Review of Microsoft Office Accounting 2007

Last night I posted about Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 and I gave it a look over last night.

It's Free that's about the only thing I found to be nice about it.

I was a little surprised (although I shouldn't have been) to see that it needed the .NET 2.0 framework.  It also needed SQL Server Express 2005.  The installer installed these automatically and I was a little miffed that it even installed.  This made the installer take forever.  I actually forgot I was installing it till it was done and came back into focus.

OK so I start it up.  This took forever as well.  I imagine that it was setting up the SQL Server database and initializing the application.  After this was done I had an interface that resembled the Office Suit particularly Outlook 2003.  Then the product activation screen came up :(

Of course you can spend a majority of your time setting this up for your business.  I just went with some basics things so I could see what it had to offer.

It's pretty robust to be honest, probably too much as it is in my case.  I was more interested in the Time Sheets, Quotes and Invoices.

I wasn't happy with the Time Entry Form...it was really complicated and it would require way to much work to get to that screen everyday...you would literally need to have that application open all day to be using it.

Thinking that I might be able to work around it if Invoicing was a breeze...then I realized why it's given away...it is TIGHTLY integrated with Microsoft Office and Invoices require Microsoft Word.

And as I looked around the application I found the many of the features required Word or Excel or Outlook.

And since I went Open Source on my Office Suite, Open Office and GMail this became just about useless for me.

Related Links:

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007
My Post about Microsoft Office Accounting 2007
OpenOffice.org
GMail