Sage 300 Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping in Sage 300, still widely called Accpac: batches posted rather than stranded, multi-company and multi-currency handled deliberately, and a month end that closes.
Still widely called Accpac.
Sage 300 is mid-market Sage, and a different system from Sage 50 or Sage Intacct rather than a bigger or smaller version of either. A great deal of confusion about it comes from that alone. It is multi-company and multi-currency by design, it is modular, and it does things in a specific order that the smaller products hide from you. Most problems in a Sage 300 file are that order being interrupted rather than anything being entered wrongly.
What the work looks like in Sage 300
A batch is not in the ledger until it is posted
This is the single most useful thing to know about the system. Entries go into batches, and a batch sits there complete and correct and invisible to the general ledger until somebody posts it. So a trial balance can look wrong when nothing is wrong: the transactions exist, they are just not in yet. Unposted batches accumulating across subledgers is the commonest reason a Sage 300 month will not close, and it is a ten-minute fix once you know to look.
Subledgers post to the general ledger, not into it
Accounts payable, receivable and the rest create their own batches for the general ledger to take. That hand-off can be set to post automatically or to hold for review, and the two behave very differently at month end. Knowing which way it is configured tells you whether a missing figure is a data problem or a workflow one, and those get investigated in completely different places.
Multi-currency means revaluation, and revaluation is a decision
Where the system holds foreign currency balances, they need revaluing at the rate on the reporting date, and the gain or loss that produces is real and has to land somewhere deliberate. Doing it late, or at a rate nobody wrote down, produces a number nobody can reproduce next quarter. Doing it on a schedule against a stated source makes it ordinary.
The fiscal calendar closes periods, and it should be used
Sage 300 will lock a period so nothing lands in a month somebody has already reported. It is frequently left open across an entire year because closing it once felt inconvenient, which means any prior month can still change and no reported figure is stable. Closing periods as part of the monthly routine is what makes last month's answer still true next month.
Optional fields, used well or not at all
Sage 300 carries optional fields on most records, which is how it holds dimensions the chart of accounts does not. Set up deliberately they answer questions the account code cannot. Set up over the years by different people they become a set of half-populated fields that make reporting less reliable rather than more, and a clean-out is usually worth more than adding another one.
Questions about Sage 300
We call it Accpac. Is that the same thing?
Yes. Sage 300 is what Accpac was renamed to, and a great many businesses that have run it for years still call it Accpac and still have people on staff who do. It is the same lineage and the same system, and nothing on this page changes depending on which name you use for it.
Do you do Sage 300 customisation or implementation?
No. We work in the system: entering, posting, reconciling, closing the month, and cleaning up a structure that has drifted. Implementation, custom development, module rollouts and version upgrades belong with a Sage partner who does that work, and taking it on would be claiming something we do not do.
Is Sage 300 work available to US businesses?
Yes, in Canada and the United States both. US tax filing of any kind stays with your own preparer. Multi-currency handling across the two countries is ordinary work in this system and is a common reason a business is on it in the first place.
More questions answered on the FAQ page.