Biz Management Platform Sage Acquires Accounting Firm GoProposal

Cloud-based business management platform Sage announced Tuesday (Oct. 5) it acquired U.K.-based SMB accounting proposal management software company GoProposal, the fourth addition Sage has made in the past 12 months.

The GoProposal acquisition expands Sage’s U.K. foothold, as the GoProposal team will join Sage’s global accountants team based in Manchester, U.K. GoProposal also has a presence in the U.S., Canada and Australia.

“We are focused on helping small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) emerge more productive and profitable than ever from the challenging macro environment of the past 18 months,” said Derk Bleeker, chief strategy and development officer at Sage, in the joint announcement.

“Accountancy practices play a vital role in helping SMBs to thrive — and by supporting them to digitize their practices, Sage can play a vital role in enabling them to focus on providing their SMB customers with great service and advice, and to help them capitalize on the emerging opportunities as the world emerges from the global pandemic,” he said.

The GoProposal acquisition “demonstrates Sage’s commitment to supporting accountancy practices through this digitalisation journey, so they can operate efficiently and profitably,” said Bleeker.

James Ashford, founder of GoProposal, sees the partnership as another step in the company’s mission “to help accounting businesses develop robust, profitable, and impactful practices.

“Because if they can do it for themselves, they can do it for their clients, and this starts with controlling the price and scope of the work,” he said. “Sage shares our vision of supporting accountants with end-to-end practice management capability. I believe together we can become the driving force behind the accounting industry.”

Related: Processing Paper Invoices Costs Businesses Average of $171k Annually

The CFO’s Guide To Digitizing B2B Payments, a PYMNTS and Comdata collaboration, shows that the average annual cost businesses incur from processing paper invoices is $171,000 and almost three-quarters (74%) of accounting staff reported frictions when manually processing invoice data.

Meanwhile, three-fifths (60%) of firms with automated invoicing and expense management reported a decline in missing invoice cases.