If you already have SageLink installed you'll know the benefits it can bring, after all the seamless flow of transaction document creation on Workbooks (from Opportunity to Quotation to Order to Invoice) is somewhat lost if you then have to manually re-enter all of the information onto your finance system. So SageLink for Workbooks is a great solution, saving you time and maintaining accuracy throughout the process.

SageLink Best Practice

In order to ensure that the data you export via Sagelink is 100% accurate all of the time, we recommend the following best practice steps:

1. Backup Sage.
2. Identify what you are importing.
3. Validate what you've imported.

1. Backup Sage

This may seem trivial but its best to get into the practice of backing up Sage before you start the SageLink import. That way if you run into any issues you can restore your previous backup and start again.

2. Identify what you are importing

We recommend that you create a Workbooks report which identifies those transactions to be exported into Sage via SageLink. The report should show you which invoices and credit notes have not yet been imported into Sage. You need to base your report on an object type Accounting Documents and apply a criterion that says 'Is Synchronised' 'Is False'.

It is best practice to run this report ahead of any SageLink import.  We recommend exporting the data (via CSV) into a spreadsheet so you have a comprehensive copy of what you are exporting. It only takes a minute but will enable you to quickly check the list against the successful Sage import later on. You need to run the report ahead of running SageLink since once you have run SageLink all of the invoices and credit notes will be marked as Synchronised in Workbooks and will therefore not appear on the report anymore! (You can see the Synchronised flag in the Payment Status reveal on any invoice or credit note.)  

In your spreadsheet you can total the value of your net and VAT invoice amounts. You can then agree (or reconcile) this to the values SageLink tells you it is importing. This simple check will ensure that you have completeness on the invoices and credit notes you are importing, something our auditors are glad we do!!

3. Validate what you've imported

After you've run the import we consider it best practice to run an Invoice Day book report on Sage. This will provide you with details of all of the invoices which have been successfully imported.  You can cross-check this against the report you generated from Workbooks prior to the import to check that all of your invoices have been successfully imported.

Another useful report to create on Workbooks is one to show all the transactions that have been synchronised from Sage. If you've already created a report to show the invoices and credit notes that haven't been synchronised you can simply copy that and amend the 'Is Synchronised' criterion to 'Is True'. This will then show you all invoices and credit notes you have exported from Sage to Workbooks.

Payments recorded in Sage exported back to Workbooks

The SageLink tool is also very useful in updating payments made by customers. Typically these will have been recorded in Sage as a Customer receipt. When the SageLink process is run it automatically searches for payments made against customer accounts in Sage and updates the appropriate Customer Invoice in Workbooks. The total of cash payments received against a specific invoice can be seen in the Amount Received box in the Additional Information reveal on a Workbooks  Invoice (or Credit Note ) record. The amount outstanding box is updated automatically too. If the invoice hasn't been paid in full then Workbooks will display the amount paid and the amount outstanding.

If you are undertaking credit control processes using Workbooks, you need to be 100% confident in the amount paid and amount outstanding values, therefore we find the following check useful:

After recording cash receipts on Sage we run a Workbooks SageLink synchronisation. This automatically updates the appropriate Workbooks invoice and credit note records. If you have auditing capabilities installed you can run a Workbooks report to identify invoices synchronised with SageLink where the Amount Paid has changed. This lists any invoices which have been updated on the date set by the criteria of the report. It is very easy to cast your eye down the list and check that the Workbooks record has been updated correctly. You can run a similar report for Credit Notes.

You can, of course, choose not to perform these checks but we think they are good practice.