User-defined fields in Word templates?

Just came across a newsgroup thread where someone from Microsoft mentioned that in Office Accounting 2007, they added the ability to include user-defined fields in your invoice templates and other Microsoft Word templates. This is a BIG deal. It sounds simple and I'll need to go check this out. Here is how it is described in the post:

"If you use Office Accounting 2007, please try the following:
On the quote/order/invoice form, go to Actions->Manage Word Templates and
select the template you want to modify.
Word will be launched and have the template loaded. On the "Document
Actions" pane on the right side of the Word window, you will see the list of
fields that includes several "User-Defined Fields". You can double click any
field in the list to add the field to the Word template."

Carolyn Kepcher teams with Microsoft on Office Accounting

I just came across this interesting little article about Carolyn Kepcher from Donald Trump's "The Apprentice" TV show. Apparently, she has joined with Microsoft to help judge a contest where they are giving away $100,000, a storefront in Manhattan for a year and free software to the best new small business idea. The contest, dubbed "Ultimate Challenge" is described on Microsoft's Ideawins.com website.

The one idea cited in the article wasn't exactly impressive, so get your ideas together and go win this thing.

Number of users supported in Office Accounting

Finally, a definitive source on how many users are officially supported by Office Accounting. Although, if you're looking for a number like "five", you're not going to get it. Jesper from Microsoft says that the previous version, SBA 2006 had some performance degradation that occurred "if more than 5 just happened to use a [database] connection at the exact same time". Luckily, Office Accounting 2007 doesn't have that same limitation. He implies that the number of users is somewhat unlimited, but cautions readers with:

"In fact Office Accounting should scale very well since it relies on Sql Server - but you might find that if your company grows to more than 25 employees it could require more advanced accounting software with more features than Office Accounting."

Read all the details here: Jesper's blog about integrating with Office Accounting

Word Templates in Office Accounting Express

As I was playing with Express, I noticed that they changed the Microsoft Word template directory, where they store the Microsoft Word template files for things such as Invoices and Quotes. Instead of these being stored in the Program Files directory like they were in 2006, they are now stored in:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Templates\Office Accounting 2007\Templates

Just thought I'd mention it...

Listing on eBay with Office Accounting 2007

Just saw a new post up on the Microsoft BizIdeas blog that I mentioned a few days ago. It now has a very detailed walk through for both setting up Office Accounting 2007 for selling on eBay, as well as how to actually create listing from directly within Office Accounting. I had walked through this in the beta some months back and the process seems to have become even easier. (I'm guessing they took some feedback from the beta and rolled it in.)

Again, I don't personally have a need for this feature, but it's interesting to see the integration with online services creeping into accounting apps these days.

Another SBA Blog!

Just a quick one: I ran across this new Office Accounting blog in another forum. It appears to be coming from within Microsoft. Check it out: It gives a pretty good description on how the eBay feature works.

http://blogs.msdn.com/bizideas/

Can you run Office Accounting 2007 on a Mac?

Although I assumed it could be done, I just read over on Start a Side Business that using an Apple Boot Camp competitor called Parallels (both allow you to run windows software on a Mac), you can run Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006. That's great news that someone is doing it. I wonder if it works with Office Accounting 2007? Anyone who knows or is able to test it, please leave a comment!