One reality of software is that sometimes it goes away. Microsoft Office Accounting was discontinued in November of 2009. Microsoft Money (for personal accounting) was also discontinued. I have no idea how many small businesses were using MS Accounting or MS Money, but Sage Accounting just sent out a press release about their options for “where to go now.” So this seemed like a good time to talk about it.
Sage Peachtree
Sage is now offering Sage Peachtree Pro Accounting 2011 free of charge plus conversion assistance and 30 days of free support and online training.
Through September 30, 2010, small businesses interested in obtaining a free, fully functional, downloadable version of Sage Peachtree Pro Accounting 2011 to replace their Microsoft Office Accounting may visit www.peachtreeoffer.com/msoa. For those interested, Sage will assist them with company set-up by converting the following information from Microsoft Office Accounting: Chart of Accounts, Customers, Customer Contacts, Employees, Inventory, Jobs, and Vendors.
You will need to provide your Microsoft Office Accounting serial number. Here’s the press release.
Intuit QuickBooks
Intuit is providing a free conversion tool. It converts data from Microsoft Small Business Accounting and Office Accounting products through the 2009 versions into QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Solutions editions. It can also convert Microsoft Office Accounting Express to QuickBooks Simple Start 2010. Here’s the related press release.
Disclosure: Small Biz Survival has partnered with Intuit in the past. See our Disclosure page.
Microsoft Money Sunset
Microsoft has released a “sunset” edition of Money. It allows you to use the software without online activation. If you had business data in a Money file, this could help you to get your data back out. Technically, anyone could download and start using it, but I certainly don’t recommend it at this point. You’ll find it on the Microsoft Money Home page.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Hi Becky
AS business owners our information is crucial. Discontinued software is not on our minds, it is usually have I done a backup lately.
For financial data I try to create a second copy in a program such as Excel so that it is always available.
Darrell
Darrell, that’s a valid point. I don’t know anyone who uses Excel to make an external backup of their accounting data. In fact, if most people would just use the built in backup feature in their software, that would be a huge step forward.
Where I am, Staples gives away Peachtree once or twice each year… they’ve been doing it for years. Used it for awhile, now understand why they were giving it away! Maybe it’s changed, but the UI was horrendous, the work flows weren’t intuitive, and the learning curve was steep. MS Office Accounting was child’s play, in comparison.
I switched to QB Pro and am relatively happy, but the conversion tool didn’t work. That was over a year ago, so maybe it’s gotten better.
Freshbooks has received lots of compliments, but I don’t think has all the functionality of MSOA or QB.
Mike
Mike, thanks for sharing your experience. Freshbooks is an online invoice-only service, and so I put it in a completely different category.
Hello Becky,
Thanks for posting info about the Sage Peachtree free offer for those using the discontinued MSOA. We don’t want to leave those folks without a good accounting solution.
If Mike’s still checking in, I’d like to know how long it’s been since he tried Sage Peachtree Pro Accounting. We’ve gotten high marks in recent years for our improved UI and I’d love to get his feedback.
Shari Willman
Sage Peachtree Product & Marketing Mgr.