Sage Accounting integration (beta)

The Sage Accounting integration is currently in beta and rolling out in stages. It is not enabled by default for every account – to try it out, please contact SparkReceipt support through the in-app chat widget and ask for the Sage Accounting integration to be turned on for your account.

The integration connects to Sage Accounting (the cloud product, formerly Sage Business Cloud Accounting) for businesses in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada. It does not connect to Sage 50 or Sage 200/300 – for those, SparkReceipt offers an import file instead, see Export files for Sage 50, DATEV, Wave and Sage 200/300.

What the Sage Accounting integration does

The integration links a SparkReceipt account to a single Sage Accounting business so that your accounting reference data stays in sync and the documents you capture in SparkReceipt can be posted straight into Sage.

Once connected, SparkReceipt pulls reference data from Sage and pushes processed documents to Sage:

From Sage → SparkReceipt (read-only sync):
- Chart of accounts – Sage ledger accounts in the income group become income categories in SparkReceipt, and ledger accounts in the expense group become expense categories. Sage's chart is flat, so there is no nesting. Only ledger accounts that Sage lets a sales or purchase line post to are imported; journal-only accounts such as Suspense are skipped.
- Income accounts – your income ledger accounts are also listed as income accounts, which is what an Income document's lines are booked to. Sales is picked as the default where it exists.
- Bank accounts – every bank account Sage lists for the business (current, savings, credit card, cash in hand, loan and other) is imported as a purchase account, so a paid expense can be recorded against the right account in Sage.
- Tax rates – the tax rates Sage offers the business (for example Standard 20% in the UK, the Irish VAT rates, or the GST, HST, PST and QST codes per province in Canada). A harmonised or combined rate is imported as one rate at its combined percentage.
- Business details – business name, region, base currency, whether multi-currency is switched on, whether the business is registered for tax, and the Sage plan (for example Accounting Standard) are read from Sage and shown on the connection settings page.
From SparkReceipt → Sage (publishing documents):
- Expense documents (receipts, supplier invoices) are published to Sage as Purchase Invoices, one line per line item. A refund is published as a Purchase Credit Note.
- Income documents (sales invoices, sales receipts) are published to Sage as Sales Invoices.
- A paid document also gets a payment recorded against it from your default purchase account, which is how a Purchase Invoice or Sales Invoice shows as paid in Sage – see Marking documents paid.
- The original file (PDF or image) is attached to the Sage record.

Unlike most of the other integrations, SparkReceipt can create ledger accounts in Sage: when you publish a document whose category has no Sage counterpart yet, SparkReceipt creates a matching ledger account in Sage with the next free nominal code and links the two. See Documents added before connecting Sage.

Prerequisites

A Sage Accounting business in the United Kingdom, Ireland or Canada on the current Sage Accounting platform. Older Sage One Accounts and Cashbook businesses, and payroll-only businesses, cannot be connected.
A Sage plan that supports purchase invoices. Sage Accounting Start does not, so on that plan only Income documents can be published – see Sage Accounting Start.
The Sage Accounting integration unlocked for your account by SparkReceipt support – see the next section.
Only one accounting integration can be active on a SparkReceipt account at a time. If you already have QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreeAgent, FreshBooks or Zoho Books connected, remove that connection before connecting Sage.
The person doing the connecting must be a SparkReceipt administrator or accountant on the account – those are the roles that can see the Integrations settings.

How to get the integration enabled

Because the integration is still in beta, the Connect to Sage Accounting action is only available to accounts that have been allow-listed by our team.

Open SparkReceipt and click the in-app chat widget (the speech-bubble icon in the bottom-right corner).
Let us know the name of the account you would like to connect to Sage, which region your Sage business is in, and that you'd like to join the Sage Accounting beta.
Once we enable the beta on your account, the Connect to Sage Accounting action becomes available on your Integrations settings.

If you haven't heard back, feel free to nudge us in the same chat thread.

Seeing a "Get Sage Accounting" button instead of "Connect to Sage Accounting"?

If the Sage Accounting card on your Integrations page shows Get Sage Accounting instead of Connect to Sage Accounting, the integration has not been enabled on your account yet. The Get Sage Accounting button only opens the Sage Accounting page on the SparkReceipt website – clicking it will not connect anything. Already a Sage Accounting user? Skip that button and ask support to enable the beta as described above; once enabled, the same spot shows Connect to Sage Accounting.

Connecting and initial setup

After the beta has been enabled on your account, the high-level setup flow is:

Log in to SparkReceipt as an administrator or accountant and open the Integrations entry in the left-hand sidebar.
Under the Accounting section, find the Sage Accounting card. The Sage region selector on the card defaults to Detect automatically; if you know your business is in the United Kingdom, Ireland or Canada, pick it – see Which Sage region should I pick? for why this matters.
Click Connect to Sage Accounting. You'll be redirected to Sage to sign in and allow SparkReceipt access.
If your Sage login has access to more than one Sage Accounting business, SparkReceipt asks you to select the Sage Accounting business you'd like to connect – the integration links a SparkReceipt account to a single Sage business at a time.
SparkReceipt then runs the initial sync, pulling in ledger accounts, bank accounts and tax rates from Sage, as well as your business details. When the sync completes, you land on the Sage Accounting Connection Settings page in SparkReceipt. The Imported from Sage Accounting section lets you review the imported data; the Preferences section holds the publishing settings, including the Default purchase account that paid documents are recorded against.
Right after connecting, SparkReceipt asks whether it should auto-publish new expenses to Sage Accounting. If you turn it on, every new expense is published as soon as it is scanned. You can change this later under Preferences on the same settings page (Auto-publish new expenses).

If you cancel on Sage's side, SparkReceipt shows Connection cancelled and nothing is connected – you can try again whenever you're ready.

From that point on, documents you process in SparkReceipt can be published to Sage from the document view.

Which Sage region should I pick?

Sage signs you in through a region-specific service and remembers the region in a cookie in your browser. If that cookie already says United Kingdom, Sage skips its region chooser, so a user trying to connect an Irish or Canadian business can find themselves signed into the UK service with no way to reach the business they want. Picking the region on the card tells Sage which region to sign you into and skips the chooser.

Leave it on Detect automatically if you're unsure. If you connect and only see businesses from the wrong region, or the business picker is empty, disconnect, pick your region explicitly and connect again. When you later Reauthorize the connection, SparkReceipt reuses the region the business was connected with.

"No Sage Accounting business found"

If Sage signs you in but SparkReceipt reports No Sage Accounting business found, the login has no Sage Accounting business on the current platform. Older Sage One Accounts and Cashbook businesses, and payroll-only businesses, are not supported. Sign in with a Sage account that has a Sage Accounting business and try again.

Keeping the imported data current

Changes you make in Sage – a new ledger account, a new bank account or a new tax rate – appear in SparkReceipt after the next sync. To pull them in right away, open the Sage Accounting Connection Settings page and click Sync now. (Contacts are not synced in bulk; a merchant or payer is matched to a Sage contact, or created there, the first time you publish a document for it.)

Publishing documents to Sage

Unless you turned on auto-publish, publishing to Sage is a manual step in SparkReceipt. Documents only move to Sage when you publish them.

Publish a single document

Open the document in SparkReceipt and click Publish to Sage Accounting in the document view. The publish dialog shows what will be sent and lets you match each line to a Sage tax rate. After publishing, you'll see the Sage record with a Show in Sage Accounting link that opens it in your Sage business.

Publish several documents at once

In the documents list, select the documents you want to publish and click the Publish action in the bulk-action bar at the top of the list. The dialog also offers an option to re-publish any documents that were already published, in case you've made edits in SparkReceipt that you want reflected in Sage.

Publishing an expense as a Purchase Invoice

Every expense is published as a Sage Purchase Invoice, whether it is a till receipt or a supplier invoice. The publish dialog asks for:

Merchant – the Purchase Invoice's contact in Sage. A merchant is required. If the merchant's name matches an existing Sage contact it is reused; otherwise SparkReceipt creates the contact in Sage.
Category – each line item's category. SparkReceipt publishes one line per line item, each booked to its own Sage ledger account. A category that has no Sage counterpart yet is created in Sage when you publish.
Line tax codes – when tax tracking is on, every line that carries tax must be matched to a Sage tax rate. See How tax is handled.
Publish as – a read-only value that always shows Purchase Invoice for Sage (or Purchase Credit Note for a refund).

The Purchase Invoice's reference is the document's reference number, and its due date is the document's due date or the document date when there is none.

Refunds. A refund (an expense with a negative total) is published as a Sage Purchase Credit Note with positive line amounts.

Publishing an Income document as a Sales Invoice

Every Income document is published as a Sage Sales Invoice. The publish dialog asks for:

Payer – the Sales Invoice's customer contact in Sage, matched or created in the same way as a merchant.
Income account – the Sage income ledger account the lines are booked to. It defaults to the Default income account set in Preferences (Sales after the first sync).
Line tax codes – as for expenses.
Publish as – always Sales Invoice.

Sage requires an address on every Sales Invoice. SparkReceipt reuses the customer's address from Sage when the contact has one, and otherwise sends the payer's name as the first address line. Canadian businesses: Sage validates provincial sales tax against the customer's province, so keep the customer's address, including the two-letter province code, up to date in Sage.

Marking documents paid

A till receipt is treated as paid by definition; a supplier invoice or an Income document is treated as paid when its paid status is set in SparkReceipt. For a paid document, SparkReceipt records a payment in Sage against the Purchase Invoice or Sales Invoice from the Default purchase account set under Preferences on the connection settings page. Sage then shows the invoice as paid.

Two things to know:

The payment is always recorded from the Default purchase account. The per-document Account shown in the publish dialog is stored on the document in SparkReceipt for your own reports, but it is not what the Sage payment is taken from.
If no default purchase account is set, publishing a paid document fails with This document is marked as paid, but no default payment account is set for the Sage Accounting integration. Choose one under Preferences and publish again.

Sage Accounting Start and expenses

Sage's Accounting Start plan does not support purchase invoices, so expenses cannot be published to a business on that plan. SparkReceipt reads the plan name from Sage (it is shown as Active plan on the connection settings page) and refuses expense publishes with the message Sage Accounting Start doesn't support expenses. Upgrade to Standard or Plus to publish expenses. Income documents still publish on every plan.

Documents added before connecting Sage

Any documents that were processed in SparkReceipt before you connected Sage were categorized using SparkReceipt's generic categories. Because SparkReceipt can create ledger accounts in Sage, you have two options:

Publish as they are. SparkReceipt creates a ledger account in Sage for each generic category it meets, allocating the next free nominal code in the matching part of your chart (income or expense). Check the new accounts in Sage afterwards and rename or renumber them if you prefer.
Pick a Sage-synced category first. Open the document, change the category to one of the ledger accounts imported from Sage, and publish. Or use the Rescan document action, which re-categorizes the document against the categories now available, including your Sage accounts.

If you create the accounts you want in Sage instead, click Sync now on the Sage Accounting Connection Settings page so they show up in SparkReceipt before publishing.

How tax is handled

The Tax handling when publishing preference on the connection settings page works the same as for the other accounting integrations, with a few Sage specifics:

Track tax (the default for a tax-registered business). Each line is sent net with its matched Sage tax rate, and SparkReceipt also sends the exact tax amount from the receipt, so the invoice total in Sage matches the document rather than a rate-derived approximation. A line that carries tax but has no Sage rate matched is refused with The line "…" has tax but no matching Sage Accounting tax rate – pick a rate for it in Line tax codes and publish again.
Do not track tax. Expenses are published as tax-inclusive totals booked to Sage's zero-rated or no-tax rate. This mode needs such a rate to exist in the business; if none is found, publishing is refused with a message asking you to add a no-tax or zero-rated rate in Sage and sync.
Business not registered for tax. Sage rejects any tax on a business that is not registered for VAT, GST or HST. When SparkReceipt syncs such a business it switches the preference to Do not track tax automatically. If you register later, switch it back to Track tax yourself.
Canada. Sage's Canadian tax codes are per province, and Sage rejects a rate from a different province than the business's tax region. A line with GST plus a provincial tax (PST or QST) is matched to Sage's combined code for that province, so it publishes as a single line at the combined rate. Every taxed line is sent with an explicit tax amount, as Sage requires.

Income documents follow the same matching, and the Sales Invoice carries the region Sage needs for provincial tax in Canada.

Currencies

How a foreign-currency document is published depends on the Sage business:

Single-currency business. Sage books every amount in the base currency, so SparkReceipt converts line and tax amounts to your base currency at the exchange rate stored on the document before publishing.
Multi-currency business. The document is published in its original currency with the amounts as captured, and Sage applies the exchange rate. If you have chosen to always convert to your home currency in Preferences, SparkReceipt converts before publishing instead.

Attachments

Sage accepts PDF, JPEG, PNG, GIF and TIFF images, Word and Excel documents, CSV and XML files. Photos in other formats (WebP, HEIC/HEIF, AVIF, BMP, SVG) are converted to JPG before upload. The file is attached to the Purchase Invoice, Purchase Credit Note or Sales Invoice in Sage.

Updating and removing a published document

If you edit a document after publishing it, open it and click Update in Sage Accounting (or use the re-publish option when bulk publishing). SparkReceipt rewrites the Sage record with the current document. A paid record is locked in Sage while its payment exists, so SparkReceipt removes its own payment, updates the record, then records the payment again. If the record no longer exists in Sage, SparkReceipt creates a new one.

Remove from Sage Accounting deletes a Purchase Invoice or Purchase Credit Note from Sage after removing the payment SparkReceipt recorded. A Sales Invoice cannot be deleted in Sage once issued, so SparkReceipt voids it instead; the voided invoice stays visible in Sage with a void reason.

Troubleshooting and feedback

Because Sage Accounting is still in beta, you may occasionally see gaps or edge cases we haven't polished yet – Irish and Canadian businesses in particular have had less live use than UK ones. If something doesn't look right – a missing category, a document that failed to publish, an unexpected error – please reply in the same in-app chat thread you used to enable the beta. That's the fastest way to get help and also the best way to help us make the integration solid enough to leave beta.

Sage and the Sage logo, as well as the names of Sage products, are trademarks of Sage or its subsidiaries. SparkReceipt is an independent, third-party app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Sage.