From William Perez,
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Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 is a good accounting software program for small businesses. A basic version called Office Accounting Express is available free of charge.

Office Accounting 2008 boasts more features, tighter integration with other Microsoft Office applications, and data sharing capabilities with eBay and PayPal. Both the free version and the paid full version offer bilingual English and Spanish interfaces. This could be a real boost for Hispanic businesses and their accountants.

Office Accounting Express is available for free, so it's worth trying out to see if you like it.

Overall:

Microsoft Office Accounting Professional is recommended for small business users who demand tight integration with Microsoft Office applications such as Excel or Outlook's Business Contact Manager. Small businesses that process payroll in-house will find Peachtree or Quickbooks a better fit for their needs.

Microsoft Office Accounting Express includes all the essential accounting features for service businesses. Office Accounting Professional adds features such as creating purchase orders, tracking inventory, assessing finance charges, support for foreign currencies, manual payroll, and managing fixed assets. Businesses with inventory, merchandise, international sales or payroll will need the extra features in the Professional version.

Importing data from another accounting program can get tricky. Office Accounting will import data from Quickbooks, from Excel, and from Microsoft Money. However, my data from Quickbooks didn't fully import into Office Accounting Professional. As a reminder, be sure to back up all your data before migrating to a new accounting platform.

Office Accounting allows users to manage their eBay listings and PayPal transactions from inside the software.

Who will benefit most from the software? Home-based businesses, vendors doing business via eBay and PayPal, and small Spanish-speaking businesses, and small businesses looking for accounting software for the first time.

Business users should also consider the free version of Quickbooks Simple Start, which may be easier to set up for first-time users.

Features in Microsoft Office Accounting 2008:

Office Accounting includes most of the essential accounting functions, such as:

• Creating invoices,
• Recording purchases, receipts, bank deposits, and bill payments,
• Generating financial statements and other reports,
• Downloading bank information.

In addition Office Accounting integrates with other Microsoft Office applications, for example:

• Using Word to create custom templates for invoices.
• Exporting reports to Excel or Access.
• Processing payroll manually in Excel, and then importing the data into Office Accounting.
• Emailing invoices with Outlook.
• Sharing customer information with Outlook Business Contact Manager.

Personal Observations when using Microsoft Office Accounting Professional:

Office Accounting allows businesses to import their accounting data from the 2002 through 2007 versions of Quickbooks. To import Quickbooks data, you'll need to download a separate add-in from the Microsoft Web site. My data did not fully import though.

Office Accounting has a very clean software interface. It is very reminiscent of Microsoft Outlook with various tabs on the left-hand side. If you like the look-and-feel of Outlook, you will like the layout of Office Accounting.

Office Accounting uses the task flow chart as a navigation aide. The task flow chart is similar to those found in Quickbooks and Peachtree.

Office Accounting integrates with Word, Excel, Access, and Outlook.

In order to process payroll, you have to set up a link between Office Accounting and Excel, and then process payroll manually in Excel. The only other option is to use ADP to process your payroll, and then download the transaction data into Office Accounting.

Product Versions:

• Microsoft Office Accounting Express (free)
• Microsoft Office Accounting Professional ($199 MSRP)

On the Web:

Microsoft Office Accounting Express
Microsoft Office Accounting Professional
Ideawins.com - Download site for Office Accounting Express

Previous Reviews of the 2007 Software

CNET: 7/10. "Microsoft Office Accounting Express is a good choice for mom-and-pop shops that could use accounting software on the cheap."

PC Magazine: 4/5. "This app looks like a serious contender."

Washington Post: "All this added power comes with a price: The application, which Microsoft plans to ship by year's end, is difficult to set up."