New Features and Integrated Services for the Next Version of Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 has new features designed to help small business customers spend less time managing their finances and more time focused on their business.

Integrated Services

• eBay: Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 enables small businesses to easily sell their products or services to millions of buyers on eBay. Office Accounting 2007 provides businesses with the ability to select items from inventory, list them for sale on eBay, view status of listings, as well as download transactions and fees - all from within Microsoft Office Accounting 2007.
• PayPal: Office Accounting 2007 offers the Invoice Payment Service and Merchant Processing Service from PayPal. These services enable small businesses to accept payment transactions with PayPal, either through email or through direct credit card payments. These solutions save small businesses time and money and result in greater payment flexibility for their customers.
• Equifax: Microsoft and Equifax offer Office Accounting 2007 customers a set of integrated, easy-to-use commercial credit reporting services. Using this service, businesses can cost effectively monitor the credit worthiness of their customers, vendors, and their own business directly from within Accounting 2007.

New Features for the Small Business

Office Accounting 2007 includes features important to today’s small businesses. Key features include:

• Integration with eBay & other online marketplace
  The innovative integration with eBay and other online market place services enables the connected small business to run their eBay based business directly from within Accounting 2007. Office Accounting 2007 enables the small business to do the following:
  
  • Easily list items from their Office Accounting 2007 inventory for sale on eBay. Office Accounting 2007 keeps the small business books up to date and their inventory valuation current.
  • View the up to date status of their current listing on eBay from with Office Accounting 2007.
  • Download the completed transactions from eBay marketplaces directly into Office Accounting (including associated fees)
  • Complete and fulfill the eBay orders from within Office Accounting using their existing processes. The order/invoice get posted to their books allowing the business to keep their accounting upto date without resorting to double data entry or manual tracking of eBay transactions.
  • PayPal payment is also integrated with Office Accounting so that the small business can send PayPal enabled invoices to their customers. The customer can then pay the business with one click from the Invoice. This allows the business to get paid faster and reduces mistakes & errors on the side of the customers.
• Enhanced Integration with Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager
  This enhanced integration will allow small businesses to share and update a single list of customers across the organization. It will also enable salespeople to access key Office Accounting reports and launch marketing campaigns from within Microsoft Outlook with Business Contact Manager. This adds to the existing functionality allowing the salesperson to view a customer's financial information in Outlook with Business Contact Manager and the ability to convert a opportunity into a Quote or Invoice and the ability to convert time captured in the Outlook Calendar into a timesheet that can be used on an invoice.
  
  
• Multi-Currency Support
  Small businesses that work with customers or vendors outside the US will benefit from multi-currency support. Small businesses will be able to add or change information on foreign currencies and easily update exchange rates.
  
  
• Enhanced forms customization
  Small Businesses can now modify the layout of most Office Accounting forms. Users can add their own fields (user defined) to forms, assorted lists, and selected reports to match their business requirements. Users can remove or move fields to make entering information on transaction forms more efficient. Users can also rename field and group header names.
  
  
• Customizable Security roles
  Office Accounting includes several preset security roles (Owner, Office Manager, Salesperson etc) as well as the ability to define your own roles to help you more efficiently manage security for your company. You have the ability to add the requisite permissions and privileges for the user defined roles. This gives the customer the ability to tailor Office Accounting to uniquely fit the security profiles and roles of their business.
  
  
• Data Compression (Archiving)
  SBA provides the ability to compress the historical data. This process converts the transaction details for closed fiscal years into a more efficient summary, reducing the size of your company file and increasing Office Accounting performance.
  
  Compressing the company data file summarizes the transactions in a selected fiscal period into compressed journal entries that are summarized by month. This reduces the size of your company file and can improve Microsoft Office Accounting performance when running reports, opening lists, and posting transactions.
  
  

New Features for Accountants

Key features in Office Accounting 2007 developed specifically for accountants include:

• Accountant Navigator
  The Accountant Navigator feature will allow accountants to efficiently work with accounts from their multiple clients from a single dashboard. Accountants can load up their clients Accountant Export file and view them in a single list, go directly to specific reports for each client's company and make journal entries efficiently. The software will handle versioning issues so the Accountant does not need to worry about different versions. The Accountant can also launch the Payroll Center from this view.
  
  
• More powerful Cash Basis Accounting
  The cash basis accounting in Office Accounting 2007 has be greatly enhanced. The key enhancements are:
  
  • The cash basis accounting functionality in Office Accounting allows the user to designate each account for inclusion in cash basis reporting.
  • Create a cash-basis 'book' that captures transactions based on the settings for financial accounts that the Office Accounting customer has selected.
  • Introduce a Cash Basis Journal Entry that makes reclassifications only in the cash basis book.
  • Allow customers to drill down into the details for Other Cash Income and Other Cash Expense. These accounts contain transactions that affect the tax return but are not yet classified by the business.
  • Closing a fiscal year on cash-basis has been improved, and includes Other Cash Income and Other Cash Expense accounts. Retained Earnings in the cash-basis Balance Sheet reflects all cash-basis net income for closed years.
  • A new financial report, the GL Report, has been added. This report displays all accounts with balances, and displays all debits and credits for the date range selected, making research easier. The new report displays in both accrual and cash-basis views.
• Payroll Center for Accountants
  The Payroll Center will allow accountants to run and manage payroll processing for multiple clients from a single dashboard
  
  
• Accountant Transfer Wizard
  The Accountant Transfer Wizard users more easily share data with their accountant. The user can export the company data file using the Accountant Transfer Wizard and then transfer the data file to their accountant for review. This feature allows the Small Business to send their accounts to their CPA for adjusting while still continuing to use Office Accounting for their day to day business transactions. When the CPA is done with the adjustment, the changes are seamlessly incorporated into the customers copy of Office Accounting.
  
  When running the wizard, the user will select a cutoff date. The cutoff date is a set point in time before which you cannot create or edit transactions while your accountant has the data file for review.
  
  
• Journal entry worksheet
  The Journal entry worksheet enables the user to enter multiple accounts, customers and vendors in the same journal entry form. The user can be more productive by creating numerous journal entries posting on different dates and with different accounts.