Sage wants everyone on the latest version of the software, always. It’s easier for them to support! With a lot of users hitting it every day, they learn about issues right away, and they can focus their internal training for their support people. So, every year, they tell you that you have to be on the latest version in order to close your year – well, that’s only partially true.
Here’s the rest of the story: You can close your year in version 20, or 21. Both versions work just find and will do the job. To ‘encourage’ you to be on version 21, Sage will only release the 2019 new tax tables in version 21, and Sage has coordinated with Aatrix to only release the 2018 yearend reports (such as W-2 forms) in version 21.
Here’s another very important parameter – if you have not yet migrated all your version 19 datasets (prior years, archives), you MUST get that done before going to version 21. The License Server in version 21 is NOT backward compatible, so once you go to v21, you will not be able to launch v19 to run these prior years. So, focus your time in the last quarter of 2018 on making sure all the prior years have been migrated to version 20.
Now, about that timing… If you move to version 21 now, you will absolutely have to upgrade at least once more, when the 2019 Federal (and some States) tax tables become available. This might be in late December, or even early January. We recommend waiting for the tax release before upgrading, otherwise you’ll just have to do it again.
So here’s the priority list:
1. Make sure all version 19 datasets have been migrated to version 20; we recommend getting this done before December.
2. In late December or early January, watch for the version 21 release that includes the Federal 2019 tax tables, then upgrade to version 21; the 2018 yearend reports such as W-2’s should also be ready at that time, too. When this is available, it’s time to upgrade to version 21.
Reserve December 6th at 11:30 Central time for our Yearend Planning webinar, our most popular all year! We’ll cover the yearend process, the payroll closing process, and the version 21 upgrade timing.