Sage software is one of the big names in accounting and payroll. The conflict between Sage Accounts (and Sage Payroll) and a lot of antivirus software is well documented. We at datamills have seen several cases recently with our own customers. Because it is such a pain when your accounts software isn’t working properly when you need it to, we wanted to make you aware of the issues.
Problems experienced can include:
- Sage running slowly
- Sage “hanging”
- Sage files being quarantined by the antivirus software
- Sage files being deleted by the antivirus
- Screen flickering in Sage
- Sage icons becoming small
- View of modules within Sage becoming restricted
As Sage themselves put it: “Under certain conditions, the anti virus software you’re using to protect your computer may have an adverse effect on the performance of Sage Accounts. When Sage Accounts creates or accesses a file, the anti virus software can lock the file as it performs a scan. This means that your software may slow down or appear to hang as the file is locked by the anti virus software. In extreme circumstances, anti virus software can also affect the stability and general functionality of your software.” They then go on to list at least 4 different antivirus providers that can clash with Sage.
The reason for the problem is that antivirus programs are written to check for suspicious file types, and Sage uses many of these types. The only way to stop your antivirus from being unhappy when it sees these file types, is to tell the antivirus to exclude them from it’s scanning. However, the more you exclude from your antivirus checks, the more you put your system at risk from real viruses. Sage say “We don’t recommend excluding Sage files and folders from scheduled scans”, so what can you do? A fine line needs to be drawn, and just the right files and folders excluded from the antivirus scans by your local IT support.
If you are seeing any of these issues on your computers, and you are using Sage and some form of antivirus protection (which you certainly should be doing!), then contact us in the datamills office on 0114 287 0510 for advice.