Accounting Network News

By Val D. Steed, CPA, MA, CITP

Figure A: Business Contact Manager 2007

You probably have not thought much about what your next accounting system might look like. Well, you should give it some thought. Before you click on, give me a few minutes to explain the importance of an accounting software interface and it's value to productivity.

The accounting system interface of the future is already here: Outlook. It seems like everywhere we look this spring, accounting vendors are touting their integration and similarities to Outlook. Why not? You probably spend more time with Outlook than you do your significant other, right? Well, let's hope this is not the case.

An Outlook interface on an accounting system makes perfect sense. Everything is all in one place. Think about it for a minute, in small business your world really consists of email, contacts, calendar items, tasks, and accounting. Now let's put this all together. If we had an accounting system that would link directly into Outlook, we would really be able to get things done without having to learn or deal with two interfaces, data exchange, etc.

Figure B: Office Accounting Professional 2007

The future is already here. With Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2007 and Business Contact Manager 2007 you have direct links to Outlook. See figures A and B above. This gives you the ability to flow information back and forth between Outlook and your accounting seamlessly. More importantly, you already know how to run the accounting system because it uses the same familiar Outlook style and command structure. We now have one location for all critical business information. Key tasks are now done quickly and seamlessly such as:

Generate sales orders, invoices, quotes, and customer letters. These can then be easily sent as email as well.
Modify forms of many kinds and use them across the entire business system.
Monitor cash flow with built-in cash flow forecast tools that utilize information from AP, AR, etc. You can easily see the health of the business with the main home page of Office Accounting as shown in Figure B above.
Synchronize all customer, vendor and employee information with Outlook for integration into all forms of business communication including email and instant messaging where appropriate.
Manage opportunities for your business. Think of Business Contact manager as CRM lite. Business Contact Manager 2007 is very adequate for many small businesses. BCM will allow you to link contacts to opportunities and set budgets, monitor expenditures and assess profitability of these efforts.
Mark Outlook appointments or reoccurring events as billable and invoice them from Office Accounting with no data import or export. Time and billing is now managed right from Outlook.
Manage your bank accounts online with direct account information downloads.
Deal with multi-currency issues directly in Office Accounting Professional 2007.
Convert data from many existing accounting systems including Intuit QuickBooks with the data import wizard.

Now, let's look at a few more powerful features in detail. The ability to have Outlook items move into business workflow is very powerful. In this example we will create an invoice from an Outlook calendar item. We first create an Outlook calendar and set it as billable to a customer. See figure C below.

Figure C: Outlook Agenda Item made Billable

This creates a time entry which can then be sent to the accounting system, Office Accounting Professional in this case. You have full control over user rights and time billing so you can designate those that have the authority to create billable time, those that have the authority to move data and bill and those that have the authority to collect payments from the invoices. This can all be done within the framework of the two interfaces shown in figures A and B above. Easily move billable time from Outlook to Office Accounting when an invoice is to be sent. See figure D.

Figure D: Time Entry sent to Office Accounting Professional

Now that our time and billing information has been sent from Outlook, we can then create an invoice which is saved back in the accounting system file. This really is as simple as click, click, click, and done. See figure E below for an example of an invoice created from billable time which was in turn created from an Outlook calendar appointment. No data transfer needed and most importantly, no re-keying or double keying of accounting data. Another process which is also powerful and similar in workflow is the ability to create a quote and then later invoice on the quote by sending it as an email.

Figure E: Invoice created from Outlook Calendar Item

Needless to say, any type of analysis is just a click away by sending data to Excel for data and pivot table analysis, writing many types of letters in Word, and preparing client presentations in PowerPoint. This brings the whole package together in a powerful bundle.

Office Accounting does link with third party software such as ADP for payroll, customer credit management with Equifax and other third party applications. The list is growing.

Need Software?

If you are short on Microsoft software and you are an accounting professional, you can join MPAN—Microsoft Professional Accountants Network and order an Action Pack which will give you all the Microsoft software you need for up to 10 users for $299. See details on www.microsoft.com/cpampan.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Microsoft.

Outlook-Based Accounting?