Does Microsoft's Small Business Accounting Add Up? But Not Everyone's a Fan Jamie Bsales
Not Everyone's a Fan
Some people who have tried SBA in the past year are less enthusiastic. The biggest complaint: SBA requires customers to know more about accounting practices than QuickBooks.
At least that's what Paul Gupta, president and CEO of Premier Software Solutions found. This IT solutions and services provider has five direct employees and an additional 20 contract workers. Before committing to an accounting package, Gupta was keeping his records in an Excel spreadsheet, which he would then hand over to his CPA. But as his business grew, that work-around was no longer viable.
So Gupta tried SBA during the free public beta period. He had seen QuickBooks in action, and he expected the Microsoft entry to be much the same. "But as I got into it, I found it wasn't as user-friendly as I thought it would be," he says of SBA.
He thought it was unclear how to set up his accounts, and found himself hunting around to find where to enter data. He also found the payroll module to be tough sledding. "I had to be a semi-accountant to enter my payroll," he complains.
So after six months, he switched to QuickBooks Online, which he found more approachable. He especially appreciates QuickBooks' integration with PayCycle, an easy-to-use online payroll service that lets him pay his far-flung employees via direct deposit.
Integration Is the Key
Fortunately for Microsoft, for every Paul Gupta out there, the company has found converts like Rob Gorki and Konrad and Phyllis Haskins. The Haskins left the software industry in 2003 to start Teddy Bears BBQ, a specialty retailer that markets barbecue products and related services, such as cooking classes and catering.
The couple found that handling basic business tasks was taking too much time away from growing the business. One culprit: Poor integration between their QuickBooks program and Microsoft Office. Switching to SBA let them move seamlessly from their Outlook contact records to their accounting records as needed.
"The difficulty of integrating QuickBooks data into our other programs created a lot of extra work," says Phyllis Haskins. "We didn't really have any consolidated customer and financial information."
The couple also wanted to better predict seasonal sales and cash flows, as well as identify their customers' buying patterns. Moreover, there was no automated way to communicate with customers, since invoices and the like resided in QuickBooks, but customer information and requests came via e-mail and the Web.
So the couple migrated their business information to SBA and Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager. They've not only saved a lot of time on typical business chores (about 80 hours a month, they estimate), with SBA they also gained a "dashboard" view into Teddy Bears BBQ that gives a snapshot of the company's current financial condition.
"The tight integration of customer and financial data has dramatically improved the company's ability to identify and analyze how the business is doing," says Konrad Haskins. With SBA, they can now see yearly sales patterns and use the built-in forecasting tools to see months in advance when extra marketing efforts might be in order. And the extra time they've gained has enabled the Haskins to grow the business.
Rob Gorski, too, appreciates the extra time Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006 has afforded him. With an infant son at home, every minute is precious. "It takes me far less time to accomplish tasks than it did with QuickBooks," he says. "And for me now, that's priceless."
Jamie Bsales is an award-winning technology writer and editor with nearly 14 years of experience covering the latest hardware, software, and Internet products and services.
