The Sage 50 renewal notice arrives about a week before the card is charged, and Sage’s own footnote says the plan renews automatically. That week is the wrong time to start comparing. This worksheet is for the month before: two columns, your real Sage 50 invoices on the left, one written QuickBooks quote on the right, and a 24-month total that tells you whether to renew or convert. It prints no Sage or Intuit prices, because both change; it does print the plan rules from sage.com and quickbooks.intuit.com that decide which lines you fill in.
Sage’s pricing page footnote describes the Sage 50 subscription as an annual plan with “a lease to the software license.” If the plan lapses or a payment is missed, you keep read-only access to your data and full functionality is not restored until the account is brought current. The same footnote requires you to stay on the most current version to continue the subscription, and lets you terminate with thirty days’ notice for a pro-rated refund.
Put together, that means two things for the worksheet. First, a Sage 50 to QuickBooks conversion has to be extracted and reconciled while the plan is active, because read-only mode is fine for reading but not for the year-end adjustments and trial-balance tie-out a clean conversion needs. Second, the renewal date is not a cliff: with thirty days’ notice you can convert two months after renewing and recover most of the year. Do the worksheet before renewal anyway; it is cheaper.
The Sage 50 user count decides the QuickBooks target before price does. Intuit’s plan pages set user caps of 1 for Simple Start, 3 for Essentials, 5 for Plus and 25 for Advanced in QuickBooks Online; Plus also caps the chart of accounts at 250 accounts and classes plus locations at 40 combined. QuickBooks Enterprise runs to 30 users on Gold or Platinum and 40 on Diamond. So:
Then fill in the right column from one written quote:
| Annual line | Sage 50 (your invoices) | QuickBooks (your quote) |
|---|---|---|
| Plan × users (× companies if Premium multi-company) | $ ________ | $ ________ |
| Payroll (band now / band next year vs per-employee) | $ ________ | $ ________ |
| Add-ons and apps | $ ________ | $ ________ |
| Hosting, server, annual upgrade labour | $ ________ | $ ________ |
| Accountant and admin hours × rate | $ ________ | $ ________ |
| Annual run-rate | $ ________ | $ ________ |
| One-time: conversion + overlap month + retraining | — | $ ________ |
| 24-month total | $ ________ | $ ________ |
Invented numbers, to show the shape. A three-user Premium file with payroll for 12 employees, a hosting provider for remote access and a CPA who bills four hours a quarter to get reports out of Sage. Suppose the left column totals $6,800 a year. Suppose QuickBooks Online Plus for three users with payroll for 12, no hosting, and two hours of CPA time a quarter totals $3,400, with a $900 conversion, one overlap month and a day of retraining making the one-time column $1,400. Over 24 months: $13,600 to stay, $8,200 to move. Your figures may close that gap or widen it; the worksheet exists so you find out before the card is charged.
Users, at the boundaries. A sixth Sage user forces Quantum; a sixth QuickBooks Online user forces Advanced; a twenty-sixth forces Enterprise. If you sit at 5 or 25, price both sides at the next count too.
Employees, at the band edge. Sage’s 10 and 15 employee band edges are where the renewal quietly rises. QuickBooks payroll scales per employee.
Companies. Premium’s multi-company consolidation is one subscription; QuickBooks Online is one subscription per company, and consolidation happens in Enterprise or a reporting app. Three entities can flip the answer toward Enterprise or toward staying.
Renew without a second thought if your auditor relies on Sage 50’s stricter audit trail, if you run several consolidated companies from one Premium licence with no wish to change, if your data must stay on your own hardware with no internet dependency, or if the worksheet gap is smaller than a year of savings. Otherwise the step-by-step conversion guide and the migration checklist show what the move involves, and for Quantum files the Sage 50 to QuickBooks Enterprise route is the one to scope.
Sage’s subscription footnote says you keep read-only access to your data if the plan is terminated or a payment is missed, with full functionality restored only when the account is current. Convert while the plan is active so year-end adjustments and the trial-balance tie-out can still be posted.
Sage’s published terms allow termination with thirty days’ advance notice and a pro-rated refund, and a full refund within 30 days of the initial purchase. Check your own agreement, but the renewal date is a budget checkpoint rather than a locked door.
Usually QuickBooks Enterprise. Quantum runs up to 40 users; QuickBooks Online Advanced stops at 25, and serialized inventory in the QuickBooks range lives in Enterprise Platinum’s Advanced Inventory. Smaller Quantum installs with under 25 users and no serial tracking can land on Advanced.
Numerawise quotes it fixed-price from $500 for a simple single-user file with one or two years of history, rising with inventory, payroll and additional years, with the written quote within 24 hours of seeing the file.
When your worksheet says move, the Sage 50 to QuickBooks conversion page explains what is migrated, how the Sage trial balance is reconciled and how to get the fixed quote.
Tell us what you’re working on. We respond same business day.
Founder of Numerawise Solutions, established MMXXIV in Atlanta. Intuit ProAdvisor Gold tier. Former Intuit Technical Support engineer. Has personally led two hundred accounting software conversions for US small businesses since founding the practice. Reachable directly at [email protected].