Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

accounting posts

Filed under: Business, Microsoft, Commercial, Freeware

Microsoft to discontinue Office Accounting next month

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008
Microsoft is killing off its small business accounting product, Office Accounting. The company will no longer distribute Office Accounting Professional or the free version, Office Accounting Express after November 16, 2009.

According to Microsoft's FAQ, the company as determined that free templates that work with Excel are a better option for small businesses than the Office Accounting application. That's kind of true, in that you can customize Excel templates any way you like. But Office Accounting provided a full featured suite of accounting tools that would be pretty difficult to replicate by building or tweaking your own spreadsheets. Really, Microsoft has determined that it's not worth continue developing this product for one reason or another, and I suspect more people will switch to using QuickBooks or another competing package of accounting software than will choose to use Excel.

Microsoft will continue to offer 5 years of support for Office Accounting, and users will still be able to bill customers using PayPal, although eBay and credit profile information from Equifax won't be available after December 15, 2009.

The move comes less than half a year after Microsoft discontinued its personal finance application, Microsoft Money.

[via ZDNet]

Filed under: Finance, Windows, Microsoft, Commercial

Quicken offers coupons to attract abandoned Microsoft Money users

Quicken discountLast week Microsoft announced that it would be discontinuing Microsoft Money, the company's personal finance application. Download Squad readers came up with a number of great suggestions for anyone looking for a replacement. But the 800 pound gorilla in the room is Quicken. And now Intuit, the company behind Quicken are reaching out to Microsoft Money customers by offering tools to import Money data to Quicken. The company is also offering discounts of up to $50 on Quicken software.

Those coupons start at $20 off the price of Quicken Deluxe, bringing the price down to $39.99. You can also get $30 off the price of Quicken Premier or Home& Business, or $50 off the price of Rental Property Manager. Or if your finances aren't that complicated, you could just try Quicken Online for free.

The coupons are good through July 31st. Microsoft will stop selling Money at the end of June, although support will be available through January, 2011.

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Beta, web 2.0

GoBootstrap makes business accounting simple

GoBootStrap
If you run a small business, odds are you've got some sort of system for tracking income, expenses, and tax payments. But we're going to bet it's not as simple as the system offered by GoBootStrap. The web service offers a sort of accounting for dummies style interface. To enter income, just click the income tab, describe the client, assignment, and amount, and you're all set.

The expenses tab is slightly more complex, in that you need to select from a list of categories like travel, supplies, or rent. But the category list is relatively short, and there's absolutely no way to add your own clutter with custom categories. While that might seem like a severe limitation, it actually makes sense when you consider what GoBootStrap offers behind tab number 3: Tax estimates.

GoBootStrap examines your income and expenses and lets you know how much you will likely owe on your quarterly estimates taxes. Right now the site only offers estimates for federal taxes, but eventually state taxes will be supported as well.

Read more →

Filed under: Business, Windows, Office, Microsoft, Commercial, Freeware

Microsoft releases free Office Accounting Express 2008

Office Accounting Express 2008
Microsoft has updated its Office Accounting software, and just like last year, the company is offering free and paid versions. Office Accounting 2008 will set you back $199, while the slimmed down Office Accounting Express 2008 is available for free.

If you run a small business with international clients, you might want to shell out a few bucks for the professional accounting package with support for things like multiple currencies and multiuser access. But if you're self employed and are just looking for a way to manage accounts, track invoices and bill payment, and a few other basic business features, the free version looks pretty nice.

The 2008 edition also includes Spanish language support and integration with new online banking services.

[Thanks Gregger!]

Filed under: Business, Productivity

Intuit releases Quickbooks Simple Start 2008 for free

Quickbooks Simple Start
Looking for some cheap but effective accounting software for your small business? The field just got a bit more crowded. Last year Microsoft began offering a free version of its accounting software, and this year Intuit has followed suit by providing a free download of QuickBooks Simple Start Edition.

Up until now, Intuit had been charging $100 for its starter accounting app. By offering a free version, Intuit stands to gain some small business customers who might have otherwise gone with Microsoft. And the only reason either company offers any software for free is because they plan to make money down the road, either through advertising, selling your data, or enticing you to upgrade when you outgrow the limitations of the free software.

But for a free application, Quickbooks Simple Start is pretty powerful. Here are just a few of the things you can do:
  • Create and manage invoices
  • Analyze your income and expenses
  • Manage multiple accounts, vendors, and services
  • Run sales, transaction, tax, and expense reports
If you want to access some of the more advanced Quickbooks features like payroll management, Quickbooks Simple Start will urge you to upgrade to Quickbooks Pro, which will set you back about $180 - $200.
[via AppScout]

Filed under: Business, Finance, Internet

Pay it square - nice tool to recoup your money



Did they pay? Who still owes money? Where do I stuff all this cash while I wait for everyone to pay-up? Here are some questions you probably don't want to deal with but since you volunteered to be a group treasurer, team manager or money person, you're stuck with.

PayItSquare might be of some help to people like you who are collecting and recording amounts of cash for a group. The beauty of it is people can pay you online via their credit card or a paypal account and you get paid immediately through a paypal account.

We asked Brian Anderson, the founder of PayItSquare, what the service fee was. Here's his response:

Read more →

Filed under: Business, Internet, Office, Productivity, Web services

Less Accounting, more fun

less accounting

Who wants to spend time and energy on accounting? Most people would rather wash the car or even scrub toilets. That might change soon thanks to Less Accounting.

The whole goal behind Less Accounting is to make book keeping as simple and easy as possible. The team behind Less Accounting, Less Everything, believes that users will never again use Quickbooks. In fact, they're so bullish, they see themselves changing the accounting landscape as much as 37Signals changed project management with Basecamp.

So how does it rank in real-life? Less Accounting provides users with three main categories, Money In, Money Out and Watch Money. Money In allows users to easily drop in sales leads, notes, proposals, invoices, and deposits made. Money Out has areas to input Expenses and Mileage. In the Watch Money category, users can get an account summary with bank account activity and view all paid expenses and deposits. It does not tie into your online banking; it's merely another tool to use for cross referencing. Through Watch Money, Sales reports can also be generated, as well as reports for both paid and unpaid invoices.

Everything is pretty straightforward to use, and the design is clean and very attractive. A few things that were missing in the beta test included some kind of tutorial or walkthrough of the application, and it wasn't very evident where data could be exported from reports, which I later came across on the top right navigation which might blend in a little too much. Aside from that, it wasn't too earth shattering. I would like to maybe see this application tie into 37Signals for contact and project management the same way that Freshbooks does, now that might be something to get people going on this.

Filed under: Business, Finance, Windows, Microsoft

Microsoft's $100,000 challenge

microsoft office accountingMicrosoft is on the hunt for the best small business idea, and has $100,000 on the table. If your idea is the best out of the bunch that are submitted, you get the cash, plus a free retail location in New York City for one year. How awesome would that be for a startup company?

The new Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 is sponsoring this contest. Microsoft released the free Office Accounting software that used to retail for $179US back in the end of October. To be entered into the contest, visit the website, and fill out the online submission form with all of your details. The free Office Accounting software can also be downloaded from the IdeaWins.com website.

Filed under: Business, Windows, Microsoft

Microsoft is offering Office Accounting Express 2007 for free

 Office Accounting Express 2007

Microsoft is entering the world of free software. Who would have thought? Today, Microsoft released Office Accounting Express 2007 for free. The software is an updated version of the previous Office Small Business Accounting 2006 that was sold for $179 US. A higher end version of the application will be for sale early next year. Microsoft has integrated eBay and Paypal into the system which I think are great features that a lot of people will jump at the opportunity to use. It does supposedly have great connection abilities with Outlook 2007, and a strong set of accounting tools that support up to five currencies.

Unfortunately I can't seem to download a copy to try out, the site looks like its down, however, I have some screenshots of the application in progress after the jump.

UPDATE: As "joshj" in the comments writes, you must open the link in IE in order to gain access to download the application. The application file size is 369.35 MB.

Read more →

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio

Joystiq

TUAW

Daily Finance

Autoblog

Urlesque

Engadget

WoW

Switched.com

FanHouse