Jane E. Kelly - Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies

Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies 3rd Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2015

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1. Table of Contents

Sage is a well-known accounting system used in more than three-quarters of a million small- and medium-sized businesses in the UK. The range of business software continually evolves, and Sage's developers pride themselves on listening to their customers for feedback on how to improve the software. This results in regular revisions and updates that add new features to Sage each time.

This book offers you a chance to understand how Sage 50 Accounts can help you run your business effectively. Thoroughly revised to cover all the latest Sage updates, I hope you get a lot out of this third edition, which covers the 2015 edition of Sage 50 Accounts.

The aim of this book is for you to get the most from Sage. I use lots of screenshots to help you navigate your way around the system and offer tips to help you customise the programs and reports contained in Sage in language you can understand, even if you're not an accountant.

Wherever possible, I show you the quickest way to do something, because you can often do the same thing in more than one way. I understand that you want a quick start, so I show you the easiest methods of doing things. You can always add details later, when time permits.

This book presents information in a modular fashion so that you get all the information to accomplish a task in one place. I don't ask you to remember things from different parts of the book; if another chapter has information relevant to the discussion at hand, I tell you where to find it, so you don't have to read the chapters in order. You can read the chapters or sections that interest you when it suits you.

This book includes a lot of instructions on how to proceed with various tasks in Sage. Wherever possible, I use numbered lists to indicate the order in which to do things.

• Italics are used to highlight new terms and for emphasis.
• Boldfaced text indicates the action step in a numbered list or text that you type into Sage.
• Monofont is used for web addresses and on-screen messages.
• Names of windows, screens and menu choices are capitalised.
• This little arrow indicates the path you click through in a series of menu options.

Because examples can help you see how a concept works in real life, I created Jingles, a fictitious party-planning company, and I use its owner Jeanette to demonstrate some of Sage's reports and functions.

While writing Sage 50 Accounts For Dummies, 3rd Edition, for the 2015 version of Sage, I made some key assumptions about who you are and why you picked up this book. I assume that you fall into one of the following categories:

• You're a member of staff in a small business who's been asked to take over the bookkeeping function and will be using Sage.
• You're an existing bookkeeper who has never used Sage before or who needs to refresh your knowledge.
• You're a small-business owner who wants to understand how Sage can help in your business.

Every For Dummies book uses icons to highlight especially important, interesting or useful information. The icons used in this book are:

Look at this icon for practical information that you can use straightaway to help you use Sage in the most effective way.

This icon indicates any items you need to remember after reading the book and sometimes throughout it.

The paragraphs next to this icon contain information that is, er, slightly technical in nature. You don't need to know the information here to get by, but it helps.

This bombshell alerts you to potential problems you may create for yourself without realising it. Don't ignore this icon!