Sage 50 Review

About Sage 50

Sage 50 Accounting is the US edition of Sage's small-business accounting software. It is published by Sage Software, Inc., part of The Sage Group plc, a UK public company registered in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The US product grew out of Peachtree Accounting, which Sage bought in 1998 and rebranded under the Sage 50 name in 2013. Sage's lighter cloud product, Sage Accounting, is not sold in the US (its help site lists only the UK, Ireland and Canada), so for US contractors this entry covers Sage 50.

For trades, the draw is job costing. Every plan tracks jobs by job ID, with costs and revenue recorded against each job. Premium Accounting and higher add phases and cost codes, so a job can be split into stages with labor, materials and other cost types tracked inside each, plus job estimates of revenue and expenses, change orders, and time and billing for invoicing customers by job, phase or cost code. Sage's help site says job reports show whether a job is over or under budget for each phase.

Sage 50 also handles inventory (including assemblies built from components, and serialized inventory in Premium and higher), purchase orders and bank connections, and it runs payroll if your Sage service plan includes payroll. The 2026 release added AR Automation, which shares invoices with customers, sends payment reminders and collects payments; it needs an active cloud subscription.

The trade-off: Sage 50 costs more than simple cloud bookkeeping (Pro starts at $128.67/mo on a one-year commitment), phases and cost codes need Premium or higher, and it is installed accounting software with no scheduling or dispatch, so field crews still need a separate field-service app.