Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 [OLD VERSION]

Customer Rating:
Summary: Solid but not spectacular
Comment: This is Microsoft's attempt to take on QuickBooks. Along those lines, it is relatively easy to begin using and will take care of the needs of most small businesses. Because it is from Microsoft, you also know that it will always integrate with the features of other Office products, including backwards compatability with whatever Microsoft comes up with next. This is not a reason to switch from your current accounting software, but may be something to think about if you are purchasing accounting software for the first time (trying to switch programs after being on a different one for years can be difficult).

Overall, a solid piece of software that does what it advertises.

Customer Rating:
Summary: The Lesser of Evils (vs Quickbooks)?
Comment: After having been a loyal Quickbooks user since 1999 I'm fed up with the downward spiral of Intuit products. Every new version of Quickbooks is slower, has more bugs, and more popup "ads" and other annoyances that simply make it harder, instead of easier, to get things done. In addition, Intuit's support, maintenance and upgrade policies are some of the worst in the business.

So the above is why I finally decided to check out Quickbook's competition. The street price of MS Accounting Pro 2008 is about the same as Quickbooks Pro. The install went pretty slow--especially converting 9 years of Quickbooks data and transactions. But it completed without any errors or problems.

My data seems to be intact, and for the most part, I've run several reports over various periods that agree with the same reports in Quickbooks. So far so good.

I like Microsoft's interface better than Quickbooks. It's more like other MS Office applications. The product loads much quicker than the newer versions of Quickbooks (which got painfully slow starting with the 2007 edition).

Microsoft has really leveraged integration with other MS Office applications. If you like to use Excel to analyze data, crunch numbers, etc, you'll enjoy how the Accounting Pro software will create custom spreadsheets for you. Likewise, instead of Intuit's clumsy forms editor in Quickbooks, Microsoft lets you use Word to design custom forms (like invoices) however you like.

So why only 3 stars? I have a few major gripes with Accounting Pro 2008:

The online banking is limited in comparison to Quickbooks (of course, online banking took a giant step backwards in Quickbooks 2009 with hundreds of users already complaining loudly). Some giant credit card companies, like American Express, are not even included in the Microsoft list of financial institutions. So if you want to import all those Amex transactions each month, you'll have to manually tell Amex to download a "Microsoft Money" file, and then manually import that file into MS Acct Pro. The software doesn't automate any of it for you.

Even for banks that are on Microsoft's list, the linkage seems very limited compared to what Quickbooks offers with the same banks. Microsoft's help files (and marketing materials) talk about 2-way direct links but I could find any banks that offered them.

The other big gripe are the reports. There is NO custom report facility where you can build a report from scratch. All you can do is modify the existing canned reports. And even that's fairly limited. I have a memorized Quickbooks report that sums the activity in half a dozen accounts. Microsoft can't do it. You're only allowed "up to 5" selected accounts as a filter. That's true for anything where you're selecting items. You only get 5. What's up with that? So I literally can't run my report. I also can't tell it to sum columns. I could export my data to Excel and do it there, but that's a lot of extra work compared to a single click in Quickbooks.

As others have mentioned, you may also not be compatibile with most of the accountants, auditors, etc. in the world. If you're running Quickbooks, you just export a copy of your data file to them. With MS Acct Pro, I'm not sure what you do unless they have the same software?

And then there are the add-ons. I don't currently use any add-ons with Quickbooks, but there are lots of them out there should you need something specific to your business, e-commerce, shopping carts, etc. MS only has PayPal and E-Bay (that I know of). More are sure to follow, however, especially if Intuit keeps going downhill and Microsoft keeps gaining market share.

I'm hoping Microsoft continues to improve the product adding better reporting, better online banking/credit card access, etc. Intuit clearly has lost focus with what their users want. Each new version of Quickbooks seems to have more unhappy customers than the last. At least Microsoft is offering a viable option for many Quickbooks users. That's a big step in the right direction.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Save Your Money
Comment: i thought I could use this software instead of Intuit Quickbooks Pro 2008 since Intuit has developed an attitude towards customers that we don't care about you at all. So I thought I would bail out and purchase the MS product. Guess what? Their program will not import Intuit files from Quickbook Pro 2008 and Intuit is now advertising their 2009 edition. I should have never wasted my money on the MS product. Their tech support tells me they have no idea when MS may have a patch that will allow the importing of Quickbooks Pro 2008. It appears MS has also developed the same attitude.

Customer Rating:
Summary: For the small business owner
Comment: If you are a small business owner looking for a software program to help you keep accounting of your business transactions - this software is something you should consider. There are some features you may find to be not as useful - but for the most part if you're looking for something as simple as tracking accounts receivable, accounts payable and inventory try MS Office Accounting Pro 2008.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Unsure, trouble installing with Vista
Comment: I have had trouble installing this with my new Windows Vista system. I'm not sure that this reflects a problem with the software, or something about my Vista setup. I will update my review if/when I am able to install successfully.