The headache that is Sage50 Payroll

[abillybob]

Hi All

 

Not sure if anyone has had experience using this as I know it tends to be used in businesses rather than schools but I'm hoping there might be some of you that have experience with using Sage 50 Payroll.

 

So we have the Database on a server, it's just an .mdb file that runs on shared area and the Sage 50 Payroll client points to this to receive it's data. Recently, like once a week we get a strange error message coming up saying the database needs to be repaired.

 

We go to DBUtilities and click on our database as administrators and then run the repair which is just a button, it confirms it's repaired and then it work another week and we have to do the same thing!

 

We are also having issues whereby sending out payslips to staff, some will get a bounce back email for some staff saying that the payslip couldn't be delivered but I can email their accounts from my work account just fine with no bounce back.

 

I have spoken to Sage support who where particularly bad after waiting in a queue for 30 minutes on the phone. They have said to check permissions on the share the database resides on and to check local/appdata has full read/write permissions for all staff which they already do? Then he said both Sage 50 Payroll and Outlook need to be run as administrator otherwise you can get issues... I'm not sure why but when I questioned the chap he said "I'm not IT trained and can't help you any further" I'd of at least though the people on their support helpdesk would be IT trained

 

So now I'm not sure what to do, I'm not really fond of setting up our AD users as administrators on each computer as I don't want them to be able to install things willy-nilly but apparently Sage won't take the case any further unless I can make Sage and Outlook run as admin?

 

Do any of you guys know how I can make individual applications run as administrator, without having the user logged in as administrator?

 

Thanks

[elsiegee40]

We had it at my last school. Unfortunately that was 4 years ago now, so things have probably moved on.

 

Support was nowhere near as good for payroll as it was for Sage accounts and there were some weirdies with it.

 

I seem to remember it kicked out a file that had be on the c:\ drive and setting up a bodge to get round that on the Bursar’s PC while leaving her unable to get to the rest of the C:\ drive. She definitely had normal privileges apart from that.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

We had it at my last school. Unfortunately that was 4 years ago now, so things have probably moved on.

 

I'll bet you any money it hasn't. The whole sage experience is bloomin' awful!

[elsiegee40]

I'll bet you any money it hasn't. The whole sage experience is bloomin' awful!

 

I found Sage Accounts support to be really good. I never had any problem with them and they were really helpful.

 

Payroll support was so bad it was like it was from a different company.

 

I am really searching the memory banks now.

 

It is possible that the Bursar had to have extended privileges over the folder I created on the Office shared drive for Sage Payroll... unfortunately I have no means of checking

[abillybob]

That's ok thank all for helping!! I'm really not impressed Sage 200 support I've never had experience with, they fob me off and say we need to get support from our re-seller which isn't great either so can't comment on that!

 

Payroll support is terrible though... They've called their product Sage 50 CloudPayroll now to look like they're keeping up with other payroll software and to 'pretend' they're on the cloud, but nope they're still on-premise.

[mavhc]

Why would you need a secure computer to handle finance? That's crazy talk.

 

Check how the emails are sent, from what ip, to what ip, with what authorisation, are they sent to work accounts only?

 

Look at the bounced back emails for clues as to why. SPF perhaps?

[abillybob]

So I've been able to make Sage Payroll run as administrator as well as Outlook under a new domain administrator I've called "Payrolladmin" I used the following in a shortcut "runas User:domainname\payrolladmin /savecred "PathtoOutlook and Sage". Problem is with Outlook, it obviously utilises mail profiles from payrolladmin user rather than the user that's logged in, no problem just tried setting it up again but then when typing in her O365 credentials it opens up the password box but it opens and it's just completely blank.

 

I thought no problem I'll sign in as the payroll admin and set it up on there, which worked perfectly fine. Logged out and logged back in as the user but it still prompts me for the password on the standard user account but of course just shows a white screen without being able to type anything in!

 

So at this point I have decided sage should be replaced with a similar 4 letter word instead and I'm about to pull the hair that's remaining on my head off! Please someone save me...

[elsiegee40]

From what I recall, nothing played nicely with Outlook installed on the local PCs. Our MIS wouldn’t either. It was the excuse I needed to get everyone using their school gmail accounts through Chrome.

[TechMonkey]

They've called their product Sage 50 CloudPayroll now to look like they're keeping up with other payroll software and to 'pretend' they're on the cloud, but nope they're still on-premise.

 

I noticed that. Our Accountant panicked as she thought we had moved SAGE to the cloud during an update without talking to her because all the documentation now says Cloud.

[mavhc]

So I've been able to make Sage Payroll run as administrator as well as Outlook under a new domain administrator I've called "Payrolladmin" I used the following in a shortcut "runas User:domainname\payrolladmin /savecred "PathtoOutlook and Sage". Problem is with Outlook, it obviously utilises mail profiles from payrolladmin user rather than the user that's logged in, no problem just tried setting it up again but then when typing in her O365 credentials it opens up the password box but it opens and it's just completely blank.

 

I thought no problem I'll sign in as the payroll admin and set it up on there, which worked perfectly fine. Logged out and logged back in as the user but it still prompts me for the password on the standard user account but of course just shows a white screen without being able to type anything in!

 

So at this point I have decided sage should be replaced with a similar 4 letter word instead and I'm about to pull the hair that's remaining on my head off! Please someone save me...

 

Why would you need a domain admin, you want a local admin.

 

Simplest thing is to set up a domain user that's a local admin, and use it only when using sage

[abillybob]

Why would you need a domain admin, you want a local admin.

Simplest thing is to set up a domain user that's a local admin, and use it only when using sage

 

I meant local admin, I setup a separate local admin account on the PC she's on. I'm not setting up her username as a Local Administrator that would allow her to install what she wanted etc which isn't very secure.

 

Sage isn't the issue it's Outlook that I'm stuck on, I'm 90% of the way there just need to figure out how I can stop Outlook prompting me for the password via O365 as it just comes up like this

 

[mavhc]

Phew, that's ok then. So Sage is interfacing with outlook somehow?