A free edition of Office Accounting 2007, Microsoft's basic accounting package for small companies, targets the many small and home-based businesses that today use spreadsheets or paper to track finances. Office Accounting Express 2007, which will ship with several editions of the forthcoming Office 2007, could offer those businesses an attractive alternative to Intuit and Peachtree accounting products, none of which are available in free editions, and help get them on the Microsoft product track. However, Office Accounting Express's features are limited, and some customers could quickly outgrow it.

Basic Accounting, Support for Online Services

Office Accounting Express 2007 is a stripped-down edition of Office Accounting Professional 2007, the follow-up release to Small Business Accounting (SBA) 2006, which the company released in Sept. 2005. The Express product offers double-entry accounting with a simple, customizable interface, wizards for accessing common financial management functions, and integration with Office. While the Professional Edition targets established companies with up to 25 employees, the free Express Edition could appeal to smaller businesses, including start-ups and those operating without accounting software.

Both the Professional and Express Editions of Office Accounting include the following:

Basic accounting functions, including general ledger, chart of accounts, invoicing, and financial reporting.

Integration with Business Contact Manager (now called Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager), which will allow users to view and update customer information using either Office Accounting or Business Contact Manager and to view Office Accounting reports, such as profit and loss or customer history, in Business Contact Manager.

Customization of forms, lists, and reports, such as specifying the fields contained in an invoice and its layout.

Integration with online service providers, including support for creating and posting eBay listings, invoicing via PayPal, monitoring of customer credit through Equifax, and employee payroll processing via ADP.

Single User, No Inventory Management

Office Accounting Express 2007 diverges from Office Accounting Professional 2007 in several important ways.

For example, Express supports only transactions in U.S. dollars, does not have inventory management features, and does not integrate with Point of Sale, Microsoft's point-of-sale application for single store retailers. Consequently, Express will not suit some small businesses, such as those that deal with customers and vendors outside the United States and retailers or manufacturers that must deal with relatively large volumes or varieties of products or materials; Professional Edition will be a better match for such companies. Furthermore, unlike Professional Edition, Express is limited to a single user and supports only SQL Server Express 2005, the free, entry-level edition of SQL Server 2005. Thus, as companies add employees or their data storage needs expand, they could quickly outgrow Office Accounting Express. For customers who find themselves in this situation, Microsoft promises a straightforward upgrade from Express to Professional.

Availability and Resources

Office Accounting Express 2007 was made available as a free download in Oct. 2006. It will also be packaged with the Small Business, Professional, and Ultimate Editions of Office 2007 when they ship later in 2006.

Office Accounting Professional 2007 will not be available until early 2007—original plans called for the product to ship late in 2006—nor will the product be included as a component in an Office 2007 edition. (Its predecessor, Small Business Accounting 2006, was included in an Office edition called Small Business Management Edition 2006.) Customers of Small Business Accounting 2006 will be able to upgrade to Office Accounting Professional for US$99; new customers will pay US$149.

Office Accounting Express 2007 is available only in the United States. Both Express and Professional Editions will be available in the United Kingdom eventually, although Microsoft has not announced timing.

More information about Office Accounting 2007 is at connect.microsoft.com/officeaccountingbeta.

Office Accounting Express 2007 can be downloaded at www.ideawins.com/index.html.

Information about Office 2007 pricing and packaging is at office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101754511033.aspx?ofcresset=1.

Office Accounting Professional 2007 was described in "Office Accounting 2007 Beta" on page 11 of the Oct. 2006 Update.