Thinc Insights
Sage 200 is great - but Sicon modules make it even greater. You can truly develop a bespoke enterprise resource planning system to meet your business requirements.
If you’re already a user of Sage 200, you’ll know how good a platform it is. But even the best tools need a bit of tailoring to get them working just right for your business. That’s where our friends from Sicon come in.
We’ve spent years developing those close relationships with Sage and Sicon – so we know exactly how to help SMEs get the most out of their business systems, no matter how niche the requirement is. Often, it’s not about big tech overhauls or complicated workarounds. It’s about using the right Sicon modules to complement your Sage 200 setup, streamlining your processes so your teams can work even smarter.
Whether you work in operations, finance, IT, sales or projects, there’s a Sicon solution that can make your day-to-day just that bit easier, your output greater and your business more productive as a result.
All of these modules feature on the journey of the ‘Sicon Umbrella’, which we’ve shared below so you can refer to throughout this piece to help you see where they might fit into your business.
When planning a strong ecosystem of modules that work together with Sage 200, you need to start with the backbone. Consider components like a strong customer relationship management (CRM) tool such as Sicon CRM, combined with easy-to-implement modules that address audit logs, document management and other enhancement packs. These enhancement packs simply help Sage 200 to be a bit more intuitive through a couple of extra features.
Before anything else, here’s what we consider to be the low-effort and high-reward Sicon modules that make a big difference to daily operations.
As with any enterprise resource planning tool (ERP), a core foundation is vital; that starts with a strong CRM. In this case, Sage 200 can benefit from Sicon CRM. Designed as an out-of-the-box CRM solution, Sicon CRM can be quick to set up, with simplified deployment to enable businesses to be up and running efficiently.
Sicon Audit Log is a must for businesses wishing to monitor changes made to key audit areas by users within Sage 200. You’ll need it to know of any changes that have been made to any core module for field data, or sales and purchase orders. It has a high-level of integration compatibility across Sage 200, along with the added benefit of creating an audit trail of changes for compliance purposes.
From working with our customers, Sicon Documents is best suited to businesses who are prioritising cutting back on paperwork. Of course, going electronic comes with additional benefits, such as greater security and easier compliance, but cutting back on paperwork can greatly improve business efficiency, as documents are all in one place and much more easily accessible.
Sicon Documents allows you to attach documents, emails, orders and transactions that take place in Sage 200 through drag and drop features, a desktop scanner, or browsing from a network location. It allows you to archive, distribute, or automate all documents in real-time – a strong contributor to creating a healthy Sage 200 backbone and perfect for admin-heavy businesses.
Sicon’s Enhancement Pack is designed to make small enhancements here and there to Sage 200. While the enhancements are too small to become standalone products or modules, the Enhancement Pack module includes over 90 enhancements and addons to fill in the gaps in the day-to-day activities around purchasing, stock counts, or warehousing. Enhancements benefit every stage of the Sicon user journey – and that’s why we’ve included it as an absolute must, especially if your business is operations-heavy.
Next up, let’s look at a variety of modules that are designed to support your business in operations, from inventory management to project scheduling. From our experience, we’ve narrowed it down to three must-haves, perfect for operations teams looking to reduce any friction in their workflows.
The Works Order Processing module from Sicon helps our customers to have greater control over the cost elements that go into the light manufacturing process. With features unique to Sicon Manufacturing, which many of our customers are migrating to as Sage Manufacturing approaches end of life, many costs that contribute to manufacturing from start to finish can be accounted for, capturing production data from stock, labour, machines used and subcontractors involved, granting full visibility of overall product costs, timesheets and stock levels.
Fully integrated with Sage 200, it allows for a number of benefits that make works orders much easier to create and stock transaction history more visible. Quotation pricing can be taken from selling prices or mark-ups, all with the availability to work off real-time data.
Sicon Kitting allows users to create and sell bundled products with ease. From our experience, it’s best used for allocating stock component parts much more quickly, thus improving stock control. Costs of all components of the stock can be added to create an exact total cost of the finished item, while a pick-list report can also be created to help supply chain team members compile what’s required more efficiently.
Once stock has been well planned and production has been completed, Sicon Distribution is a great addon for the management of future stock planning. It helps with displaying warehouse replenishment data, material planning for future products, and demand-based purchasing. Our customers use it to manage provisional stock levels and minimum stock level requirements per warehouse, all based on historical data.
Using Sicon Barcoding and Warehousing grants distribution teams with real-time visibility to your warehouse operation. It helps teams pick, pack, and dispatch with far fewer errors. With handheld scanning and automated stock movements, it takes the guesswork out of your day-to-day operations. From speaking with our customers, it helps them to operate quicker and with more accuracy. As with other Sicon modules, it’s completely flexible, designed to scale with your business as operations expand.
Whether your team is managing internal jobs, client projects or complex billing – there’s a set of Sicon tools to help keep on track. From tracking costs, revenues and resources, to breaking down numbers, each step of a project is covered. Here’s how:
Using Sicon Projects is a great project management tool for easily tracking your project costs and resource expenditure. Users benefit from a real-time view of their project costs and expected profits, all from within their existing Sage 200 system.
The system prides itself on its versatility, allowing teams to adapt to the size of projects, no matter their size. Sicon Projects helps our customers keep projects on schedule and on budget, with full visibility over every job – from initial estimate to final invoice.
The Job Costing module within Sicon Projects is a must for recording costs and revenue for individual jobs. It holds reports templates available within the Sage 200 report designer, so they can be amended to suit specific business requirements. Integrating with the purchase ledger, Sales Order Processing (SOP) and Purchase Order Processing (POP) functions of Sage 200, it helps to tie all costs together in one place, for better visibility and easier reporting.
These additional project management tools are of great benefit to managing projects, but also to finance teams for the visibility and traceability it brings to project work. At a glance, teams can see exactly where the money is being spent, allowing for easier reporting and data-led decision making.
If you’re a business that requires the maintaining of assets – be that machines or buildings, these next modules are worth a look at. We’ve also got a strong recommendation for managing the most important resource for your business – people.
We’ve recommended this module as a must-have for businesses that are required to track the servicing and maintenance of customer assets. Within Sicon Self Service, you’re able to schedule maintenance requirements, manage callouts better and track complete service history. You can also log service cases against customers and assign service cases to a team, making it much easier to stay close to ongoing service cases.
Sicon Fixed Assets is great for businesses that need to have a real-time understanding of their asset position. It links directly to month-end processes for finance, appealing to a range of requirements, as it helps to track depreciation, revaluations and disposals of assets – all benefiting depreciation forecasts and wider reports that concern assets.
Moving away from physical assets for a brief moment, we’ve selected Sicon Approvals as a great tool for the management of your teams and people. It’s designed to allow for data entry and approval processing for business documents of all types, including requisitions, invoices, timesheets, expenses, sales orders, employee documents for HR and holiday requests.
This’ll allow you to completely streamline any approval process and support each team better. It’s ideal for teams juggling workloads, especially when half of the office is on holiday.
Again, these are about doing more with Sage 200. They’re all smart additions that bring structure and insight into key areas of a business.
Sicon’s finance-focused modules are a great fit for an already-strong Sage 200 setup. They help you to go beyond the reporting features available in the standalone version, supporting finance teams that want more proactive insight into cash flow, spending and decision making – all of which is built on even greater real-time data.
Sicon Cash Flow allows teams to access a neat summary of their short to mid-term cash position based on all the real-time data that is within Sage 200. It grants its users access to all incomings and outgoings, incorporating all transaction types directly from Sage 200 that impact cash position, where a day-by-day summary of balance can be analysed. It’s a great addon to make things much easier for monitoring cash flow in an accurate, efficient way.
The Debtor Management Tool from Sicon addresses the complications that come with managing direct debit collections – both successful and failed. Both you and your customers will be able to see these much simpler, with functionality centred around the ability to change and amend payment methods after an invoice has been raised, while instalments as failed attempts are all flagged with prompts to the user for how to correct these issues.
Aimed at making the procurement process much smoother and more compliant, Sicon’s Approvals and Requisitions module helps you to ditch the endless email chains and papers, allowing teams to raise purchase requests straight from their browser or mobile.
It still gives full control to finance teams with custom approval rules allowed, all linking directly back into Sage 200. Once something’s approved, it flows straight into Purchase Order Processing, ready to begin its next step in the journey – perfect for those teams that are remote or often on the move.
These modules collectively have been great for customers that were still using spreadsheets for cash flow forecasting or invoice approvals. These modules help you see the bigger picture and act faster.
The great thing about Sicon modules is how seamlessly they plug into Sage 200. It’s no fuss and no overhauls – just additional features for an incredibly flexible solution.
At Thinc, we’re not tied to one solution, software vendor, or one-size-fits-all approach. We work closely with partners like Sicon because they bring real value to our clients; we’ve worked with them for years, and we know their team, their modules and how to make them work for your business.
If you’re ready to make Sage 200 work even smarter – whether that’s improving visibility, speeding up operations or reducing costs – let’s chat. We’ll help you pick the right Sicon modules for your business, and we’ll support you through the whole journey.
Which Sicon modules are the best fit for you?
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