No. Their blurb for the 2006 version is the usual ad copy. Nothing remotely substantial.
There are so many blatant displays of stupidity in Quickbooks that it's hard to keep track on all of them. Who in their right mind would let a bookkeeping product go out the door with such an incomprehensible way of showing debits and credits? Nobody, unless they are either incompetent or indifferent. This stupidity is also in the $3,500 per sucker Enterprise version.
Many transaction reports don't even show totals. They have a long way to go to figure out how to put totals on reports. The correct signs on credits and debits is a very advanced concept for them.
Clever that. And must have taken a bunch of programming. Pity it won't help the masses - including me - much. I'd happily settle for 10 minutes of the programmer's time to put meaningful headings on reports and show the heading on every page on the screen and in the navigation bar. And for dessert all I'd ask for is that clever modern invention of the previous millenium (or perhaps the one before that): page numbers.
No, I will leave that up to Microsoft and Intuit. In any event the comparison will have to be made between QB 2006 and SBA after they release their first patch. I have a feeling that QB 2006 will be released earlier than normal. the reason I say this is because the local stores are selling
2005 Pro (upgrade) for only $79.00. This is usually an indication that the stores are dumping their stock to make way for the new version. I guess Intuit wants to meet the challenge head on.
I was at a technology show several months ago and because I visited the Microsoft booth they sent me, free of charge, not only the full working version of SBA 2006 but a full working version of Office Professional 2003. Hey I'm sold, I will allocate the time to learn their product. There will be those that choose this product, and I want to be there to help them (for a fee).
My overall impression of SMB is that it has the potential to develop, over time, into an excellent program. I like the product, find it very easy to use, and for the most part love the user interface.
In it's present form I can not see the masses of QB users moving to SBA. SBA simply does not offer any compelling reason for most to do so.
At the present time what many QB users will find lacking in SBA 2006 are the following:
Inability to move from field to field using the enter key. No automatic decimal placement. No memorized or recurring transactions. No feature to condense or better remove completly old transactions. (whats up with this?).
I could go on but I realize that Microsoft is in this game to win and many of the version 1.0 shortcomings will be long gone by the time they reach version 11 (QB 2006 is at this level). In any event SBA will make QB a better product.
It has long been very fast, easy and inexpensive to get completly custom reports from QuickBooks. Simply link the industry-standard Crystal Reports. Flexquarters in one of several companies that facilitate this. However, very few QB users do this. Most only want the total simplicity QB emphasizes and rarely use any QB report.
QB2006 will use backorders to calculate inventory available. Its commercial database will run much faster and handle far larger files. We may eventually be able to have multiple QB files synchonizing with other QB files. There have long been many QB add-ons for advanced inventory needs, including one that costs $10,000!
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