| Please
also see The End of BusinessVision - FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions) Although
no official announcement has yet been made,
the signs of the imminent demise of BusinessVision are all clearly there for anyone to read:
IMPORTANT: You will NOT be able to login to BusinessVision with a
date past DECEMBER 31, 2020. This applies to ALL OLDER VERSIONS of
BusinessVision, ie v7.79 (2014) and lower.
If you are "off plan", ie if you have not been paying Sage for the
annual maintenance, then you will have to re-purchase BusinessVision to
get past this limitation.
HOWEVER, a FAR BETTER solution is to
upgrade to SPIRE.
- Most earlier versions of
BusinessVision will not allow a login date past Dec 31 2020
- No new features in updates or new "versions" (which are versions in
name only) - only a smattering of bug fixes
- The BusinessVision office has closed, the product manager is gone,
the programmers are gone, and all remaining BusinessVision staff are working on other products,
including the tech support staff
- An intense and aggressive marketing campaign is underway to push
BusinessVision users away from BusinessVision to their Sage 300 Online
product (a cloud-based product) or down to Sage 50 (Simply Accounting).
- Please read about the concerns with Cloud
accounting systems.
- Please view a
comparison of BusinessVision and
Sage 300 Cloud.
- You may hear it said that Sage 300 Online is "the
next generation of BusinessVision". This is
extremely inaccurate.
Sage 300 Online is actually Accpac with a browser interface. The two products have nothing whatsoever to do with each other and
were developed many years ago by two completely different companies.
"Next generation" implies parentage and an actual connection, but in
this case there is none at all. This is part of Sage's attempt to push BusinessVision users to that
product.
- BusinessVision Partners are also being strongly encouraged to adopt
Sage 300 Online. Very few are doing so because this product is simply
not appropriate for most BusinessVision users.
- BusinessVision incorporates outdated components which will never be
upgraded: Crystal Reports v10 and Pervasive v10, neither of which are
any longer supported by their respective vendors
- BusinessVision has had only minor modernizations added to it over
the past 7-10 years
- Very little investment has been made in developing or maintaining
BusinessVision
- No value is being delivered for BusinessVision users' annual
"Business Care" fees aside from what has effectively become overpriced
payroll updates and tech support
- Because of this, most BusinessVision customers are dropping off the
maintenance plan, because they see they are receiving little value for
their $$
- There is code built into the BusinessVision product that will
prevent it from being used past the year 2020
- BusinessVision sales are down to next to nothing (why would anyone
purchase a soon-to-be discontinued product?)
- BusinessVision sales staff are instead focused on the Sage effort to
push end users and Partners to Sage 300
If BusinessVision had been modernized and enhanced over the past 7-10
years, it would still be a viable and excellent product to this day. But
instead, unfortunately, Sage has sent it coasting into
retirement.
Two attempts have been made to purchase the BusinessVision product away from
Sage in order to keep it alive, but both offers were rejected by Sage.
As a BusinessVision user, you should of course be concerned about the
future of the product! There are three options for you to
consider:
-
Upgrade to Spire: A well-known
independent 3rd party add-on for BusinessVision called
BVEssentials
(from Tri-Tech Information Systems in
BC), has added many modules to its product to
become a complete replacement for BusinessVision. It is fully compatible
with BusinessVision, and offers numerous enhancements.
Spire uses a modern database
engine, encompasses all of the existing functionality of
BusinessVision plus a whole host of new features, and has a modernized and
much more powerful and easier-to-use interface.
Other advantages of this upgrade include a complete 100% one-click data
conversion at no extra cost, minimal retraining, preservation of your customized reports
and forms, and reasonable upgrade cost.
Please read more here, and please see
the Spire FAQ.
Quite frankly, Spire is the premier option for you to consider.
- Keep using BusinessVision for the near future: Even if BusinessVision were
discontinued tomorrow, you could
probably still keep using it for a year or two or even longer. Like all software,
BusinessVision relies on compatibility with Windows operating systems, and these
typically last 6-8 years. Aside from
payroll, you'd be okay to stay with BusinessVision for a few years.
Payroll could either be outsourced or you could use one of the payroll
software packages that are available. Tech support for BusinessVision
will always be available from Wildwood Canada.
BUT ... yes there is a "but" ... BusinessVision uses Pervasive v10 and
Crystal Reports v10, both of which are no longer supported. And there is
NO possibility that BusinessVision will ever use newer versions of either of
these, due to (a) technical reasons and (b) licensing. Therefore,
sooner or later BusinessVision will cease to work on a new Windows
version, or even when a Windows update is released.
**There are already issues with compatibility of BusinessVision with
Windows and MS Office versions. Certain things are sometimes breaking or
are not installing or working properly.
Additionally, you will not be able to log into BusinessVision past
the year 2020 - this is a hard limit built into the software.
BusinessVision users
should start investigating alternatives NOW.
Please read ALL marketing material you receive these days with a
very critical eye and verify the alleged facts that are being
presented to you. The best source for verification is a 3rd party
consultant, such as Wildwood Canada. Please contact me to discuss
anything you read or hear about Spire, BusinessVision, or Sage 300
Cloud. I have striven to be accurate with all information that is
presented herein.
- Look at other products:
- For most BusinessVision users, a downgrade to
Simply Accounting (Sage 50) or
to
Quickbooks will cause a major net loss of functionality.
Quickbooks does
not function well in multi-user mode and has other drawbacks. Simply Accounting is... well...
simplistic. Please read more about these two products
here.
- On the other hand, changing to another Sage product such as Sage
100 or Sage 300 entails its own significant set of issues and problems.
There is the significant cost, lack of data conversion, and major retraining.
Not to mention the Batch processing of Sage 300 and
Sage 300 Online -
yes, these products are actually the old tired Accpac with a new name!
You didn't want Accpac then, why would you want
it now? And there appears to be a significant lack of ongoing development and enhancements across
many or most product lines of Sage.
- Cloud-based products have many drawbacks.
Compare Sage 300 Online with Spire
and BusinessVision.
- Please note that
Spire is the ONLY product with a
complete data conversion
from BusinessVision - 100% of your BusinessVision data will be
converted - YES, ALL OF IT - with NO loss, at NO additional charge.
- None of the above problems and issues are a factor in an upgrade to
Spire.
If you are a BusinessVision user, and wish to discuss the issues
outlined on this page and learn more about the above alternatives, please
contact Wildwood Canada.
READ MORE:
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