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QuickBooks Pro 99 Links to Microsoft Office

You can pair QuickBooks with Office for analysis and mail merge.

By Mike Hogan, PCWorld   

Intuit is the third major accounting vendor to develop Office links (and, holding something like 80 percent of the retail accounting software marketplace, it's the most important by far). BestWare added them to M.Y.O.B. Plus last year about the same time Peachtree Software drew on Microsoft's Common Object Model to create Peachtree Office Accounting. That product is an entirely new bean counter, the principal claim of which is that users need never leave the Office embrace.

The $220 QuickBooks Pro features Word and Excel templates launched from buttons strategically placed in its otherwise unchanged interface--templates, by the way, not found in the $120 QuickBooks 99. A click on the Write Letters button in QuickBooks Pro's flowchartlike Navigator interface launches a list of pre-made Word letters and the letter-creation wizard for bullet-proof execution of same. The library includes two dozen prewritten, preformatted thank-you notes, overdue invoice notices, and other common business communications that you can customize completely using Microsoft Word.

Choose a letter format, make changes, and QuickBooks will use the address and other information from its customer, employee, and vendor databases for mail-merge addressing. QuickBooks Pro 99 lets you process a high volume of letters--and, new with this version, faxes--with very few mouse clicks and even less typing.

Easy Excel

Similarly, QuickBooks Pro 99's report screens include a button that launches Excel and pours the contents of any QuickBooks report into a new or existing workbook. Formulas and formatting remain intact, and the QuickBooks wizard for this purpose includes an extensive set of data filters to ensure a smooth export of just the data you want to see.

After that, you have access to Excel's considerable capabilities to do high-bandwidth number analysis, what-if different income and expense scenarios, and create rich 3D graphs. Excel also considerably expands QuickBooks' reporting options and lets you e-mail binary files to customers and vendors. What you can't do is export the results back into QuickBooks, a safety measure that prevents the corruption of your sensitive accounting data.

Beyond this, Intuit has added to both QuickBooks and QuickBooks Pro 99 a string of useful, but marginal, enhancements typical of intermediate product revisions. Both get a new Statement of Cash Flows Report and can now break out different checks on a bank deposit slip that can be laser-printed. Reporting, product shipping, and timekeeping features also got tune-ups.

Internet Connection

Both QuickBooks 99 and QuickBooks Pro 99 include embedded versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.1 and a direct link to the QuickBooks pages of Intuit's popular Web Site. An early proponent of Internet connectivity from within its programs, Intuit's Web pages offer numerous small-business resources--including the QuickBooks Online Payroll Tax Service, QuickBooks Online Direct Deposit Service, and access to the Quicken Business CashFinder.

Intuit added the Office links because more than 80 percent of QuickBooks customers use some combination of Word, Excel, and the Internet to manage their businesses on a daily basis, according to the company. But then, that's probably true of just about any group of PC users.

It's more likely that Intuit opted for an early update because the company doesn't like to leave competitors breathing room in a market space. It has always quickly adopted competitors' innovations. Office connectivity was the prime lure of M.Y.O.B. and Peachtree Office for the service-oriented small businesses who are QuickBooks' primary audience. Now, M.Y.O.B. can distinguish itself only by its somewhat more robust time-and-billing module, while Peachtree Office is completely outgunned in terms of accounting functionality.

It's an admittedly brutal cycle, but it could be time to release new versions, folks.