Microsoft Small Business Accounting Software

New Office Accounting 2007 article on Yahoo.com

2007-03-13T15:56:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure how I missed this article, but it talks about how both Intuit and Microsoft are embracing online services directly in their accounting applications. The article takes a few shots at Intuit and praises Microsoft for it's efforts:First, the shot at Intuit:But Intuit's ballyhooed Google alliance was underwhelming at best. It boiled down to a single icon called MARKETING TOOLS just

Office Accounting Express -- More than 1 Million Strong.

2007-02-20T06:18:00.000-08:00

Rajat Taneja, whom we've mentioned before here, has indicated that the free Office Accounting Express product has been downloaded over a million times in the first 90 days.Wow, I'm amazed at this number! I guess I had better start coming up with more tips on this new version, and quickly! I have to say, I'm excited about the growing community of users who can share experiences and tips about

User-defined fields in Word templates?

2006-11-29T11:57:00.000-08:00

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

Carolyn Kepcher teams with Microsoft on Office Accounting

2006-11-28T17:34:00.000-08:00

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

Number of users supported in Office Accounting

2006-11-22T07:52:00.000-08:00

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

Word Templates in Office Accounting Express

2006-11-16T19:54:00.000-08:00

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\TemplatesJust thought I'd

Listing on eBay with Office Accounting 2007

2006-11-04T08:31:00.000-08:00

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

Another SBA Blog!

2006-11-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-11-01T07:46:00.000-08:00

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

More on Office Accounting 2007

2006-10-31T08:17:00.000-08:00

I did a lot of searching and reading last night about the new product and finally downloaded a copy of Office Accounting Express. Here are some of the articles I found:Review: Microsoft's New Office Powerhouse: Office Accounting 2007 (CRN)Review: Intuit, Microsoft Accounting Add Web Services (PC World)Microsoft tries to lure 'mom and pop' companies (CNET -- lots of comments on this one)Microsoft

MAJOR Microsoft Announcement!!

2006-10-30T09:14:00.000-08:00

Wow, this accounting war is really escalating... Microsoft just announced a FREE version of a new lower-end version of SBA (now called Office Accounting). The new version called Office Accounting Express seems to have most of the same features you find in the Pro product with the exception of less reports and some more "advanced" accounting features. See their website at Ideawins.com for the

Great article on the SBA 2007 Beta

2006-10-11T16:41:00.000-07:00

Kathy Yakal from PC magazine reviewed the first version of Small Business Accounting and now she's done it again for 2007. Here are a couple of interesting quotes from the article:"I found Office Accounting 2007's Office-like interface to be more intuitive and aesthetically pleasing than the QuickBooks interface. Each program area (such as Customers and Banking) is represented by a tab, which

MAJOR Intuit / Google announcement!

2006-09-14T07:50:00.000-07:00

Wow. I was quite taken aback by the announcement Intuit and Google made yesterday. The summary is that Quickbooks is going to call a number of Google services directly from within the product. Here is the short list: Google AdWords: Small businesses will be able to sign up for AdWords directly from the QuickBooks 2007 home page. New advertisers will get a $50 AdWords credit to advertise their

SBA 2007 Reviewed.

2006-09-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

Here is an article I came across yesterday on the new SBA 2007 beta. Note, the name appears to have been changed to just "Office Accounting 2007" (I may have to change the name of the blog!!). Now that some of this stuff is publically available, I should be able to share some of the details of the beta. I have to say, the eBay stuff is WAY cool!http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127015/

Manual Payroll with Excel -- Summary

2006-08-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

For those who didn't follow the blog early on, I thought I'd pull out and consolidate into one post, all of the different posts about how to use the manual payroll feature in Small Business Accounting. I probably need to add one more post that shows how to finalize the payroll, but here is where we are so far: 1. http://sba2006.blogspot.com/2005/10/diy-payroll-with-excel-part-i.html 2.

www.SBAisBetter.com

2006-08-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

Wow. I just saw this over on the Microsoft SBA blog: http://www.sbaisbetter.com. The site looks like it's targeted at accountants and there's a lot of great information comparing SBA and QB Pro. I'm not sure I buy all the claims, but it's good to hear more from the MS folks.Also, I'm a little struck by the number of product reviews over the past 11 months and most of them look pretty good.

Anxiously awaiting the SBA 2.0 Beta

2006-05-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

I signed up for the new Small Business Accounting beta, but have yet to receive it. Has anyone else out there received their copy yet? I'm eager to see what changes and new features will be there...

Supported bank list updated

2006-04-29T07:47:00.000-07:00

Wow, last time I checked the supported bank list for Small Business Accounting, there were only about 30 or so banks listed. There are many more now, although it's fair to say that most of the banks supported allow you to import a bank file. Check it out: http://sba.microsoft.com/bank_list.htmlI should say, I'm still on my quest for automatic Wells Fargo Support, however.

New Microsoft Blog on SBA

2006-04-29T06:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't searched around for new information on Small Business Accounting for a while, but my recent searching has yielded an interesting new blog from the folks at Microsoft. Actually, it looks like it's been there for a few months already. There isn't a bio page, but it looks like the blog is written by Rajat Taneja, who leads the small business efforts at Microsoft, including: SBA,

It's been a long winter...

2006-04-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

Anyone else have the same feeling? I think I'm out of the woods for now. One thing I noticed a week or so ago was an invitation to the new Microsoft Small Business Accounting beta. I signed up, but haven't recieved anything else yet. I'm looking forward to see what kind of changes they've made.Anyway, I plan on contributing more here over the next several months.

SBA Update 2 Details

2006-01-23T16:41:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I've posted, so I thought I'd chime in on the new SP2 (details here). It seems like Microsoft is jumping on the rapid-fire release train that Intuit has been on for a while. (Intuit puts out 8 or so updates to QB per year) It'll be interesting to see how many more we get out of Microsoft this year.One thing I have to commend them on is addressing feedback from

SBA now with Point of Sale support

2005-12-09T13:18:00.000-08:00

I was at an accounting conference in Utah earlier this week and was surprised with this announcement. Microsoft has connected Small Business Accounting with their existing Point of Sale solution. The announcement is located here. Also, see a demo of the Point of Sale product here. Finally, you can get a lot more information about POS in general here.Would be interested to hear from anyone who

Vacations, Vacations...

2005-11-22T07:46:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been dark as of late. I'm on vacation and thought I'd just drop a note to that effect. I'll be back in full force after Thanksgiving. Happy holidays all -- enjoy your vacations.

SBA now supported on SBS

2005-11-09T09:32:00.000-08:00

Hot off the presses is a whitepaper detailing how to use Small Business Accounting with Small Business Server in a supported way.If you are looking for details on how to make this work, get the details straight from the horse's mouth: whitepaper.

Import transactions into SBA with Excel -- Finally!

2005-11-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

A reader emailed this to me yesterday and I know there have been numerous requrests from people desperate to get their transactional data into Small Business Accounting. It's not the cheapest solution, but depending on how married you are to your historical data, this may be one way to go.Check out the offerings from DP Solutions LLC

Templates in a multi-user environmet

2005-11-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

Greg on the alt.comp.software.financial.quickbooks newsgroup had the following comment about Small Business Accounting:> Oh, here's another thing... document templates (invoices, quotes, etc.)> exist as separate files and need to be distributed to every machine on which> they're used.This is a great point. There are two solutions to this one: Create a central fileshare that contains templates

Mobile access to SBA and BCM -- Coming Soon

2005-11-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

I ran across a new 3rd-party application called Aqivo for Small Business Accounting and Business Contact Manager by 360 Degree Solutions yesterday. Details are a little sketchy, but the concept sounds really cool -- access your data from both of these applications from mobile devices while you are away from the office. I'm assuming that the application uses some sort of web application and works

Tips for using the Add Links feature

2005-11-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

A feature in Small Business Accounting that one reader asked for more information about is the Add Links feature. This feature in a nutshell allows you to link files located on your computer or network to a document or other item in SBA. This is a powerful concept that could enable you to work in a more paperless way. For Invoices or POs recieved by email or quick scans of important bills or

How to run SBA on SBS

2005-10-31T12:19:00.000-08:00

An update on running Small Business Accounting on SBS has appeared on Susan's SBS site. You can find the cleaned up list of steps to make this work here:http://msmvps.com/bradley/archive/2005/10/28/73374.aspxDon't be scared by the number of steps, they're just very detailed (which is a good thing).

Migrate from MS Money to SBA

2005-10-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

Many, many people seem to want to move or migrate their data from Microsoft Money to Small Business Accounting. I came across the following workaround to move the data:http://money.mvps.org/faq/article/280.aspxI haven't tried this workaround myself and it seems like a lot of steps, but for those users unwilling to depart with their historical data, this should work.

Welcome Intuit!

2005-10-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

Using my blog stats as a guide, the blog has seen a fair amount of traffic from the good folks at Intuit, both in California as well as from Texas. It's ok, I know you're watching Small Business Accounting like a hawk. Please continue to come back and join the discussion.One thing I have to say about the good folks at Intuit is that they've stepped it up again. I received mail from them on QB

Using the Transaction Journal report to track changes to an invoice

2005-10-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

One of the key features in Small Business Accounting is the ability to see evolutions of a posted document over time, like an Invoice. Most products have a transaction journal report, but they only include the "current state" of the document. That is to say, it shows what accounts have been posted to and for what amount. The transaction journal report in SBA acts a little more like an audit trail

3 New SBA Yahoo Groups

2005-10-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Susan Bradley for pointing these out a few days back. Small_Business_Accounting - For users of Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting, this group will answer questions and offer advice on taking full advantage of the software's features. Discussions will include integrating Small Business Accounting with the other members of the Microsoft Office Family.

Multi-currency and other Intl Features in SBA

2005-10-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

While the current version of Small Business Accounting doesn't support multi-currency, a lot of newsgroup posts over the last few weeks have been inquring about such international features. A newsgroup post Tuesday by Microsoft again confirmed that a version of SBA for the UK market is on the way in the fall of 2006. Excellent news.

Topic Requests?

2005-10-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Not that I've run out of topic ideas, but I'd like to hear from you if you have anything you'd like to see on the blog. If so, post a comment. (...and yes, I'll finish the payroll postings one of these days.)

"Microsoft vs. Intuit: The Battle Begins" (CPA Technology Advisor)

2005-10-14T21:06:00.000-07:00

Three new articles hit the web today on CPA Technology Advisor that continue down the path of pitting Microsoft Small Business Accounting against Quickbooks directly and leaving Peachtree and the other accounting packages pretty much out to dry. Of particular interest is the dismissive attitude from the other accounting vendors in the second article. Recommending The Right Small Business

Another SBA Blog

2005-10-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

Always good to see another Blog dedicated to Small Business Accounting. Lets hope we see more content there soon.http://microsoftsba.blogspot.com/

DIY Payroll with Excel, Part III

2005-10-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

Next Up: Doing the payroll calculations. As I said in the last few payroll posts, once you have the payroll setup done, you don't have to touch it again until you have tax rate changes, new employees or new pay rates. For the most part, this should be once or twice a year.When you started this process from within Small Business Accounting, you were asked for a payroll period. This payroll period

"Can Microsoft Upstage Intuit with SBA 2006?"

2005-10-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

"Priced under $200, Microsoft’s Small Business Accounting solution -- coupled with Microsoft’s extensive penetration of the small business desktop productivity market -- may create the first real threat to QuickBooks’ market dominance. Yet, Intuit customers have proved impervious to rival attacks in the past, and Intuit has proactively announced a new version of QuickBooks -- code-named Denali

SBA content on http://www.mbsadvisor.com/

2005-10-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

I came across this while browsing different sites talking about Microsoft Small Business Accounting and was a little surprised at how detailed some of this content is - it's great. The site appears to have a lot of detail for most of the Microsoft Business Solutions software, written by J. Carlton Collins, CPA. Below, are links to the content for Chapter 8 only, given it's focus on Small Business

SBA on SBS -or- SBA using SQL?

2005-10-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about using Small Business Accounting with Small Business Server and/or with full Microsoft SQL Server. While a lot of the talk has been about how to get it to work, I was confused by the myriad of conflicting information about whether or not it's a supported configuration:A post on Susan Bradley's Blog indicated that it was unsupported, but

DIY Payroll with Excel, Part II

2005-10-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

Next up: Setting up the GL mapping for manual payroll in Small Business Accounting. Setting this piece up is pretty straightforward once you know a few basic tips. First, all Earnings should be mapped to Expense accounts and second, all Deductions should be mapped to Liability accounts. If you had an accountant define your Chart of Accounts, you should ask them which accounts to map to which

New Microsoft Word to include PDF support

2005-10-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

I came across this yesterday in a Microsoft blog. Apparently Microsoft is adding the ability to save Microsoft Word documents as PDF files. This is big news because it now means that with the new Office 12 software, Small Business Accounting users should be able to save/send their custom invoices as PDF files for free. Admittedly, I may be extrapolating a bit, but I can't imagine why it wouldn't

DIY Payroll with Excel, Part I

2005-10-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

I finally took a deeper look at the DIY payroll in Small Business Accounting over the weekend. This feature was made available in the downloadable update on 9/7 and uses Excel to perform the payroll calculations with info pulled in from SBA. If you only have a handful of employees and/or want to manage payroll on your own, this is a reasonable alternative for you.For starters, SBA sends over all

"Intuit Cuts Pricing, Kills QuickBooks Basic"

2005-10-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Summary: Intuit is removing QB Basic from the line-up in favor of the more popular QB SimpleStart product. The reason given by Brad Smith is that they are reducing customer confusion by simplifying the overall product line. I'll buy that.Additionally, Intuit cut pricing on Pro and Premier by $100, making Pro now $199. Smith summarized the pricing change using the following words:"We call it

Reconciliation Tips

2005-09-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

Back to some more Small Business Accounting feature tips. I've come up with a few tips for the reconciliation feature in SBA.First, the question of how to save a partial reconciliation if you're not able to finish it all in one sitting. Believe it or not, clicking the Reconcile Button on the Reconciliation screen will detect that you are not in balance and will ask if you'd like to save your

More SBA in the news (CNET)

2005-09-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

Here is another review of Small Business Accounting 2006 done by CNET. I think the editor has some great words for SBA, but I'm a little confused by the rating (6.7 Good of 10) given the details in the review. The only big negative for him is that if your company is using Corel or StarOffice instead of Microsoft Office, then SBA is a "poor" choice for you.http://reviews.cnet.com/

Tip on importing your QB file if your version is not supported.

2005-09-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a good little trick from Frank on the Small Business Accounting newsgroup on how to import your QB data if your version is older than the supported versions. Check this page to decide if you will benefit from Frank's tip:>Frank >Subject: RE: Quickbooks 2001 not importable?> A workaround is to download QB 2005 and upgrade your QB 2001.> Then SBA will load all data. Note- The QB 2005

What is SBA and why are people so excited?

2005-09-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

A few people have emailed me over the last week and asked what the big deal is about Small Business Accounting: "it's just another accounting program in a field of 5 others, right?" No. Let me offer a few quick thoughts as to why I'm so excited about this software.SBA may be another accounting application, but it's really only one piece of the puzzle. The real beauty comes in when SBA is combined

Tips on emailing documents from SBA

2005-09-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

In playing around with Small Business Accounting for the warehousing post on 9/24, I came across a few tips for effective emailing of documents:Emailing documents as attachments:Since most customers or vendors will print out the documents you send them in email, the current SBA feature sends an embedded HTML (read-only) version of the document. This means that when they print the document, the

Time billing and project managment with BillQuick and SBA

2005-09-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

I had the chance to play with a product called BillQuick by BQE Software over the past few days and it's pretty good. If your company needs good time and project management software integrated with accounting to run your business, this software is unbelievable. Professional service companies like engineers, consultants or architects will love the project managemet and those who do the billing

Automating warehousing with SBA

2005-09-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting question from the Small Business Accounting newsgroup that I thought might be beneficial to others on the topic of how to automate selling/pick/pack/ship operations between sales people and warehousing staff ina small business:"rdewaal" wrote:> How can I generate a pick list and Bill of Lading from a multi user> installation. Sales would be taken in the office. Pick lists

Kathy Yakal reviews SBA (PC Magazine)

2005-09-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

Kathy is well regarded for her broad and deep reviews of small business accounting software. Her head-to-head round-up from last year didn't include SBA, but I fully expect to see it in the next one (early '06?). In the meantime, here is what she had to say about SBA earlier this month:"After numerous attempts over the years, Microsoft has finally done it. The company has produced a

Useful Shortcut Keys

2005-09-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

Shortcut keys for a blog post? Sure, who doesn't want to be more productive using any application? I thought it might be interesting to post a bunch of the more interesting keyboard shortcuts for SBA. Some of these are pretty darn handy, especially the account register and journal entry shortucts. Most of these can be used anywhere in the application except where noted: Function

Tips on using different line types in SBA

2005-09-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

Here is another feature that I suspect that a lot of people haven't found yet. On most forms, SBA allows the selection of several different types of lines. The most obvious of these is the Comment line type on the quote form, for instance. To select a different line type, click on the first column of a line and select from the options. In addition to Item and Comment, you can use the Sales Tax

The SBA Analysis Tools

2005-09-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many people have noticed or played with this gem. The Analysis Tools are accessed off of the Windows Start menu and bring up a separate little application to launch each of the predefined Excel or Access components. Excel is used for pivot table functions and Access is used to render reports that users can easily customize using extended data from the SBA database. Unlike

Tricks for importing bank files

2005-09-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

Not having my bank fulling integrated into SBA is not a huge problem right now because with SP1, they've added the ability import bank files after downloading them from the bank's website. The trick here is to select the right file format. Some of my banks list the file types by product (ie. Quicken or Money), but some of them list them by download format (ie. QIF, CSV, OFX). For SBA, it's clear

First post... Using SBA since beta...

2005-09-10T19:27:00.000-07:00

I've been playing with Microsoft's Small Business Accounting software product since the beta in November '04 and I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised. One thing in particular I've noticed is that the development team really seems to have taken a lot of the feedback submitted by users in the beta, if I remember correctly from the feedback in the beta newsgroup. I'm particularly glad to see that