specific times of the day or on specific days of the week, check your scheduled tasks and amend any that are scheduled when the issue occurs:

Click Start then click All Programs and click Accessories.
Click System Tools then click Task Scheduler and change the time on all relevant scheduled tasks.

Timeout Issues

There may be times when using Sage, that certain areas of the program take a long time to load or do not load at all. This behaviour usually indicates that something is interfering/blocking the program from carrying out what it needs to display data. You should check the following...

Anti-virus/Firewall - try disabling this feature either local and/or network
- Some Anti-virus programs such as BitDefender or Eset will still run in the background even when disabled. Uninstalling these may be required.
Server/network connection - test the data on the local machine.
3rd party programs - close all non-essential programs when using Sage 50 Accounts
Background services - stop all non-essential services running in the background
- Open Windows Task Manager to see what is running on the PC
Internet connection - if using a wireless connection try using a direct cable
System Resources - does it adhere to the minimum requirements?

Speed Issues

To help troubleshoot speed issues we recommend you test the network transfer speed outside of Sage 50 Accounts.

How do I test this?

To do this you can copy the Reports folder from the client computer to the root of the shared folder on the server and time how long it takes to complete.

The standard location for the Reports folder is:

Version	Company file location
v27	C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2021\Company.000
v26	C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2020\Company.000
v25	C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2019\Company.000
v24	C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2018\Company.000
v23	C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2017\Company.000
v22	C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2016\Company.000

On the client PC, open Sage Accounts.
Click Help, then click About. In the Program Details area, make a note of the Data Directory.
Open Windows Explorer and browse to the Reports folder.
Right-click the folder, then click Copy.
Browse to the route of the local disk on the server, then click Edit, then click Paste.
Time how long it takes to complete the process.
Repeat steps 4 and 5 two more times and calculate the average time taken.
Because the first transfer should take longer, you must only use the average of the second and third file transfers.

On a network which runs at 100 Mbps, the folder should transfer in 30 - 40 seconds. On a network which runs at 1 Gbps, the folder should transfer in 15 - 20 seconds.

You should now repeat the process to time how long it takes to copy the file from the server back to the client PC.

If copying the file in either direction takes longer than 80 seconds on a 100 Mbps network or 40 seconds on a 1 Gbps network, this is slower that you would expect and is impacting the performance of Sage Accounts. Until the network transfer speed improves, Sage Accounts will continue to run slowly. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any further advice about what may be causing this and how to resolve it. We recommend that you refer to your network administrator for further advice.

Clean installation

Sometimes it may be best to remove all traces of the Sage 50 Accounts software from the computer and start off with a fresh installation. You can find help with this in the following guides:

Reporting issues

Reports Running Slowly

There may be times when using Sage 50 Accounts, that running reports will take longer than usual to preview or print. To identify where the problem lies, we recommend trying the following…

Close all non-sage programs running on the computer – this could indicate an issue with the PC specification such as RAM
End all non-essential processes in Task manager – there may be multiple processes running in the background that could be slowing down the PC
If Sage 50 Accounts is installed on a different computer, try on that machine – this will indicate if the issues is with the software installation or the computer
Database size – the size of the accounts data can affect the speed of reports. The data size can be reduced by deleting old invoices and records and using the Clear Audit Trail option to remove old transactions

Printing Issues

You may find that some printing issues occur which can be caused by a conflict between the printer and the Sage software. Outside of Sage 50 Accounts, other documents may print fine but this is because other programs do not use the same platform or print routine, they have their own routines built into them.

If this happens, we recommend the following…

Installing or updating a compatible printer driver
Changing the default printer and printing to something different, such as XPS document writer or CutePDF (if installed) can help determine if the printer driver is the issue

Sage websites and servers within Sage 50 Accounts

Website access

Sage 50 Accounts tries to access various websites for different tasks, and therefore requires unrestricted access to all relevant URLs. If the software is unable to access these websites, it may return errors when performing tasks.

NOTE: The link to the article above relates to proxy servers. There may not be a proxy server in place, however the URLs may still need to be made as 'trusted' sources on any anti-virus software and/or web browser security settings.

Network monitoring

We also recommend using a networking monitoring to run side by side with Sage 50 Accounts to see if there is anything running in the 'background' that could conflict with the Sage software.

TIP: An example of a program that can do this is Fiddler. The Fiddler tool allows users to debug web applications by capturing network traffic between the Internet and computers as well as inspect incoming and outgoing data to monitor and modify requests and responses before the browser receives them.

3rd Party Applications

Sage has no control over 3rd party applications that link in with Sage 50 Accounts and issues may arise when a new version of Sage 50 Accounts is installed.

This is usually because these applications will be configured to work with the files and settings of a particular version of the program. When a new update is installed, most of the Sage files are updated and some new ones added [depending on the update]. This means the 3rd party application may need reconfigured to work with any new/updated Sage 50 Accounts files.

VPN Issues

A VPN is an encrypted tunnel through the Internet that reaches from your device to a VPN server. From there, your traffic is passed on to the website or service that you’re using. Since your data has to travel through the VPN server, it’s normal to experience slight hiccups in speed from time to time.

A slow VPN may be a sign that you haven’t configured your settings for optimal performance, or it could mean that more significant changes are in order.

CAUTION: Sage have no control over VPN's and their settings/configuration so we recommend contacting your IT support for assistance with these issues.