Another month, another half day wasted on Sage problems. I’ve had this problem at a few sites, mostly accountancy practices, some of which use ADM / Client Account Manager and multiple versions of Sage Accounts.

The fix was to find SDBDesktopUpdateInstaller.msi in %temp%\SageAccounts\Q3Update. Right-click -> Uninstall, and then Right-click -> Install.
You may need to install the v22 ‘May Improvements’ before this works. YMMV. I’ve had enough of Sage. I now advise my customers to move away as soon as possible. Report designer problems, updates not updating, emails not emailing, data service screwing up both file servers and end user machines by backing-up gigabytes of user profile data instead of just Sage data at 5pm every night, and now to top it off, Sage 50 Data Service isn’t even compatible with / supported on Small Business or Essentials servers. What market are they targeting exactly? Don’t forget Sage isn’t compatible with / supported on Office 365 either (a.k.a. you will be fobbed off and on your own when report designer emails break again). I look forward to the day Sage are a dead and buried legacy.

FYI last month a huge amount of time was spent on a Report Designer issue with Accounts v23. It appeared that the Data Source was locked to ‘SageLine50v13’, as the reports failed to run, citing that data source as being missing, and it was not possible to change the data source from SageLine50v13 in any reports either (the dialog box’s Save Changes button was not clickable). I told the customer that it looked like they might have restored reports from a v13 client which needed updating, or maybe to set the reports path to local rather than data files location. That didn’t work, so I advised they make use of their Sage Cover support contract, since I only charge this client £100 per month for mostly-everything IT service and support. Sage advised the client that the computer was corrupt and needed a full re-format and reinstall. Given that it was a new computer a few weeks earlier and had Sage installed from a new v24 ADM disk, I disputed this, but was nonetheless left to try to work it out. After 6 – 8 hours of pissing about, I happened upon this Sage article (updated reference here: https://communityhub.sage.com/gb/sage-50-accounts/f/general-discussion-uk/116473/reports-not-loading). I had searched for the term SageLine50v13 a week earlier and found nothing, so who knows when this article was published?

My advice to Sage users is that it’s a nightmare to support and very prone to failure. There are thankfully many alternatives available now. Xero works for me.

The two biggest mistakes Sage ever made in my opinion, apart from getting involved in ACT!, were to introduce the Sage Business Desktop / SBD central-launcher/common-platform/whatever-the-hell-it-is thing, and the SData service and its follow-ups. Neither of these things have been beneficial to the end user. Both of them have had a gigantic net-negative impact.