Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 [Old Version]

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

With Office Small Business Accounting, Microsoft is making another attempt to enter a market that has not responded well to its previous entries. Strong points are integration with a SQL Server database, the Office tool set, one banking group (Wachovia), and one payroll service (ADP). Weak points are limited support for inventory, assets, structured accounts, and employee benefits and records.

Ease of use, these days a Microsoft hallmark, is better than QuickBooks (Intuit) and Peachtree (Sage). However, importing from QuickBooks or Peachtree is likely to fail because of design quirks and rigidity in the Microsoft product. If you try to import using accounts that Microsoft is somehow unable to recognize, they will be silently dropped. Our subaccount structures were not imported.

Inventory methods are limited to FIFO, which happens to be what we use. There are 12 built-in accounts; most characteristics cannot be changed. In many businesses they would be useful only as subaccounts, but they cannot be made into subaccounts. Only one level of subaccounts is provided, and subaccounts are not supported at all for cash or bank deposits. Built-in accounts treat credit-card purchases as cash payments at time of purchase. You will not be able to use direct deposit for payroll unless you sign up with ADP for an expensive "full service" option.

The product runs only on Windows XP, not on any of the older systems. Integrated support features that generate forms, export data or use contacts require Microsoft Office to be installed on the same computer. Contacts are fully supported only for Office 2003. Only the appearance of forms can be changed; the content is fixed at whatever Microsoft thought it should be. Microsoft didn't think service invoices should include dates of service, and so they won't. Try that on your clients. Unlike QuickBooks, Microsoft didn't think you should delete transactions you entered by mistake, so you won't be able to. However, you can zero them out and move them to a dead-letter account, which you will need to invent.

To install and activate the product requires a Microsoft Passport account. To set up a Passport account requires disclosing an e-mail address and using it for verification. Although Microsoft is promoting a year of free assistance as an inducement, its Web site for product support is asking $35 per e-mail contact after the first two. The Help menu offers a service to "Find an Accountant" that launches a Web page trying to sell Microsoft products to accountants. On the forum pages you find arrogance toward customers such as the likes of, "Well if QuickBooks will do that, why don't you just stay with them?"

The offer of a year of free support is available to U.S. customers who register before the end of September, 2006, by calling 866-827-1619 (toll-free). Before registering for support you must install and register the product and upgrade to its latest version. Use Help / Check for Ugrades. As of spring, 2006, one upgrade kit has been released. Support is by telephone at the same number, from Microsoft staff in the U.S. This is bound to be expensive for Microsoft to provide; it signals a strong commitment to the product.

By Microsoft standards the documentation is above average, but for the rest of the world it is pretty hopeless unless you are very skilled at both accounting and software. As of spring, 2006, one book on the product was available, an introductory-level book from Microsoft Press just slightly longer than the User's Guide that comes with the product. The User's Guide and the product have several time-wasting inconsistencies, for example, the spelling and capitalization of account types. Mix them up, and you cannot import a chart of accounts. There is no usable information in the User's Guide or the on-line documentation on how to set up accounts for most payrolls. Apparently you do it by experiment, or you pay ADP for the "full service" option as mentioned above.

A warning to potential users who need more than one computer to access accounting records. While Microsoft Small Business Accounting can support multiple users, because it relies on a SQL Server database, product documentation does not explain system requirements clearly. In your My Computer / Folder Options / View properties, on all the computers with access to an accounts records database, you must turn off the option "Use simple file sharing" at the bottom of the properties list, which is turned on by default.

We believe that several so-called "reviews" here are from Microsoft and its vendor network, because the reports are far different from our experience. We do continue to hope Microsoft will give QuickBooks and Peachtree long overdue kicks in the touchas. We managed to work our way around pitfalls of the product and will use it for a year to see if Microsoft will solve its problems while maintaining its strong points. If not, then we will go back to QuickBooks.

My consulting business is based on time billing, and now I can bill time, invoice by email, and track conversations ALL from Outlook. If I schedule an appointment, or track my time in Outlook, I can mark the time as billable, create an entry, and the info flows directly into my accounting software.
My ability to invoice by email had expired with QuickBooks, so I had switched to using PDFRedirect to print pdf files instead and emailed them. I was not eager to spend hundreds of dollars on an upgrade, when what I had was working fine until one of their updates turned off a feature I needed. Now it's not a problem, and the new solution actually works better because I can run the whole time billing side of my consulting business from Outlook.
I had recently tried SugarCRM, but the open source version doesn't handle billing. Small Business Accounting 2006 has the best features of CRM, with Opportunity tracking, what's in the pipeline, etc. PLUS the best features of QuickBooks for considerably less.
Unknowns: What happens at tax time?
Untried: Payroll with ADP
Wishes: a tick mark of some kind in Outlook to show that a calendar entry HAS been sent to the accounting software for billing.
ELEVEN MONTHS LATER: 1)My clients need dates to show for each item in my service invoice for their accounting - there is no way. 2)After restoring from a backup after a computer crash, all sorts of wierdness happened - previously invoiced items show not invoiced, etc. 3)I'm starting to feel tired of fighting the software. Template changes don't stick. 4)I wish QuickBooks worked with Outlook. I'm ready to go back.

I've just started working with SBA and am impressed with some of the features. As a long time QuickBooks user, I have always wanted to have a contact management software program to integrate with QuickBooks. I just didn't want to spend the 60 to 100 dollars and have an add-in that will not work when QuickBooks introduces a new version.

Along comes SBA, and it fully integrates with Outlook with Business Contact Manager. Since I already use Outlook, no problem. In addition, this program has different price level capability, which is nice. It also allows a discount to be applied without having to create a Discount account in the chart of accounts. Sharing is easier than QuickBooks. You won't receive the message that SBA must be in single user mode to run some task (making it necessary for all other users to exit QuickBooks).

An SDK (Software Development Kit) is available for downloading at no charge, making it easy to program using VB.net. Invoices can be created in Word, almost all reports can be exported to Excel, and most built-in reports are fine for daily use.

You can import QuickBooks data, but you'll need version QuickBooks 2004 or 2005 to import transactions. ADP payroll can be integrated into SBA for $169 per year. Direct deposit or write you employee paychecks. Credit cards can be used with no telephone line necessary for approval (you can use a card swipe machine, if desired, or just enter the info with the keyboard).

All in all, a very refreshing accounting program for small business (about 5 user maximum).

I was lucky enough to be on the public BETA program and so have been running my company on the product for more than 6 months. I use some of the built in reports, but I especially like the fact that I can build my own. With Quickbooks, I couldn't get my data out very easily so I appreciate that SBA comes with Analysis tools that allows me to get my information out of SBA in a format I like.

There are dozens of accounting software packages targeted at "small business" users. The long time market share holder is obviously QuickBooks. As a result of this Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006 is equally obviously going to be "compared" to QuickBooks. The answer is to carefully read the features provided before you pluck down money. A little careful reading and possibly a demo install will tell you whether this package is for you.
This is Microsoft's effort to provide businesses that currently use Excel and Access with an alternative. They do not say anywhere that it is going to be a QuickBooks or Peachtree replacement - simply that it will offer you a set of carefully detailed accounting features that will help you better manage your business. The 5 star rating is based on how well the package performs the operations it claims to offer.
If you have unanswered questions post them on the SBA newsgroup where a bunch of good people devote their time to helping those getting started. Here are a few things that I find most helpful.
1. You can design and print your own forms of all types rather than buying preprinted forms. This can save you a ton of money.
2. You can buy software packages to print checks as add-ons. One source is www.checkmaster.com among others.
3. If you are a programmer or have access to a programmer you can download the Small Business Accounting SDK and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Express edition (both free) to write add-ons to your SBA installation.
4. In this regard the software is very open to modification and enhancement by the user.
Once again - check the feature set before you buy. Keep in mind that this is a Microsoft product which means that it will be maintained and upgraded over time.

I was excited about the possibility of having integration between Outlook and my accounting package so I downloaded the trail for SBA from Microsoft and gave it a try. Since own but was not using the Business Contact Manager add on to Outlook my first chore was get in working. This proved to be a huge chore with several failed attempts and a 1:40 call to MS tech support to find out I needed to download an updated version of the BCM software. After some trouble I finally got everything working and began to explore SBA 2006.

As a current user of QuickBooks 04 Pro I was able to import my company data fairly easy. There are some oddities about how your finical data transfers and several transactions that had a unique identity in QB like an invoice or deposit now just look like a journal entry. There may some work around, but I have not found it. All of my client data transferred easily, and I was able to move that to Outlook with BCM quite easily.

I primarily use QB to invoice clients and then receive payments on those invoices and make deposits. With QB it was vary easy to create separate forms for different situations and instruct QB to print one type of Invoice for one client and a different type for another. With SBA MS claims you can customize forms, but it's much trickier than they let on. To customize a form you must make a form template in Word and to print that form you have to tell SBA to export the item (say an Invoice) to Word for printing. Although the form customization possibilities seem limitless, the implementation of actually using them seems far too cumbersome. With QB I can batch print Invoices using my customized forms easily and I can't find a way to make this work in SBA at all. With SBA it looks like you have two default form choices for invoices (product and services) with no way to modify them.

The other thing I do constantly is receive payments and print deposit slips. With QB I simply place my preprinted deposited slip in the print and its' formatted and printed correctly. The deposit slip form that SBA produces dose not match my pre-printed deposit ticket and I cant find any option to change it.

Additionally, when I entered a deposit and then had to re-locate it, it was a somewhat more difficult process than in QuickBooks. With QB I can simply enter the deposit screen and page back to previous entries but this was not possible with SBA.

With all that said, I love having customer financial data available in Outlook. If a client calls I can easily look at her account status while accessing her information in outlook. There is also a huge amount of duplicate entry that might be avoided by sharing a singe database for accounting and CRM data. I also love how easily SBA will pass information to Excel or other MS software for manipulation and analysis.

I am frustrated with QB's pricing and in program spamvertising, but I think at this point it is still a more mature and flexible program. Its disappointing that an upgrade for QB (which is actually no longer offered forcing current customers to buy new again) is higher priced than buying SBA. If you image is not dependant on the output of your accounting program and you only use it internally, then you might be happy with SBA, but if you need document flexibility I think you will find it inappropriate. I so much wanted to like SBA, but its just missing too much now to consider switching.

I had been using PeachTree 2003 Complete which is a better program if you are an accountant. I used it for several years and found it a challange, though I was getting by with it.

I received a trial offer from MS and installed it. I had Office 2003. Now my business contacts are common to SBA and Outlook.
My invoice forms are editable with MS Word and I can generate an html e-mail invoice from them. I've even been able to include a PayPal pay now button in the e-mail invoice.

I can generate an Excel worksheet from a report with one click.

Overall, I like it better. I run a 2ghz P4 with 756MB memory and the product is a little sluggish, but stable (SP3). It uses the personal SQL server (MSDE) and has a backup utility producing a zipped file.

I installed the MS trial and then used the key from my purchased copy to remove the trial status.

Yes this is a Microsoft V1 SP1 product (don't forget to download the update). It is very useable today and is better than Quickbooks for us. Quickbooks did the bean counting but it did not give us the reports we needed to run our business. We are very happy we switched and we are much more productive as we can focus on acting on the marketing data in the reports. We were a beta tester of this product. We did appear in the launch video and I have been featured in a nationwide radio campaign promoting the product. While competitors may cry "Payola" all we've ever recieved is free copies of the software and one $50 gift card. This is a great product and I know the dev team is working on making it better. If we had to switch over from Quickbooks again, we'd do it in a heart beat even if we had to pay double.

We were a switcher from Quickbooks to SBA during the beta program, because we were really struggling to capture customer intelligence and use it easily for marketing purposes. We were proficient with Office, and found we were using Quickbooks strictly for banking and nothing else, but needed Office to do everything else. When SBA came along, we were given a familiar interface, instant integration with Word and Excel, and were given a tool that would integrate our customer data with Outlook Business Tools to make our monthly email newsletter tasks fairly simple.

Yes, the first version does have limitations with banking imports - it is not as evolved as Quickbooks in its ability to remember repetitive transactions and automatically assign those transactions. As long as your bank gives you the ability to download transactions into an MS Money file, you can successfully do an import of that file into SBA - though it is a 2-step process instead of a direct import.

For a first release of a Microsoft product - I was pretty impressed. I know that not all first versions are ready for prime time, but I know that we have vastly improved our accounting productivity and our ability to track and retain our premier customers with this first release. And our ability to produce polished business accounting reports in Office is greatly enhanced, which is important for small businesses who need to grow and communicate with investors, landlords, realtors, etc.

I am excited for the next release, and excited to recommend this product to other small businesses who just don't have all day for accounting tasks because they'd rather be doing whatever it is they started a business to do!

I have switched over to Microsoft after using quickbooks and quicken for years. The interface is smoother and looks for organized. The only problem is the data move from quickbooks to sba was not easy, and the parameters are different so I have to reenter the info for my inventory items.