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Despite the Web, disk-based software continues to dominate the low-end market.
Even though there's been a lot of development in Web-based accounting software in the last couple years, disk-based accounting software still holds its own quite nicely. And despite all the changes in technology, it's still just accounting. Even though the potential of Web-based accounting is high, disk-based accounting software is still the best bet for small and mid-sized businesses that don't have inexpensive, high-speed Internet access or that have a relatively small amount of accounting transactions to process. Disk-based accounting is also still the clear leader for features and compatibility, although this will probably change within the next year or two.
You can expect any accounting package you buy to do GL, AR, AP, and PR, and to print sales invoices, quotes, POs, checks in several styles, and canned accounting reports. Such products should also be easy to use and have good printed and online documentation. And you can also figure that most packages will import and export accounting data in a variety of formats, provide customer address books and to-do lists, and have Internet-based features for tax tables and transmitting data.
This article reviews five disk-based accounting packages that run on Windows: MyBooks 6.0, MYOB 11, Peachtree Complete Accounting 2002, QuickBooks Premier Edition 2002, and Simply Accounting 8.5/9.0.
Evaluating the Products
Each product was evaluated using the following criteria:
Overall ease of use. Was the product easy to install and configure? Did the product feel easy to use? Was it necessary to pick up the manuals or go to the online help? Did each step in the new company setup make sense? Was it easy to add invoices and pay bills? Does the package offer a trial version or money-back guarantee to let you try before you buy? Is the product multi-user? Is it network-ready?
Product features. How complete is the feature set? How many sample charts of accounts are there?
Documentation. Was the online documentation well indexed, useful, and clean? Were the manuals complete, easy to read? Could I find information quickly?
Reporting & exporting options. Are the reporting options complete? Can you easily export report info and financial data to other formats?
MyBooks 6.0
MyBooks from Appgen Business Software...