archive
Sage 50 Data Export & Retirement Archive
Closing the business or retiring Sage 50? Keep the records without keeping the software.
When this makes sense
There is a specific problem at the end of a Sage 50 file’s life: your obligation to keep the records outlasts your reason to keep the software.
It shows up when a business closes, when an entity is wound up after a sale, when a location is consolidated into another company, or simply when you have moved your live books elsewhere and are left holding years of Sage history you are required to retain but never intend to post to again.
Keeping a retired accounting system running purely so you can answer a question in four years is a bad arrangement. It depends on an installation that has to survive every future operating system, and on somebody remembering how to use it.
What we deliver
A readable archive of your accounting history that stands on its own - one that an auditor, an accountant, or a tax authority can be handed without needing Sage 50 in front of them.
That typically means your financial statements and trial balance for each year retained, the general ledger with transaction detail, customer and vendor histories with the invoices and bills behind them, and your payroll and tax reporting. We scope the exact contents with you, because what you are obliged to retain varies by jurisdiction, entity type, and why the file is being retired.
We deliver it in open, durable formats. The point of the exercise is that the archive still opens in ten years, so it does not depend on any one vendor’s software - including ours.
What this is not
It is not a way to carry on using Sage 50 without a subscription, and it is not a migration. If your books are still live and you want to keep working in them, what you want is a conversion to QuickBooks instead - that keeps the books operational rather than freezing them.
An archive is deliberately final. It is a record, not a working system.
If the file is damaged
Retirement is very often when people discover a problem, because it is the first time in years anyone has opened the old company. If the file will not open, or a backup will not restore, that gets addressed first - see Sage 50 backup won’t restore. A file does not have to be healthy for us to look at it.
How to get a quote
Tell us your Sage 50 product and version, how many company files are involved, how many years each covers, and what you are required to retain and for how long. We will evaluate it and send back a flat fee. The evaluation is free.