Replacement for Microsoft FRx Financial Report Writer

04-12-2010     Posted by: Robin Saacks     General, Sage Software

FRx version 6.7 will be the last from Microsoft: Support ends Dec 2012

Sage has been advised that Microsoft has made a decision against further development of their FRx reporting software beyond version 6.7. Microsoft agreed to continue supporting the current version of FRx through December 31, 2012, thereby enabling Sage adequate opportunity to evaluate suitable alternatives.

During a recent discussion on the MAS 90 and MAS 200 Users and Consultants forum on Linkedin, Erik Kaas (Director, Product Management at Sage Software) confirmed that Sage has “established an OEM relationship with a business intelligence (BI) vendor (Alchemex) that offers advanced financial reporting, operational reporting, and advanced OLAP analysis capabilities. Sage MAS customers will be provided with one free user license for this product with the option of purchasing additional licenses.

This solution will provide robust financial reporting out of the box and will complement the already very strong tools in Sage MAS, including Business Insights Explorer and Dashboard. Sage will also ensure that the next releases of MAS 90 will continue to be backward compatible with FRx Desktop.

Sage is also reviewing a “trade in” program to allow customers that have purchased additional FRx licenses to exchange them for equivalent BI Intelligence licenses, and are investigating if and how custom FRx reports can be converted to the new format with the use of a conversion utility. However, since FRx is a proprietary format it is unlikely that the utility will be perfect – but it should minimize the costs of conversion.