End of BusinessVision

In 2013 Sage announced that they were going to “sunset” BusinessVision and move all of the clients off the product and on to either Sage 50 (Simply Accounting) or Sage 300 (Accpac).  This notification did not have the intended consequence for Sage, as clients migrated to competing accounting systems, especially Spire (with a 100% data conversion and an eat-your-lunch pricing model).  Within a year Sage had rolled back on the messaging, but not necessarily the plan.   Clients can now “stay on BusinessVision for as long as they want to,” which is likely corporate double-speak for “we won’t tell you when we are pulling the plug.”
January 1st, 2021 has come and gone for BusinessVision.  Due to an issue with the way dates were stored in BusinessVision, any client who is not current with their software assurance as of the 7.9 software patch was not be able to open any fiscal period with a date past December 31st, 2020.  Thus, a client with a fiscal year starting February 1, 2020 or later will be unable to create that fiscal year in Businessvision without getting back on plan.  The cost of getting back on plan for those who have let their assurance lapse, is likely one-and-a-half times more than the client originally paid for the software.  This will create a huge influx of renewals and clients leaving the platform over the next year or so.  This will likely be Sage’s last cash-cow from the BusinessVision platform.  If I were a betting person, I’d predict an end-of-life notification for BusinessVision to follow the 2021 surge by a couple of years.
That is where we are now.  Sage is continuing to increase the sales targets for partners to stay part of their program shutting out all historic BusinessVision partners who do not support another Sage product.  This is step two in killing off the product — eliminate the Business Partners.