Do you use Microsoft Office Accounting or its free sibling, Office Accounting Express? Well, then, take note: Microsoft is discontinuing both of those programs one week from today, on Monday, November 16.
What will you do? Well, for starters, you can look for a replacement. We have a few suggestions.
Thankfully, online accounting packages have proliferated like unicorn posters on a teenage girl’s wall in recent times. We’ve told you about Outright, WorkingPoint, and NolaPro, for example. And there are a number of Open Source options at click2try as well.
So why is Office Accounting going away? According to Microsoft’s Office Accounting Website, the company has “determined that existing free templates within Office used with Excel was a better option for small businesses, and the Microsoft Dynamics ERP products were appropriate for mid-range organizations.”
Of course, you can keep using Office Accounting if you want to. Microsoft will offer support for the product for another five years, and, most of the app will still work just fine. On the other hand, online sales from eBay and credit profile from Equifax won’t be available after December 15, 2009, so if you relied on that, you should start looking for an alternative now.
