QuickBooks Premier 2006: A Fresh New Look for Quickbooks The Office Factor Wayne Kawamoto
The Office Factor
Since Microsoft entered the accounting fray this year with Small Business Accounting, Intuit is, no surprise, emphasizing QuickBook's ability to integrate data with Microsoft Office applications. While nothing has really changed from the prior version, QuickBooks easily imports and exports data between Microsoft Word and Excel and does an admirable job of mapping and coordinating fields.
You can synchronize QuickBooks contact information with Microsoft Outlook by using QuickBooks Contact Sync for Outlook, a free, downloadable utility. When contact information in Outlook changes, it's easy to synchronize them into QuickBooks. On the other hand, the features here don't let you track documents and e-mail, related tasks, or status and history the way that SBA does.
Intuit has streamlined the software setup and says that customers can get up and running within 15 minutes, which will probably be true for most people. The setup has been reduced to three basic steps:
Providing company information
Selecting how your company is organized (sole proprietor, partnership, incorporated, etc.)
Choosing billing options (charging sales tax and more)
Beyond the initial setup, you can watch two-minute tutorials in the QuickBooks Learning Center, which demonstrate key tasks.
A QuickBooks for Every Small Business
Intuit offers a QuickBooks version for almost any small businesses, from the fresh start-up to the seasoned player with up to 20 employees.
At the beginning level, the Simple Start Edition, now in its second year, offers features to track sales and manage customers as well as print checks, pay bills, and track expenses. The Simple Start Edition does lack the new features for 2006 such as the Customer Center, Vendor Center, and Employee Center, and offers a less sophisticated form tool and fewer reports.
QuickBooks Pro 2006 brings networking capabilities to the mix and supports up to five employees, and it tracks unpaid bills, manages payroll, maintains employee time, and creates budgets from past data. The Pro edition also adds the ability to work with Microsoft Excel and Word, sync contact data with Outlook, and track inventory.
The Premier Edition includes all of the features found in Pro and adds the abilities to build and track inventory assemblies, create custom pricing levels, remotely access QuickBooks data, track job costs, create and customize business plans, create sales and expense forecasts, and assess company performance trends. There's something to be said about size. QuickBooks is the most popular accounting product, and there are more than 400 custom solutions for it.
With version 2006, QuickBooks lives up Intuit's claim of straightforward simplicity. If you're a current QuickBooks customer, you'll want to consider an upgrade. Unfortunately, Intuit isn't offering a price break on upgrades — you'll have to pay full MSRP.
Pricing
QuickBooks Simple Start Edition 2006: $99.95
QuickBooks: Pro Edition 2006: $199.95; $699.95 for the five-user pack
QuickBooks: Premier Edition 2006: $399.95; $1399.95 for the five-user pack
Wayne Kawamoto has written over 800 articles, columns and reviews about computers, new technologies, the Internet and small businesses. Wayne has also published three books about upgrading PCs, building office networks, and effectively using and troubleshooting notebook computers. You can contact him through his Web site at www.waynewrite.com.
