When is an upgrade not an upgrade? When MicrOpay v5 wipes all user settings

David M Williams
Thursday, 14 May 2009 19:11

IT Industry - Development

Prominent Australian and New Zealand payroll software company, Sage MicrOpay, has issued version 5 of their flagship Meridian product. For existing customers the upgrade is a seamless process except for one thing - it ignores every single saved setting and customisation.

UPDATE: MicrOpay have requested an opportunity to respond as they were unaware I was a journalist when I spoke to them. As soon as we receive a comment from them we will add it to this story, or post a new one (and link to it from here.)

For over 20 years, MicrOpay has been a leading payroll software provider and is solidly entrenched in an estimated 30% of Australian businesses.

The company was founded in 1985 and was later purchased by the Commonwealth Bank in 1995 making it wholly owned by a major financial institution.

Within seven years, from April 2002, the company again changed hands, being sold for $AUD 10m to large South African based accounting software vendor, Softline.

Softline had been well known for its earlier acquisition of international financial suite AccPac, formerly owned by Computer Associates. MicrOpay joined Softline’s other Australian purchases, HandiSoft and Sybiz.

In the turning wheels of enterprise, Softline was itself acquired in November 2003 by the Sage Group, a FTSE 100 company with over 5.8 million customers and more than 14,500 employees worldwide.

Throughout this cycle of changing hands MicrOpay solidly continued its focus on payroll software solutions, resisting temptation to diversify from their core line of business.

Generally, MicrOpay’s products have been stable performers, ranging through a DOS, and later a screen-scraped version for Windows, product called Payroll Manager onto the current flagship MicrOpay Meridian.

As is usual for payroll vendors, an upgrade has been made available prior to the commencement of the new financial year with updated personal income taxation rates. This new upgrade is dubbed version five and is not merely a point release.

MicrOpay consultants and documentation assure that, besides the mandatory tax tables, the new release only differs in that functionality has been included to better serve the New Zealand market. As such, it was expected Australian customers would simply find it business as usual.

Not so.