John Thuneby's blog

Free Webinar - Microsoft Office Accounting – why is this free software making such a splash?

jthuneby — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:22:00 GMT

Join Gary Simon (the author of Office Accounting to the MAX), fellow Microsoft Senior Program Manager Glen Altringer and I, as we discuss Office Accounting 2009 in the UK market and the impact on small and medium size businesses.

The 30 minute webinar is on Wednesday April 22nd at 5PM GST (9AM PST) and you can register using the link below:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/733483201

Office Accounting 2009 (UK) finally launched as a free upgrade for existing users

jthuneby — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:22:00 GMT

In the wee hours of this morning (GMT) we launched the 2009 UK edition of Office Accounting. We have also made Office Accounting 2009 Service Pack 1 (SP1) available for download. Office Accounting 2009 with SP1 is fully certified by HMRC.

If you are currently using Office Accounting 2008, you qualify for a free upgrade. Office Accounting Professional and Office Accounting Professional Plus users upgrade to 2009 Professional and Express users upgrade to 2009 Express

Why Upgrade?

If you are using payroll, you really want to upgrade (with the SP) before closing the payroll year.

For the rest of you out there, the 2009 version will sport a bunch of bug fixes, 10 new reports in the Pro version (8 in Express) and a Vista gadget. You can read about the new features here.

Similar to the US, we took those nasty watermarks off as default on the printouts (remember UNPAID?).

Similar to the US product, the 2009 Office Accounting Pro supports 32bit SQL Server 2008. You can basically install SQL Server 2008 first and then choose to install the client only of Office Accounting and point to SQL 2008.

Is Office Accounting a 32 bit Application? Does it work 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit SQL?

jthuneby — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:20:00 GMT

Yes, yes and no. Some of you have tried to install Office Accounting on a 64 bit operating system (fine), maybe even on 64 bit SQL Server (not so fine). So why is Office Accounting a 32 bit application? Doesn't Microsoft know how to compile in 64 bit? Well we do.

One of the strengths of Office Accounting is the integration with other applications and services, such as other Office applications, payroll, eBay listing (US), Bacs e-payments (UK), import from Microsoft Money and Intuit QuickBooks (US), etc.

Most of the integration components are in 32 bit and the code is written in-process, so this is not going to work in 64 bit (as you cannot mix 64 and 32 bit in-proc). We will basically have to rewrite most of the integration code to run out-of-process in order to ship in 64 bit.

Fine, the app is 32 bit, but why can’t I use 64 bit SQL? As all of the Office Accounting engines (posting, tax/VAT, FIFO, foreign currency) are written in SQL and reside as stored procedures within the database, the database has to 32 bit as well (in order not to mix 32 and 64 bit in-proc).

So for now you will have to run Office Accounting on 32 bit SQL Server on a 32 or 64 bit operating system.

Flat Rate VAT in Office Accounting UK

jthuneby — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:20:00 GMT

Over the last couple of years I have been asked many times how one would handle flat rate VAT in Office Accounting, either from an end user standpoint or from an engineering standpoint. But before I begin, I will tell you flat out that I am not a big fan of the scheme, given how easy it is to keep VAT records in Office Accounting.

The way the government sees the Flat Rate VAT Scheme, it is easier if you don’t keep track of VAT on purchases and just record it on sales. Here is how it works:

On the sales side, keep on adding 15% (formerly 17.5%) or 5% VAT as applicable.
On the purchase side, you have to treat all purchases as zero rated, rather than using the regular VAT rate, thus adjusting the VAT code (and potentially the amounts) on every purchase. A regular purchase invoice may have net amount of £100.25 + 15% VAT = £115.29. This will have to be replaced with a zero rated purchase invoice of £115.29 + 0% VAT.

The tricky part here is that you have to remember to overwrite the VAT code and validate the unit price on every single line on each purchase invoice in order to get it right. If you forget, you may up overpaying for your purchases or you will have to adjust the amount at the end using a journal entry.

However the worst part is that you end up inflating the unit cost of your purchases, making the profitability of each item seem worse than it actually is.

A better way to use Flat rate in Office Accounting

It is much easier if you keep track of VAT on purchases and sales as you normally would. Here is how it works:

1. Keep VAT record as you normally would using the normal scheme by tracking VAT

2. Make adjustments on a journal entry

3. Create VAT return

The beauty of this method is that you use Office Accounting the same way you normally would, it doesn’t mess up your profitability and as an added benefit you can see if you have a gain or loss by using the flat rate scheme. How is that possible? Well, it is all in the adjusting journal entry.

Let us look at some sample transactions without zero rating purchases.

In order to figure out how much you owe in VAT using the flat rate scheme, I recommend you run the VAT detail report as depicted above and export it to Excel. Let us say that my business type is computer consultancy and the flat rate VAT is 11.5% as of December.

The VAT you owe is thus (£2173.00 + £329.95)*11.5% = £287.38 as seen above.

This means that you need to make an adjustment for the difference between the collected VAT amount and the owed amount (£325.95-£287.38 = £38.57) before you create your VAT return. If you adjust the amounts before creating the return, you and your accountant can keep track of what was actually filed to HMRC in Office Accounting (rather than just on paper).

The resulting Journal Entry thus looks like this:

You debit the reduction in sales / output VAT as before, credit the full amount of purchase / input VAT and post the balance to an account to keep track of the gain or loss by using the flat rate VAT (I created an Other Income account for this purpose).

You may have noticed a loss (debit) of £752.24 on the scheme. The loss on flat rate VAT will be reduced as more of the stock is sold, but now it is simple to keep track of whether the flat rate scheme is in your interest (remember that the first year the government offers a 1% discount in flat rates, so if this was the first year in business, things would have looked slightly better).

The resulting VAT 100 report looks as follows:

Now how should you fill out the return to HMRC? Again I recommend exporting to Excel.

Normally you will need to adjust box 6 and 7 in your filings (however you don’t have to make any more changes in Office Accounting).

When you can see you have the right result, go ahead and create the VAT return in Office Accounting and pay the amount to HMRC.

Office Accounting 2009 (US) launched as a free upgrade for existing users

jthuneby — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:22:00 GMT

Whether you are using Small Business Accounting 2006 or Office Accounting 2007 or 2008, you qualify for a free upgrade to 2009. Paid for versions upgrade to 2009 professional and express upgrades to 2009 Express:

http://www.ideawins.com/Upgrade.aspx

Why upgrade?

Besides the fact that it is a free upgrade, there are several new features and a good amount of bug fixes. You can read about the new features here:

http://www.ideawins.com/whatsnew.aspx

I especially like that the new reports save you from filtering existing reports if you just want to see this simple [insert new report here] as well as a bunch of new cash basis reports.

We also made the bilingual Spanish version a Language pack instead of a separate product. That means that if you are using an English version of Office Accounting, but want to be able to use the bilingual version, you can still upgrade and download the language pack. Nice.

And thank God we took those nasty watermarks off as default on the printouts. Who wants to receive an initial invoice with big nasty letters saying UNPAID? It is like an insult. Sometime engineers just live in their own little world. L

However my favourite feature is actually undocumented. Whilst we didn’t have time to switch SQL Express 2005 out with SQL Express 2008 when it finally became ready (we shipped Office Accounting 2009 months ago), we do support the newer and faster SQL in Office Accounting Professional. You can basically install SQL Server 2008 first and then choose to install the client only of Office Accounting and point to SQL 2008.

Who should not upgrade?

A very small amount of people:

- Users running Windows 2000 with Small Business Accounting 2006. SQL Server 2005 does not support Windows 2000.

- Users with less than 512 MB memory. You shouldn’t really be running the application anyway.

- Users of Small Business Accounting 2006 who integrate with Outlook with Business Contact Manager 2003 or 2006. The old version of BCM is running SQL Server 2000 (MSDE) and you would end up with two database instances on the same PC (not good). DO upgrade when you upgrade to Office 2007 with BCM. All other Office 2003 users are fine.

Ehm, I am in the UK, hello???

At the time of writing Office Accounting 2009 UK is scheduled to be released early next year, prior to the start of the UK payroll year in April. The government just release their pre-budget announcement with payroll changes and we need to make sure that our solution remains certified with HMRC as well as ICAEW.

UK VAT Rate Changes and How to deal with them in Office Accounting

jthuneby — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:34:00 GMT

As you may have seen in the news and as reported on the HMRC website, the standard VAT rate will be lowered temporarily by the government: “In his Pre-Budget Report on 24 November 2008 the Chancellor announced that the standard rate of VAT will be reduced to 15% on 1 December 2008.”

The government has posted a number of FAQ documents. See the post here: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pbr2008/measure1.htm.

Being a user of Office Accounting, how do you deal with this?

Fortunately Office Accounting was designed with changing VAT rates in mind. This is what you do:

1. Open your company.

2. On the Company menu, select VAT, Manage VAT Codes, or as an alternative, select Preferences on the Company menu, select the VAT tab and click on the VAT Codes button.

3. Select VAT code S (Standard rated), Click Edit.

4. In the VAT Rates section add two lines: 15% as of 1. December 2008 and 17.5% as of 1. January 2010. Click OK.

5. You are now ready for the VAT change. Your VAT return will be calculated correctly regardless of whether you are using the cash accounting scheme as long as you use the correct dates for the sales and purchase invoices.

The next time the VAT rate changes, just add an additional line to deal with that.

So you may ask - why don't I just change the existing rate? Well, having multiple rates are better as they will handle backdated transactions correctly.

New Book - Using Microsoft Office Accounting to the MAX

jthuneby — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:08:00 GMT

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

Don’t do this at home – faking the currency in Office Accounting Professional

jthuneby — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:17:00 GMT

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.

Office Accounting Express helps Miami bridge the Digital Divide

jthuneby — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:50:00 GMT

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.

Creating a custom list in Excel

jthuneby — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:37:00 GMT

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.

Using business templates for setting up a company

jthuneby — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:21:00 GMT

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.

Welcome

jthuneby — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:52:00 GMT

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.