Nov 27

One of the key things I get asked when working with Sage Line 500 or Sage 1000 is ‘Can I export this report to excel?’. Of course using the standard Sage reports it is possible but the formatting normally screws up the column alignments, this is especially true of reports such as the aged debtors and aged creditors reports.

Microsoft SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) exports to PDF, csv and Excel with loss of formatting whatsoever. In fact reports which have rolled up lines using the ‘+’ and ‘-’ icons actually go into Excel in this format so you can easily hide/expand detail lines. Of course that is the biggest reason why SSRS is a great choice for Sage reporting, but the others include;

  • Licensing - No Licensing Costs on the client, SSRS is bundled with SQL Server on the server
  • Deployment - As reports are viewed using a web browser (Internet Explorer) it is easy to do large scale deployments
  • Security -Security can be controlled at either the folder or report level and links to active directory so you can map groups of users to a report folder, i.e. Finance team to Finance folder, HR team to HR, etc.
  • Layout - to be blunt SSRS reports can be made to look much nicer than standard Sage reports
  • Integration - it is possible to include dashboard reports written using SSRS right into Sage CRM / Sage 1000