I saw that someone said on one of the online forums that there was not anything in Office Accounting for Accountants. I beg to differ. This product is not something that offers anywhere near the same capabilities of someone like Iris for Practice Management - it is not designed to do so, it is aimed at small businesses who want a simple to use accounting package and then a tool for accountants to simply extract and manage data from it.
I am not an accountant, but Microsoft offer several areas for Accountants with Office Accounting:
- Ability to customise the product to brand it for a specific organisation, such as an accountant, ISV or partner
- Ability to monitor several people's accounts from the one place and gather updates via an secure online process (through Office Live)
- Client sends accounts to accountant, continues using them and then the changes are synchronised back from accountant without data loss
- Run payroll for multiple clients
- Single Journal entry with VAT that spans multiple dates, customers and suppliers
- Full audit on transactions and modifications to spot fraudulent actions easier
- Ability to produce a number of the reports that accountants may well want to automate
- A Microsoft backed network designed to listen to the needs of accountant and deliver further benefits for them - aka Microsoft Professional Accountants' Network which also provides the following software and support benefits:
- Free Support
- Free unlimited support until September 2009
- Access to managed newsgroups
- Access to invitation-only training events specifically for accounting professionals
- Free Software
- One complimentary license of Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008
- One complimentary license of Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2007
All in all I would say that was quite a lot for something that is potentially free for customers and free for accountants!!
ttfn
David
Posted
Sun, Nov 25 2007 9:25 PM
by
David Overton