Summary - What You need To Know First:

• There is NO urgent need to replace BusinessVision right today - despite what Sage might tell you
• Sage thinks and hopes you'll switch to another Sage product, namely Sage 300 Online, and they'll tell you your only viable option is another Sage product
• We think that, at this moment, Sage don't actually have an appropriate replacement for BusinessVision
• There actually IS a really great replacement option: Add BVEssentials to work alongside BusinessVision now, and plan the simple migration to Spire Software when you're ready
• BVEssentials / Spire is the way to keep all your data and all the functionality you love, but move forward with more modern software, real support and continued development of new and useful features

What will Sage tell you to do?

Sage will tell you (probably energetically so) that if you use BusinessVision or were thinking of using it, your only choices are the few options that they offer:

• Sage One - an online (hosted, browser-based) entry-level system for a modest monthly fee
• Sage 50 Accounting (formerly Simply Accounting) - the current version of the very old Simply Accounting product from the mid-1980's
• Sage 300 - the current incarnation of what was once called ACCPAC; the traditional in-house software purchase version, which is still available after all these years
• Sage 300 Online - the webified, hosted version of Sage 300

OK, so What SHOULD you do, then?

The great news is that there are three better paths available for existing BusinessVision users as well as companies that were considering BusinessVision for the first time.

Option 1. Stay where you are:

There may actually be no reason to change. If you go this way, get everything current on BusinessVision, stay there, but stop paying for Sage Business Care (annual maintenance).

• BusinessVision runs fine on all the latest operating systems (up to Windows 8.1 and Server 2012) and with all the current versions of Microsoft Office and other applications
• If it works for you today and your needs don't change, it may work for you right up until December 31, 2020 (see comments above on the built-in 2021 login limitation)
• The only thing you lose by not renewing with Sage is the ability to get Payroll Updates, and there are other ways to accomplish Payroll (third-party application or payroll service)

Option 2. Start the move to BVEssentials / Spire:

BVEssentials is a third-party application that integrates closely with your BusinessVision data and adds a wide range of additional functionality, all while keeping a workflow that's familiar to BusinessVision users.

Here's what that means today and going forward:

• Today, BVEssentials adds functionality beyond what you're used to in BusinessVision modules; it replaces some modules entirely (notably, Order Entry)
• It's fast, flexible, easy, more robust (goodbye partial postings!) than BusinessVision and much more versatile
• It has been working well for over 1,000 companies and has been in use for over 10 years
• Very active development - new functionality is being released every single month
• Most recently, they have added complete versions of AR, AP, GL and Payroll that can replace those same modules in BusinessVision

Now, BVEssentials has evolved to its next generation, called Spire.

• Spire is a complete, standalone replacement for BusinessVision
• It has all the functionality of BusinessVision and more, with far greater ease-of-use, a modern database, and enthusiastic support and ongoing development
• Companies that purchased BVEssentials before July 2015 will get their licenses upgraded to Spire at no extra cost.
• Companies purchasing Spire now can install it now, or add BVEssentials to BusinessVision for the moment, and upgrade to Spire when they're ready
• Very important note: Spire will retain ALL your BusinessVision history

In summary, Spire is designed to be easier, faster and more robust than BusinessVision; it's more flexible, more capable and far, far better-maintained. It does everything BusinessVision does and a LOT more.

Option 3. Look elsewhere

Start looking into other third-party accounting / business management solutions from Sage or other vendors. Certainly, there's lots of good software out there, at various price points.

However, you can assume that to get something better than BusinessVision, you'll likely pay a lot more, and the odds of migrating all your historical data are slim to none.

Why use BVEssentials / Spire over one of the Sage products?

We've explained above why the BVEssentials / Spire path makes a lot of sense for a lot of users. But what about the Sage options they'll be pitching?

• Sage One is very, very limited. No inventory, and if you don't need that, there are other, better options available at the same cost or less (some even free). Even Sage won't really talk this option up
• Sage 50 (formerly Simply Accounting) is a lower-end option than BusinessVision. It's come a long way since its days as Bedford Accounting in the early 1990's, and it's a decent product given its low price point. However, it just does not scale, and it's missing a lot of features that BusinessVision users need every day
• Sage 300 is really expensive compared to BusinessVision, a lot more complex, and huge overkill for most BusinessVision users. It's also Batch-based - which means it's NOT real-time. Transactions are accumulated in batches, which must be manually posted. At the end of each day, you need to run Day-End Processing. At month-end, you need to manually run Month-End Processing. Until you do, your books are not actually up-to-date.
  
  

  It also suffers from the same aging platform issues as BusinessVision has. Sage will offer some compelling price points to try to get BusinessVision users to move to it, but don't forget: implementation will be complex and expensive, and annual maintenance charges will eventually be based on the list price of the software, so your annual costs would go way up, as would your total cost of ownership (TCO)

• Sage 300 Online is the option Sage is positioning as the future for BusinessVision users. However, it has multiple weaknesses that make it difficult to see it as a choice for the kinds of businesses that rely on BusinessVision now, including:
  • it's hosted - which means you need to ask:
    • Who owns the data?
    • What happens the day you don't want to pay any more?
    • What happens the day they decide in 5 or 10 years that they don't want to offer it any more?
    • What happens the day your Internet connection is down?
    • How well is it secured?
    • What happens if there's a breach?
    • Where is the data (clue: it's in the US...), and what does this mean for your privacy and that of your customers?
    • As of this writing, Sage they they're 'thinking' about encrypting backups (not live data - there is no plan to do that); they're 'thinking' of developing tools to let you extract the data (YOUR data) from their system if you want to leave or they discontinue it. Even then, the best you'll get is a bunch of unrelated Excel sheets that you can't access like an accounting system.
  • It's a brand new offering - i.e., nowhere near tried & true, and yet it is decidedly NOT a modern application:
    • It is based on the exact same codebase as Sage 300 on-premise (which is itself the re-branded Sage ACCPAC)
    • It was not written as a web app, but rather a "web-i-fying' wrapper was created to allow the existing application to be made to look like a web app
    • As of this writing, much of that codebase is still programmed and maintained using Visual Basic 6, which Microsoft discontinued support for in 2008. They say they have been upgrading some of the code to newer technologies, but only incrementally. Sage can't tell us when or if the entire app will ever be rewritten with modern tools
  • It's overkill for the vast majority of BusinessVision users, yet lacks some basic functionality that has long been in BusinessVision
  • Batch-based workflow - Like the on-premises version, everything in Sage 300 Online is batch-based, which means it's NOT real-time. Transactions are accumulated in batches, which must be manually posted. At the end of each day, you need to run Day-End Processing. At month-end, you need to manually run Month-End Processing. Until you do, your books are not actually up-to-date
  • Multiple companies - if you want to run 2 or more companies (many BusinessVision users do), you must pay another incremental subscription price for each user of each company. As of now, they're 'thinking' about reviewing that
  • Credibility - Sage do not have a great track record of creating web-based anything that's easy to use or efficient. Have you ever tried to navigate their customer portal? Their main website? At last check, Sage 300 Online ONLY runs on Internet Explorer, and only certain versions. They're 'thinking' about adding the ability to use other browsers
  • Historical data - as of October, 2014, Sage said they were working on data migration tools from BusinessVision to Sage 300, and had made some progress. However, they still could not (or would not) say how much of your BusinessVision data they would be able or prepared to convert
  • Price - Sage have been offering Sage 300 Online at around the same price as your BusinessVision annual fees, but only for a set period. After that, the regular price starts at $69 per user, per month, per company data set - forever. For a typical BusinessVision client with two active companies, that's $69 x 10 users x 2 companies x 12 months = $16,560 per year, every year.