Gary Simon has written a great little book on Office Accounting 2008 (Express and Professional) seen from the perspective of the business owner, as in “how do I use this ##!!! software to run my business?”, rather than the traditional “click here” approach of describing how the different forms and fields interact.
To this date it is probably the best book I have read on Office Accounting – not because of technical complexity but because of relevance for the small business user. The author’s business tips goes far beyond the software itself.
Although written for the UK market, US users can easily get value out of the book (Hint: In the UK vendors are called suppliers, tax is VAT, etc) although the price may seem a little steep considering the latest drop of the US dollar.
Any downsides? Well, besides the price point (£37), the author certainly drank the Microsoft Kool-Aid and chapter 1 may seem confusing to the novice user (it describes all the company preferences up front). But all in all worth every penny if you like our software and want to take your business to the next level…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Use-Microsoft-Office-Accounting/dp/0955590019
A good number of people from countries like Australia, South Africa, India, Ireland and others have been asking how they can change the currency in the UK version Office Accounting, so it shows their local currency symbol rather than £.
There is a way to get around this issue, but it does come with downsides, so do read through the end of this article before you go about and do so.
Office Accounting works with what we call a base currency as well as transaction currency. In the UK version of Office Accounting the base currency is GBP with the pound “£” currency symbol. You can fake a different base currency by simply replacing the text strings we use to describe the sterling.
If you are using Office Accounting Express check the end of this post...
Here are the steps (for South Africa):
1. On the Company menu select Preferences and turn on Use Foreign Currencies
2. On the Company menu, select Currency, Currency list
3. Select GBP on the list and click Edit
4. Change “GBP” to “ZAR” in the code, change the description to South African Rand and the symbol to R. Save
5. Turn off foreign currencies.
The application now displays amounts in ZAR (R) rather than GBP (£). For Ireland and other Euro-based countries you need to delete or rename EUR to make the steps above work.
You have to remember either to add the local VAT/GST rates or change the standard rate.
However there are side effects. Because Office Accounting 2008 is a country-specific application, the side effects can cause Payroll, PayPal, OFX bank statement import and BACS to work incorrectly.
If you use foreign currency another side effect is the currency exchange base - the way we quote foreign currency in the UK is “how much do I get for 1 GBP”, rather than what is the price of 1 (or 100) foreign units
You should note that we have only "trained" Office Accounting in the British / US postal address formats, so if your country uses a different format for addresses, you probably want to wait for a true international release of Office Accounting (timing TBD).
So what about those of you that are using the Express product? You can download the Professional trial version (you actually only need the product key) to make it work. After the trial expires, the product will revert to Office Accounting Express.
I am attending the US Conference of Mayors in Miami, Florida. Digital inclusion is a hot topic down here, where it is a common belief that the communities need to adopt technology to avoid being lost in an increasingly connected world.
The City of Miami launched Elevate Miami about two years ago where they provide computer access and training to their citizens. Part of the program is to get people out of poverty by helping them start their own business. This includes basic business training, technology training as well as microloans and grants.
http://www.elevatemiami.com/
Microsoft has assisted in this effort with the free Office Accounting Express and Office Live Small Business web site offerings as well as providing technology training together with the local colleges and Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs).
We had a lot of interest from other major cities and we are working on scaling this effort to become a national effort.
So ping me if you work with community training or digital inclusion. We have regional engagement teams and we are already piloting technology training in a number of locations.
Have you ever found that the lists in Office Accounting are great, but you are missing that one column you need (which the engineers at Microsoft just didn't think you wanted), like the second address field on the customer list you want for a mail merge?
Fortunately there is hope. Office Accounting is based on an open architecture, so you can use Excel to create your own data-aware lists in just a few simple steps.
Open a new Excel document.
Click on the Data tab in the ribbon. In the Get External Data section, click From Other Sources, From SQL Server.
In the Data connection wizard enter (local)\MSSMLBIZ as the Server name and click Next.
Select the database in the list and pick a view for your custom list, in this case the CustomerAccountView. Click Next.
Pick a file name (or leave it as is), add a description that makes sense to you as well as a friendly name. Click Finish.
In the Import Data dialog, select Table, Existing worksheet and click OK.
(Note: Several columns hidden above)
You now have a custom data-aware list in Excel that you can filter, hide and show its columns and refresh the data as needed. Not too bad after just a few clicks...
____________________________________________________________________________
Note: I recommend you use our views in step 3 above (and not the tables), as the views usually already contain information that naturally belongs together - the stuff you need.
Developer note: The majority of the tables are fully normalized so using the views is much less work and we do sometimes change table structure between versions and service packs.
Are you a consultant or accounting (accountancy) professional with clients using Office Accounting? Have you spent some time playing around with the product and want to keep your setup? The new business templates in Office Accounting 2008 can help you do that.
Here are the steps:
1. Set up a new company (or import it from a competitive product)
2. Modify the chart of accounts
3. Modify the support lists (terms, countries etc)
4. Modify tax/VAT setup and rates
5. Modify currencies and rates
6. Click File, Utilities, Export as template and save the file.
Now you have a custom XML business template with all your settings set up.
To use the template, set up a new company. When the setup wizard asks for a business type, click the Add button to the right and select the template you have saved.
My name is John Thuneby and I am a Senior Program Manager on the Office Accounting team. My job is to design software, so while I will be posting tips and tricks on using Office Accounting, I hope to receive feedback on how well the software is working out and how we can improve it.
