Not as good as it used to be since 2001
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Vole ensnares Brit Taxman in axis of weavil
MICROSOFT has teamed up with HMRC (Her Majety’s Revenue and Customs) to make accounting even more exciting for small businesses.
Microsoft Office Accounting 2008 should help SMEs and their accountants reach new heights of efficiency, according to Rajat Taneja, general manager for small business applications and service. Version 3.0 was designed with the help of customers, accountants, ISVs and, in the UK, Britain’s popular HMRC (which combines the popular brand names Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise).
We don’t know which customers the Vole consulted, but they must have been IT hobbyists. We wish they’d asked me for my input. We could have told them not to over complicate things. Ditch that stupid RSS feed, we’d have told them. And never ask the Inland Revenue for tips on user friendliness.
Office Accountant Express (dubbed Sage Shagger by one cynic) is free, and can be downloaded here www.msofficeaccounting.co.uk. As can a trial version of Professional, full price £149.95.
"Small businesses start with a glint in the eye, they’re a passion, and small business people are too busy working to want to spend hours on the accounts,” said Taneja.
If, say, you’d just thought of a quick and dirty operating system that could run on all of IBM’s new personal computers, you would’t want to spend all day screaming “oh, this bloody piece of junk!”.
So that’s why Microsoft consulted Britain’s leading efficiency experts at the Inland Revenue. HMRC has had an incredible track record of success in helping UK tax payers.
For the price of just 50 Millennium Domes (around $100 billion in IT industry currency) Britain has a world on-line class tax return system that’s the envy of the (third) world. It’s fit for purpose and keeps Britain open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Except when it regularly crashes the day of your tax return deadline. (Also half day closing on Wednesday)
Still, Microsoft did get one thing right. There’s an automated system for chasing up unpaid invoices. Chasing invoices is the bane of the self employed, and can end in death threats, you you can hear, here. µ
Tags: Microsoft
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typo in first sentence
"make accounting even more exciting"

Infinity times zero is still zero.
There is simply no way on this Earth that accounting is going to get "more" exciting, just as there will never be competitions about watching paint dry.
What there can be, however, is a lot of accounting managers drooling about surveillance functions and such.
Really, I am quite against DRM, but some accounting packages make DRM look like a James Bond girl wanting to help you relax.
I know of at least two that can present not only to-the-second stats on operator activity per account, but a total number of keystrokes per operation as well, along with the average time BETWEEN keystrokes.
I thank God I got out of that line of business.
On the other hand, with Microsoft it can very well bring some excitement to the dreary lives of accountants, in the "oh-no-a-trojan-wiped-that-customer's-account !" kind of way.