Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008

[DavidT]

I am not sure how many accountants are aware, but MS do offer a single license of this (& MS Office 2007) to accountants here.

I expect with everything else, they are doing what they can to get everyone using it.

Has anyone yet checked out the MS Office Accounting Professional?

I am curious how it might be with transferring data from a client using the free express version.


David Toohey
The Accountants Circle
Accountant & Bookkeeper Forums | Find Me an Accountant

 

[Subbynet]

If you mean upgrading from the Express to Professional versions, it should work very well and does say in the FAQ section about "outgrowing" the express editions and moving to Professional.

 

[DavidT]

Hi Martin

I don't actually mean upgrading, I mean being able to transfer data from Express to Professional for adjustments and then transferred back to Express again.

Cheers

David Toohey
The Accountants Circle
Accountant & Bookkeeper Forums | Find Me an Accountant

 

[Tom McClelland]

Presumably this question can easily be directed to Microsoft (or UK distributors) themselves. If such questions cannot be answered easily by UK representatives of the manufacturer/distributer then it calls into question whether or not the product is sufficiently well technically supported for it to be a good idea to use it at all.

 

[DavidT]

Well... I did only say I was curious about those capabilities.

The question I actually asked was if anyone had checked out the software itself. Just for general thoughts & opinions, if anyone has any!

David Toohey
The Accountants Circle
Accountant & Bookkeeper Forums | Find Me an Accountant

 

[Subbynet]

Ah right...

I'm not sure of its capabilities on that level because I haven't tried it, but I do know the Express Edition is the exact same code as the Professional Edition, the only difference is which features are turned on using the activation codes.

A trial version is available of the Professional Edition, so if I was you I'd load up the Express edition on one computer, and the Pro on another, and find out that way.

 

[Tom McClelland]

Well... I did only say I was curious about those capabilities.

The question I actually asked was if anyone had checked out the software itself. Just for general thoughts & opinions, if anyone has any!

David Toohey
The Accountants Circle
Accountant & Bookkeeper Forums | Find Me an Accountant

Ah, right. I checked it out and I thought it was quite nice, visually appealling and well featured, but I've been "in the biz" for a long time so I don't have any difficulty understanding software like this. I've got a suspicion that a novice might well find it substantially harder to get to grips with than a program like KashFlow. The other minor downside (for novice users or people who aren't particularly techy) was that installing it and getting it running was a protracted process and it seemed to me that you were expected to understand about stuff like SQL Express in order to do this, so that would be a barrier for some that they'd never get beyond.

 

[NJTLondon]

I'm new to the world of MS accounting pro 2008....started to import data from disparate spreadsheets and wondered if it is possible to import data from excel to user defined fields in MS Acc.

In my case I have "age" as a user defined field in MS acc. in a cutomised layout.

When I import from an excel file it does give me the option to 'map' to the customised "age" field...it only allows me to map to the default fields.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

N

 

[Nicster]

I have imported Customers with user defined fields I created myself.

I exported some data first into an excel sheet, then used the same sheet to import and it just worked fine.

 

[NJTLondon]

Thanks...I like the solution however I cant get it to work:

If export the customer information with the customised field, it is not present in the excel file (it does not export all fields for some reason?)

Tried another approach: added the customised field (age) to the import customer template, then imported the template...MS Accounting only matches the defaults fields and gives no option to import the data in the customised age field (doesn't even show the age field).

This is driving me nuts...I can modify the customer layout form as much as I like, but I cannot import data to the customised fields in the customised layout??!

Maybe I missed somthing in your solution?

Cheers,

 

I am having the same problem. How do I import fields that are not on the map fields list that comes up for items.?

 

[PC-Bookkeeping]

Replying to your original question David, I have trial-led the software, appealing on the eye it is however i found it extremely slow & going off various other forums this seems to be an issue.

 

[Nicster]

I find it extremely slow aswell.

This is putting me off setting clients up with it.

Is there anywhere we can post these issues so they can be looked at?

 

[dp0848]

A really weird thing. Running MS Accounting on a my PC it is really, really slow. But running on my Mac using Parallels & Windows Vista it absolutely flies along. I would have thought it should be the other way around.

 

[PC-Bookkeeping]

Having read many threads in official & un-official Microsoft forums I would like to think they got the message by now, however any replies i've seen don't offer any solutions. Also the professional version i found to be just as slow even more worryingly as this one is to pay for!

 

[stitchup]

Hi guys

I've downloaded the trial version of MS Office Acounting Pro 2008.

The big issue for me is how easy, or otherwise, it will be to transfer my data across.

I presently use Quickbooks Pro vers. 6 (not 2006). This is quite an ageing program and I do need to upgrade. I guess the simplest route would be to stay with Quickbooks assuming the transition will be catered for.

If I had to re-enter data manually, I'll stick to what I have.

Anyone know if there's a forum for MS Office Accounting software? Getting info from Microsoft is difficult at best!

John

 

[dp0848]

John,

If I were you I'd wait until your year end to change over and then just put the opening balances in to MS Accounting.

David.

 

[DavidT]

As David suggests - it is usually easier to wait for a year end.

If you would like to do it now, possibly to have both packages running concurrently for a short while as a trial period... although twice the input work it can help if you aren't confident the change is a good idea.

The easiest way would probably be to run a trial balance at the end of a month (say Aug) and journal these figures into MS Accounting.

Without knowing your business and Chart of Accountants I would expect a consideration would be the Sales and Purchase ledgers. For these enter the both the balances in a suspense account and then run a report to identify the outstanding items and enter just these in again, which should total the same as the ledger accounts.

Rather than using the income/expense codes which were managed in the journal of the TB, the other side of these should be the suspense account which will end up cleared.

This will give you correct totals in your accounts, along with the invoice details of the items outstanding for both the sales and purchase ledgers - which you can then apply the future receipts and payments against. You will need to refer to QB though for further historical detail on the accounts, and provide this and MS Accounting data to your accountant.

You may also be able to output/input the client & supplier details, though I am not sure on the details of that myself.

David Toohey
The Accountants Circle
Accountancy & Bookkeeping Forums | Accountant & Bookkeeper Blogs | Accounting Templates | Find Me an Accountant

 

[Nicster]

This might be a really stupid question, but is MSOA compatible with a Mac?

 

[DavidT]

Hi Nicola

It wouldn't run on the MACOS (Operating System) but it should run on an emulator, though somewhat slow I would think from a lot of feedback.

However, new Macs can run Windows without a problem and it should run ok on that.

Cheers

David Toohey
The Accountants Circle
Accountancy & Bookkeeping Forums | Accountant & Bookkeeper Blogs | Company Formations from £21! | Business Start-Up Package

 

[Nicster]

Thanks David! How are you?

Whats an Emulator?

So if my client has a Mac, but has a windows OS, they should be able to use it? Failing that, I could use Kasflow I guess.

 

[DavidT]

Hi Nicola

I just sent you an email a little earlier!

Yes, essentially as you've just said there - if they have a Mac running a Windows OS they should be able to use it.

Basically, an emulator is a program that makes the computer think it's something else - act like another type of computer... same idea though - needs to run Windows.

David Toohey
The Accountants Circle
Accountancy & Bookkeeping Forums | Accountant & Bookkeeper Blogs | Accounting Templates | Find Me an Accountant