Anyone try Microsoft accounting pacakge?

I see Costco is taking $100.00 off the price, so if it is already in Costco being discounted, MS must think it isn't going to sell.

I think I got an email directly from MS a couple weeks ago with the same $100 off promo. The program is alright, but QB is still better right now. Will probably take a loot at it again in a year or so, that is if MS sticks with it for that long. Hopefully they do.

Yep that's where I saw it as well.... Costco flyer

hence the question

heh, make that... take a look at it again in a year or so.

I tested the beta and the final Microsoft Small Business Accounting. It seems clear it is only a skeleton start. The thought of using ADP for payroll makes me gag. However, no one should ever discount the willingness of Microsoft to throw money into new products for years before producing something worthwhile.

You also should know that Microsoft repeatedly loses battles with Intuit. Microsoft first lost when Intuit refused to sell the Quicken name for a Microsoft Windows product. It lost big time when Intuit quickly followed the introduction of Money with Quicken for Windows. A better price and the first rebate in the software industry produced an amazing market share. Retailers put big quantities of Money, which they could not sell or return, in closeout bins and the then president of Microsoft ended up on the Intuit Board of Directors. There also was a now gone program called Microsoft Profit and a Microsoft personal income tax program that did not last until its first April 15.

Despite all this, I really like the Microsoft Small Business Accounting program. It has already been very good for small business accounting program users. I said years ago that Intuit was probably not improving QuickBooks quickly because it was afraid of monopoly problems if such improvements increased their 80% to 85% market share at retail. Intuit seemed to delicately balance improvements, so they were good enough to keep this share without spending extra money to increase it. The Microsoft SBA entry seemed to lift this Intuit concern. They junked rebates and cut prices, saving us time and giving them more and retailers less. They made a series of significant improvements, starting with the new interface, the database and the 15 users version. Even this may only be a preview, with a 25 user version available next year and the ability to link and synchronize multiple QB files soon following (this is a Sybase iAnywhere database capability).

Microsoft had some initial success. The month after its release it cut the market share of QuickBooks from 85% to 79% at retail. However, QuickBooks then jumped to a 93% and 95% retail market share. The resulting $100 SBA price cut relates to Microsoft's placing its #2 man in direct personal charge of SBA. This reaction is worse than it seems from cutting a $149 product by $100 after 4 months. Professional accountants and bookkeepers (whatever that means) can now buy $25,000

Mike Block - QuickBooks Tax Cut C.P.A. >

I used Mickeysoft Home & business for the first three years of my business. It was easy to set up and use but after a couple of years it suddenly suffered from corruption of the data file. I looked in the Mickeysoft knowledge base and saw that data corruption was a common problem with all sorts of fixes that didn't fix the file. My opinion of Mickeysoft products is that when I buy their products, in reality I am paying to be a beta tester. I am much more comfortable with QB even if it costs a little more. What is your data worth? $100, $1000? You can't put a price on it.

Bob

Got my free CPA copy yesterday. Found out it won't generate purchase orders from sales invoices. Hasta laVista SBA!

Steve

Hi Robert:

I agree both as to the beta test nature of some early Microsoft products and as to the high value of data compared to the cost of many programs. However, Microsoft Small Business Accounting comes from the GreatPlains division that cost M$ 1.6 BILLION. This made SBA a real disappointment

Mike Block - QuickBooks Tax Cut C.P.A.