Office Accounting Opens a Window to eBay and PayPal – Helping Inventory Fly Out the Door

By Bob Lewis, Sr. Marketing Manager, Accounting Professionals, Microsoft Business Division

 

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 rolls out a leading relationship between online services and accounting software. Whether your clients are among the more than 700,000 small businesses that already conduct their primary business on eBay or could benefit from increasing their sales, the Office Accounting/eBay integration will save them paper, time and hassle. And with Office Accounting’s partnership with PayPal, your clients can conduct their invoicing and payment process online. 

 

Office Accounting Creates a Window into eBay

 

Office Accounting allows users to perform their entire eBay process without leaving their accounting software. Your clients can take the information they have already used to describe their inventory and post their products directly onto eBay. They can use their pricing information to quickly categorize their products and set auction minimums and buy-now prices. This process takes only seconds, and the Office Accounting/eBay connection makes it easy for small business owners new to eBay to take the plunge.

 

Once the bidding starts, Office Accounting allows users to track and manage the selling process.  Your clients can see how their auctions are performing and rapidly change their minimum prices and buy prices in response.  When the auction ends, users download all the transactions into Office Accounting. The software takes care of the rest. It records sales prices, fees, and shipping – and posts them to the proper expense accounts in Office Accounting.  The Office Accounting/eBay interface can save many hours for active eBay sellers and makes the process much easier for the occasional eBay user.

 

Clearing out stale inventory quickly is one of the unique advantages of selling on eBay. Office Accounting users can post and quickly sell their older inventory. Then they can redeploy that capital to buy fresh inventory or invest the money in profit-driving areas of their business. Clients will be able to decrease their inventory’s aging and improve their turnover ratios. The result? Improvements to your clients long-term financial health.

 

Flexible Businesses Are Profitable Businesses

 

eBay sellers can move quickly to respond when market demand shifts. Office Accounting’s partnership with eBay takes that flexibility one step further by integrating accounting data directly with this process. When your clients are more efficient, they make more money.

 

eBay pros can’t wait to get on board with Microsoft Office Accounting 2007. At the recent eBay live conference, many of these e-sellers were literally hugging the Microsoft team presenting the Office Accounting/eBay solution because they saw immediately how this integration was going to make their lives easier and help them be more effective eBay sellers.

 

Office Accounting Hands Users the Reins for Electronic Invoicing

 

The Office Accounting/PayPal integration combines online sales and paperless payment. In brief: your clients can email invoices to their customers through Outlook and include a “buy now with PayPal” button that allows those customers to pay immediately – through their PayPal accounts or with a credit card. Your clients collect their money quickly, then Office Accounting brings in and helps reconcile those transactions. With electronic real-time payment functionality, Office Accounting and PayPal help your clients minimize paper flow and improve cash flow.

 

The ability to email invoices directly from Outlook is a unique and critical piece of this integration. Other accounting software on the market typically requires their customers to send invoices through their own, internal service rather than the customers’ Outlook accounts. Some companies even charge customers for this additional step. In contrast, Microsoft enables your clients to control their own payment process.

 

Internal Solutions to Your Clients’ Fundamental Business Needs

 

With Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, Microsoft continues its practice of working with

best-in-class providers and creating best-in-class solutions. Office Accounting enables its online partners to deeply integrate their services into the accounting program rather than simply creating an import-exportable file capability. Microsoft recognizes that online commerce is critical to many of your clients’ success and, with Office Accounting, brings accounting software there.