Older versions of Sage 50 Accounts will stop working after 30th September

Above: The error message you may see

Sage has announced that a critical security patch will stop some older versions of Sage 50 Accounts from working when the patch goes live at the end of September.

The issue affects customers on perpetual licences from v20 through to v 26.2

What options do I have?

For Sage customers on version 26.2 you can upgrade to version 26.3 free of charge.  V26.3 and higher are not affected by the issue.  Contact Sage support to download the required version.

For Sage customers with versions earlier than v20 there is no need to take any action as these earlier versions are not affected.

For Sage customers with v20 through to 26.1 the only option to continue using Sage is to upgrade to Sage’s subscription licence – Sage 50 Cloud Accounts.   Don’t worry about the “Cloud” in the name it is still very much the same desktop application, running in Windows, it just has some “Cloudy” features in the new version.

How can I purchase a new subscription to Sage 50 Cloud?

At Your Office Anywhere our core business is hosting applications like Sage 50 on remote desktop servers to make it easy to share database applications without a local server, and work remotely.   However, we can also sell subscriptions for Sage 50 Cloud Accounts and will help customers who need to upgrade.  Just contact us if you need assistance with this.

Are there any other benefits for upgrading to Sage 50 Cloud Accounts?

As it is a subscription licence, subscribers will always have access to the latest version and so can take advantage of new features and security/functionality patches.

Sage 50 Cloud Accounts includes some integrations with other cloud services like Microsoft 365.

Sage 50 Cloud Accounts also includes Sage Remote Data Access, aka Sage Drive, as a way to share Sage with remote parties such as accountants.  This can be used to share Sage data without a local server for small installations.  For customers with more than a couple of users take a look at Sage hosting as a robust way to share Sage without a local server.

What happens if I’m on an affected version and I don’t upgrade?

We’re told that the Sage software will no longer work at all.   We will try and find out what if any errors you may receive once the patch has been applied at the end of September and update this post.

Update 03-10-2022 - We ran a test on an old version.  At this point the software continued to work but the implication of the warning message is that this is a temporary situation.  The warning message reads:

Urgent action required

Software updates help keep your data secure and deliver the latest performance improvements.

From 30 September 2022, we're making security improvements which means you need to install v26.3 or above, to continue to access your software.

We recommend you install the latest version as soon as possible.

What is the issue that Sage are patching, why are they doing this?

The affected versions of Sage connect with Sage’s licencing service using a security protocol called TLS.  This encrypts the data when sending over the internet.

The affected versions use TLS 1.0 which is considered insecure as the encryption is relatively easy to break.   Large tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple have now stopped supporting TLS 1.0

Sage originally announced this update in January with the intention of implementing the patch in Spring this year.  However, they pushed it back to September to give customers and third party add-on vendors more time to change.