Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2007 is a full feature accounting and financial management software for small businesses, and is the successor for Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 (SBA 2006). Office Accounting Professional 2007 (named only as Office Accounting 2007 during beta) has all the accounting functionalities of Office Accounting Express 2007, which available for free download. Other than basic accounting and financial feature, Professional edition also supports multiuser access, multicurrency support, inventory management, fixed asset manager, sales order and purchase order tools, job tracking, enhanced cash basis accounting, dashboard and integration with Microsoft Point of Sale.
PC World (dead link) reviews and compares Microsoft Office Account 2007 (Professional edition) with Intuit QuickBooks Premier Edition 2007 and concludes that QuickBooks 2007’s new features, including an improved payroll “dashboard” that makes it easier to pay all employees at once, make it a worthwhile upgrade for current users. Aside from Office Accounting’s rudimentary multiple-currency capability–useful for import/export firms, the Microsoft program has little to tempt existing QuickBooks users to switch. However, if you’re using a manual accounting system or an Excel spreadsheet and want to try a dedicated accounting package, Office Accounting may be worth a test drive. It looks slick, with an easy-to-navigate and informative company dashboard that includes a summary of the financial performance and a to-do list.
Update: Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 is available.