Sage 200 into Google Ads: the questions that decide the route
Sage 200 holds the real numbers, but how we reach them depends on your version, hosting and add-ons. We confirm the route during scoping, then send order values for the sales we can trace to an ad.
- Sage 200
- SQL Server
- Google Ads
You can send Sage 200 order values to Google Ads by reading completed sales orders or invoices, matching each one to a click identifier or hashed contact details captured with the original enquiry, and sending the matched figures as offline conversions. The reading part depends entirely on how your Sage 200 is set up, so we confirm the route during scoping and don’t promise one from a web page.
Sage 200 tends to sit at the centre of businesses that sell by phone, by rep and on account, which makes it an excellent source of truth and a fairly poor conversationalist. Most of its sales never go near a website, and Google Ads bids as though they didn’t happen.
Which Sage 200 do you run, and where does it live?
Sage 200 comes in different editions and gets installed in different ways, often with a business partner’s customisations on top. That changes what’s possible and the details shift between versions, so treat this as how we think about it before looking at yours:
| Possible route | When it might suit | What we’d check |
|---|---|---|
| Sage 200 API | Your version and licence support it | Whether the fields you need are exposed |
| Read-only database access | Installed on servers you control | Permission, load and your partner’s view |
| Scheduled report or export | Locked-down environments | Whether it’s reliable and contains the identifiers |
| Existing connector or add-on | You already have one from a partner | Whether it can expose orders to us |
We’ll speak to your Sage business partner if you have one, because they’ll know what has been altered in ways no documentation will tell us.
Where do your orders begin?
Trace one recent order backwards. If it began as a web enquiry, there’s a chance of attribution. If it began with a rep’s visit, a repeat customer ringing their usual contact or an EDI file from a retailer, there’s no ad click behind it and it can’t be attributed. Sage 200 can’t tell the difference by itself, so the useful question is how much of your order book starts online at all.
A phone order becomes traceable in only one way. When the customer first enquired, something was kept: a GCLID (with gbraid or wbraid filling in on some Apple traffic) stored against the enquiry, or an email and phone number that can be sent hashed for Google to match with someone who clicked. If your staff then record that same email against the customer or order, the two can be joined, even though the order itself was keyed in days later.
Sage customer records often hold one accounts email per company, which rarely matches the buyer who filled in the form, so we’d look at whether contact details exist at order level. Consent limits this too, since a visitor who denied ad_user_data never had hashed details collected, and that part of the gap is meant to be there.
Which document counts as the sale?
Sage 200 can hold a quotation, a sales order, a despatch and an invoice for what is, commercially, one event. We’d normally pick the sales order or the invoice and stick to it. Orders arrive sooner, invoices are nearer the truth, and whichever you use, credit notes need to come back as conversion adjustments.
We’d also agree whether the value is net goods, and whether to go further. Because finance teams tend to keep cost data tidy in Sage, bidding on profit may be more realistic here than you’d assume, though SKU-level costs, shipping and returns have to hold up.
Does anything need to change on the website?
Almost certainly, since Sage 200 can only pass along what it was given. We’d check that the enquiry or account form captures click details, that your consent banner passes visitors’ choices to the tags, and that your conversion actions aren’t already counting something twice. A Tracking Audit, from £395 ex VAT, covers that ground and gives you a traffic-light report either way.
Who needs to be involved?
Usually three people: whoever looks after Sage 200, whoever runs your Google Ads, and someone who can say which orders count. The third is often a finance director, who may enjoy pointing out that the marketing figures were never real. Credentials stay in your accounts, with read-only access on the Sage side wherever that’s possible.
From scoping to a fixed figure
A Sage 200 sync starts from £2,500 ex VAT, and we quote a fixed price after confirming the route, because a straightforward API connection and a heavily customised install are different jobs. ERP order values describes what’s included. If your team is also retyping purchase orders into Sage 200 by hand, our sister site works on order automation, and it’s a separate project you can take or leave.
Common questions
Straight answers to what people ask before they get in touch.
Can Sage 200 connect directly to Google Ads?
We’re not aware of a simple built-in connector, so a small integration normally sits between them. It reads the orders, matches them to captured click details and sends the results to Google. Which way it reads from Sage 200 depends on your version and set-up, so we confirm it in scoping.
Will you be writing to our Sage 200 database?
We’d want to avoid that. The integration only needs to read orders, customers and invoices, so read-only access is the usual aim. If a field such as a click reference has to be stored against an order, we’d go through the supported route and agree it with your Sage partner first.
Does it matter if Sage 200 is hosted by a third party?
It can. A hosted install may rule out direct database access and leave us relying on the API or a scheduled export. None of that stops the project, but it changes how we build it, so we’d confirm the arrangement with whoever hosts it before giving you a fixed quote.
Our customers order on account. Can those orders be attributed?
Newer accounts sometimes can. An account customer who first came through an ad, with a click ID or hashed email kept from that enquiry, can be linked on early orders. Long-established accounts generally can’t, and we’d advise against crediting Google Ads with them even where a match appears possible.
Do we need to change how our team enters orders in Sage 200?
Probably only a little. The common request is to record the buyer’s email in the same field every time, as that’s what links an order to an enquiry. We’ll look at your existing process first, since any change that slows order entry tends to be quietly abandoned.