Sunday, July 6, 2008

- Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008

Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008
It's clear that with this product Microsoft is trying to make a more serious dent into the accounting market, but I really think they are kind of missing the mark. First, as many Microsoft products these days, it's bloated and slow. Really slow. Even on my pretty new computer. The install is quite daunting and you have to wonder what the heck takes it so much time. Now, I can deal with that if the product itself is worth it, but I'm rather underwhelmed with this one. It's got way too much for the average sole proprietor or small home business like me (Accounting Express is probably a better choice) but it doesn't have what a larger business needs like Quickbooks and Peachtree offer. Some of the features that this shines on, like the PayPal integration, require additional monthly fees, so again, you have to be at a certain level of sales to benefit from them. As others have mentioned, it does seem rather buggy as well, to some degree you might expect that versus very well-used and long-established products but it's annoying nonetheless. One thing to also keep in mind is that a product like Quickbooks is so ubiquitous now that there are HUGE numbers of 3rd party products and APIs that tap into it. It's very easy these days for instance to purchase ecommerce software that will automatically download your web orders and dump them into Quickbooks. Here you are tied to a much more limited amount of options, so something to be aware of.

Having said all that, this *does* do the basics well enough and as usual with Microsoft software, it integrates well with the rest of their products. For me however, it's overkill for my needs and still needs some work to be ready for heavy use.

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