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AIA

Microsoft SBA makes US debut

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19th Jan 2006
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Microsoft introduced its new Small Business Accounting (SBA) application to the US this week with a package of money-off special offers.

A spokesman for the company in the UK could not give any further details about the product, but said it was working on the expectation of and Autumn 2006 launch.

Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006, to give it the formal name, is very specifically focused on the north American market, where Intuit's QuickBooks dominates. The "get QuickBooks" strategy is evident in both the program's design and Microsoft's aggressive marketing plan, which includes $100 discounts for purchases before the end of April, versions of SBA bundled alongside the Office Small Business Management Edition 2006 on Dell Dimension, Optiplex and Latitude PCs and a "Small Business Accounting Starter Kit" for accountants to help migrate their clients from other products.

Microsoft SBA is aimed at for companies with up to 25 employees and includes modules for accounting, stock management, sales order and purchase order processing, job tracking, banking, and payroll. The most obvious characteristic is the degree of integration with Microsoft Office applications such as Excel, Word and Outlook - a feature it shares with the evolving ERP product families from Microsoft's Dynamics business software wing.

From IT Zone's lone sighting, the interface looks very good, with a visual accounting process flowchart (similar to those in QuickBooks and Sage Line 50) to navigate between modules and a left hand Customer column, from which the user can jump to other commonly used applications. IT Zone's SBA watch will continue over the coming months, but it is likely that plans for a UK launch will depend very largely on whether the product achieves its first objective - to put a dent in Intuit's share of the north American market.

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