Microsoft Releases Accounting Software
New Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting focuses on tracking business income and expenses.Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service
Today, at its Microsoft Business Summit in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft will release new accounting software aimed at small businesses.
Unveiled at the vendor's partner conference in Minneapolis in July, Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting will give small businesses software that supports double-entry accounting, which keeps track of both a company's income and its expenses to ensure accountability for all parts of the business, according to Steve Guggenheimer, vice president of small business for the Microsoft Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partner Group.
Forty percent of small businesses do not use software specifically designed for accounting, Guggenheimer said, so Microsoft saw an opportunity to serve those customers with a product designed to meet their needs.
The new product will face an entrenched leader in the small-business accounting market, however: Intuit's QuickBooks.
Partnerships
Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting enables customers to perform basic accounting functions, such as recording customer transactions, and to manage sales and other financial documents. The product includes third-party services from Microsoft partners such as JPMorgan Chase, Deluxe, and Automatic Data Processing to allow customers to sign up for those companies' services from within the product, he said.
Microsoft is also launching a new version of Office that includes Small Business Accounting, called Office Small Business Management Edition. The product integrates accounting functionality with Microsoft's office productivity suite, so customers can perform accounting functions from within Office itself, Guggenheimer said.
"It allows accounting to be used as an overall way you manage the business," he said. "It integrates [Office] with [things like] how you would do sales, do quotes, [and] send out offers in a seamless way, which is what people care about."
At the time Microsoft introduced Small Business Accounting, the company set up the Microsoft Professional Accounting Network, which invited professional accountants to learn about the product so they could recommend it to their customers, Guggenheimer said. To date, 3000 accountants have signed up with the program.
Both new accounting products will be available starting today through various channels, including Microsoft's Small Business Specialty partners and such retail stores as OfficeMax, Office Depot, Staples, and CompUSA, Guggenheimer said. Microsoft hardware partners Dell and Gateway will offer PCs with the software pre-installed, he said.
Small Business Accounting costs $179, with a $30 rebate offered at launch, Guggenheimer said. Office Small Business Management Edition costs $499, with a rebate of $100 at launch.