Came across an interesting article -> that can be accessed from the following link

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/whats_new_oct08_how_to_survive_the_credit_crunch.htm

Credit Crunch can be effectively handled by the following ways

1. Don’t bury your head in the sand

Ignoring your debt problems will only make them worse. Don’t ignore calls or letters from the people you owe money to (your creditors).

Contact them to explain why you’re having problems. The sooner you do this, the more options you’ll have for solving your financial problems.

2. Get advice

There are many organisations which offer free and independent money advice such as Citizens Advice, Shelter, National Debtline, and the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. Their debt advisers can assess your situation and work out the best course of action for you. For details of organisations which can help, go to the bottom of this page.

3. Pay your priority debts first

There are some debts you need to pay first before others, because the consequences of not paying them can be much more serious. For example, mortgage or rent debts are a priority as if you don’t pay these you could lose your home. Debt advisers can help you plan your budget and pay your priority debts first.

4. Pay what you can each month

Work out how much money you’ve got coming in and going out of your household on essential expenses like food and bills. Then work how much you’ve got left over to pay your creditors. If you can’t afford to pay back all the money you owe, work out how much you can afford and offer to pay this. A debt adviser can help you do this.

5. Maximise your income

Are you getting all the money you’re entitled to?

There may be benefits or tax credits you can get such as Pension Credit or Disability Living Allowance which you haven’t claimed. Working Tax Credit is an in-work benefit which is not just available to people with children. You might be able to get it if you work enough hours and are disabled or your income is low enough, even if you don’t have children. You may be able to get Council Tax Benefit or Housing Benefit to help you pay your council tax and rent. You don’t necessarily have to be out of work to get these benefits. You may be able to get help with your health costs such as prescription charges and dental costs. You may be able to claim help with education costs such as school meals and clothing.

You may be able to get a grant to help you pay for things like fitting home insulation and improving energy efficiency. This can help cut down the fuel bills.

Your gas and electricity supplier may be able to help you if you have fuel debts.

To find out if you can get help, visit the British Gas Energy Trust website at: www.britishgasenergytrust.org.uk or the EDF Energy Trust website at: www.edfenergytrust.org.uk.

There are also some charities which give grants to people to help pay their bills or buy essential items. You can find a list of these charities on the Turn 2 Us website at: www.turn2us.org.uk.

An adviser can help you maximise your income. For details of organisations which can help, go to the bottom of this page.

6. Make savings on your household expenses

Look carefully at your spending and see if there is anything you are able to cut down on. For example, you could shop around for a cheaper gas or electricity provider, or look at cheaper mortgage or insurance providers.

You can find more information about changing your gas and electricity suppliers from the website of the consumer watchdog, Consumer Focus at: www.consumerfocus.org.uk.

To find out more about how to save money on financial products such as mortgages and insurance, go to the website of financial watchdog the Financial Services Authority at: www.moneymadeclear.fsa.gov.uk.

7. Think twice about taking out a loan to pay off all your debts

You may end up paying back a lot more than you borrowed and at very high interest rates. You may not be able to afford the repayments and the loan may be secured against your home which you could then lose.

8. Facing possession proceedings? Don’t panic

Always attend the court hearings yourself. Court proceedings do not mean that you will automatically lose your home. The court process acts as a final check to make sure repossession is the last resort. Some courts have advice desks which can provide last minute assistance.

9. Take care with “mortgage rescue schemes”

Selling your home and renting it back might seem like a quick fix to your debt problems. But, many of these schemes offer very little security. You could end up paying very high rent or even being evicted. These schemes are also not regulated so you will not have access to the same protections as a mortgage holder.

10. Don’t abandon your property

If you are struggling with mortgage repayments you may be tempted to send the keys to your lender or abandon your property. Don’t do this without advice. You could still be responsible for the debt on the property and may be pursued for it years later.

Click here for more details on Sage 2011

Whats New ?

Bank reconciliation

All the details you need are now on one printable screen. Complete customer and supplier receipts and refund without leaving the bank reconciliation to save you time.

Sage services

Find out exactly which Sage Services you can access with the new Services Toolbar in Sage 50 Accounts 2011. Update your Sage account details and access Sage software downloads.

Flat rate VAT

Set up and manage businesses on both invoice and cash-based flat-rate VAT schemes. Calculate the savings or losses to your business of flat-rate compared to standard VAT.

Charities

Manage your reporting by fund, produce Profit and Loss and Balance sheets without the need to export data.

Web store integration

Integrate your web store with your accounts. Using Sage Pay you can create new customers and products, sales invoices and receipts. Payments are downloaded automatically from your web store, saving you time.

www.sage2011.com

Sage North America announced today the availability of the Sage Peachtree 2011 product line, part of the broad portfolio of Sage business management solutions that service end-to-end business needs. A longtime favorite of small businesses and accountants, Sage Peachtree is easier to use than ever, providing companies with instant access to key information that makes billing customers, reacting to issues and controlling profitability easier than ever for small businesses, helping them to stay competitive in a rapidly changing economy.

“At a time when most small businesses need to do more with less, Sage Peachtree 2011 will help them to leverage efficiencies and answer the three most important questions of their day: are business activities on track, on schedule, and within budget,” said Connie Certusi, general manager, small business accounting solutions, Sage North America. “Sage Peachtree 2011 makes it easier for small businesses to quickly get the information they need so they can focus on what they do best: running their businesses.”

treamline Service Billing: Businesses that provide services can quickly invoice customers for any unbilled time and expenses; unbilled items can be filtered by date, customer or job. The outstanding time and expenses are then transferred directly to an invoice, increasing billing efficiency.

Improve decision making with the new Inventory and Services Management Center: A customized dashboard helps users process large quantities of information about a single inventory item or a service at a glance. It enables quick research, comparisons, and decision making, and helps small businesses easily see the impact of a service—usage, revenue, and more. The dashboard cuts time needed to track details on inventory for planning purchases, freeing that time for other activities.

Instantly identify Job Status:& Customizable job status indicators provide visual red/yellow/green “stoplights” for easy identification of what’s on or off track, and are completely customizable to suit the needs of individual businesses. Small businesses can easily delete, rename, or change the color-coded stoplight button attached to each status, with virtually unlimited status types, for easy monitoring.

Click here for Complete Release

Sage North America is expanding into cloud computing with an on-demand version of its SalesLogix CRM application suite and plans to offer cloud-based “connected services,” modeled on Sage Payment Solutions, that extend the vendor’s on-premise applications.

But the software company is taking pains to reassure channel partners that its cloud foray won’t cut resellers out of the picture.

“We will ensure that you play a role,” said Himanshu Palsule, executive vice president, in a keynote speech Tuesday at the company’s Insights partner conference in Denver. “You will not be disintermediated by connected services. You cannot. Think about it. You still own the customer relationship.”

Sage executives, in fact, presented the announcements at Insights as a new business opportunity for solution providers, much as SAP did this week as it rolls out its Business ByDesign suite of on-demand applications.

“If you are a partner, this is a tremendous opportunity,” said Tom Miller, Sage vice president of channel management, in an Insights keynote. “You have the business knowledge. You have the business process knowledge. We see opportunity for you to add value to these connected services.”

for further details go to  http://www.crn.com/software/224900333

A very interesting analysis and study provided by Manufacturing Software Advice about Sage products in the US

The guide gives a pictorial representation of Sage offerings along with the Advantages of various product offerings and suitability to various industry segments.

A good piece of information packaged well in a small article

Excerpts

By market share, SAP is the largest business applications software vendor. Oracle is number two. You probably knew that. Do you know the third largest applications vendor?

Sage, with 8% market share, is the third largest business applications software vendor. And in the SMB segment (companies with fewer than 500 employees), it’s the largest. Sage is a $1 billion plus company whose software products power hundreds of thousands of organizations’ mission-critical functions. However, given the evolution of this highly acquisitive company, its product portfolio and corporate background might merit some explaining. We’ll give it a try.

Click here to read the complete article

Sage Software, the leading global supplier of ERP, CRM, and HRM solutions to medium and large organisations, has launched the ‘ERP X3 v6’ – the newest version of ‘Sage ERP X3’, the flagship ERP solution for mid-sized and large businesses in the Middle East. Built around the customer to place emphasis on ease of use, rapid deployment and cost effectiveness, the innovative solution focuses on cost and time savings, full interoperability among dispersed teams and customer experience improvement. The announcement follows the recent creation of an international team to support the development of the ‘Sage ERP X3’ business.

With hundreds of enhancements and new features, ‘Sage ERP X3 v6’ boasts of multi-currency, multi-country, and multi-legislation functionality to address the complex requirements of mid-sized and larger businesses. Compatible with ‘Sage ACCPAC’, a software that provides an integrated accounting solution, the latest ERP offering from Sage operates in 64 bits for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, RedHat Linux 5, IBM AIX 5.3, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Oracle Database 11g R2 with Real Application Clusters and EXADATA compliance. The solution is available in seven languages: English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, and can be deployed on a wide range of technology platforms and databases, thereby providing crucial flexibility for customers.

“The innovative, role-based web user interface of ‘ERP X3 V6’ makes manipulating complex and critical information easy and displays it exactly how the user wants thus improving interoperability across a business,” said Vikram Suri, Managing Director, Sage Software. “By launching this new version, we are aiming to help CFOs of global businesses get real-time visibility of their entire business and control over multi-legislation and multi charts of accounts. The development of ‘ERP X3 v6’ underlines our commitment towards helping businesses who cannot afford complex enterprise software, and we are proud to finally launch this solution here in the Middle East.”

Recognising that the needs of customers are changing, with an increasing demand for solutions to manage businesses on a global basis, Sage Software has created the global team, which includes key people from Sage’ worldwide business. Bringing together Sage Software’s local expertise and global resources, the team will focus on maintaining the relevance of ‘Sage ERP X3’ among today’s customers. The team will work closely with Sage’s local operations to ensure that the solution is complementary to local mid-market product offerings and includes international pre-sales and professional services, training, global R&D and global marketing and communications.

“Our established commitment towards delivering the specific needs of our customers is once again demonstrated by the creation of this global team to support ‘Sage ERP X3’ customers. This initiative will leverage our extensive local knowledge and strength at the international level, which have both contributed to our widespread success among established business as well as start-ups across the globe. As a trusted partner of many important organisations fuelling the world’s economy, we are proud of this exceptional step and we are confident of its success in the years to come,” concluded Suri.

The customers will need to apply the 17.5% rate to all sales of standard rated goods and services taking place on or after that date.

What you should apply the new rate to:

• All takings received on or after 1 January 2010
• All VAT invoices you issue to other VAT registered businesses on or after 1 January 2010

check further details on www.sage2010.com

The latest Version of Sage Line 50 the premier product from Sage is all set to launch on 3^rd August 2010.

As the Website “http://www.sage.co.uk/thinkingbusiness/default.aspx” says

The Key Features include

Improved User Experience

“Our usability improvements extend from simplification of core processes to navigation and accessibility to data.”

Data Import Wizard

A new easy to use import wizard allowing you to map fields directly to Sage 50 Accounts and save procedures for future use.

SagePay (Protx) Integration

Provide the option for immediate online card payments with a ‘pay now’ button that can be embedded directly into PDF files such as invoices.

Some other features income

Bar code generation, Cash register, Legislation updates including ECSL changes and improved video tutorials & EC Sales list changes where new legislation updates include regulations from HM Revenue & Customs for certain companies who trade in the EC.

Watch this space for more information an update on the same.

Please also check www.sage2010.com for more details