Growing your business with Accounting Start

Sage Business Cloud Accounting Start is easy to use whether you’re a professional accountant or a new business owner with little accounting knowledge. Another great thing about Accounting Start is its flexibility. There are multiple subscription plans that give you the features you need to grow your business.

There are two subscriptions to choose from when upgrading; Accounting Standard and Accounting Plus.

Add new employees

As your business grows, you may hire more employees such as sales clerks or a bookkeeper. Accounting Start is not licensed per-seat, so you can add as many employees as you’d like with a Standard or Plus subscription.

Employees may require different access rights when working with your data. For example, you may not want a sales clerk to see your bank accounts, while this would be necessary for your bookkeeper. Standard and Plus subscriptions include predefined roles to use to assign permissions. You can also edit predefined roles or create custom roles from scratch.

Understanding premium features

In addition to adding employees, premium features are available when you upgrade your subscription. These features are fully integrated—no need to buy add-on modules or install anything.

Say goodbye to bulky spreadsheets

Let Accounting Start help streamline your business processes.

  • Expenses. Keep track of your vendors and expenses in the same place as where you enter your customer sales. This gives you a more holistic view of your business activity. The expense invoices and credit notes you create are automatically reflected in your bank accounts and posted to your general ledger. With expense data, you can take full advantage of Accounting’s reports to gain insights about the financial health of your business.
  • Products and Services. Manage the products and services your business sells where you make your sales. Whether your business sells products or various services, you can add them for fast invoice entry and automatic posting.
    • Stock items. Add stock items to take product management to the next level. Keep track of what you buy and sell (in and out) quantities, costs, and other details such as storage location. Accounting Start will automatically adjust quantities as you buy and sell stock items. You'll see an alert when quantities get low so you never have to worry about running out of stock again. With stock items, you also get deeper reporting to help you monitor in and out quantities and values.

Expand your client base

Are you looking to do business in other countries? Turn on foreign currency to create invoices and other transactions in the currency of your customer’s home country. Using this feature, Accounting Start will access live exchange rates for calculations to ensure the accuracy of your transactions.

Understanding your subscription options

With three options available, there's no need to pay for functionality you don’t need. Here’s a feature comparison:

Feature

Accounting Start

Accounting Standard

Accounting Plus

Sales invoicing

X

X

X

Take card and online payments

X

X

X

Track what you’re owed

X

X

X

Connect your bank

X

X

X

Reports and insight

X

X

X

Cash flow statement

X

X

X

Mobile app

X

X

X

Correct transactions (find & recode)

X

X X

Multi-user

  X

X

Cash flow forecasts

  X

X

Quotes and estimates

  X

X

Expense invoices

  X

X

Products and services

  X

X

Analysis types

  X

X

Pro-forma invoices

  X

X

Statements

  X

X

Remittance advice

  X

X

Credit notes

  X

X

Delivery notes

  X

X

Stock items

    X

Multi-currency invoicing

   

X

Visit our website for full details.

Upgrading your subscription

When you're ready, upgrading is quick and easy:

  1. Select your business name in the upper right-hand corner and then select Manage Business Account.

  2. Select Manage Services on the left.

  3. Select the subscription you want and then select Subscribe.

  4. Select Continue. Verify the summary of charges and then select Finish.

Where to find new features

After upgrading, some features are available immediately while others you have to turn on. Here's where to find them:

  • Expenses, Products and Services. You'll have new selections on the main navigation bar.

New Expenses and Products & Service options after upgrading

  • Stock items. Go to Products and Services, click New Item and then click Stock. Later, you can go to Reporting, Stock Movements to access that report.
  • Foreign currencies. From the main navigation bar, go to Settings, click Currencies in the Financial Settings section and then click Enable foreign currency transactions to turn on the feature.