"In the beginning..." Great Plains, Navision, and uh, another one I've forgotten, oh yeah, Solomon; were products of other companies.
Microsoft bought them, to start it's move into the enterprise resource planning space. As it's been known to do before - it bought market share. The original hope/plan was to merge these three into a single product. As all three were completely utterly different in terms of architecture and only shared clientele on the low-end (mainly) so MSFT designed a platform and started the "great re-code". Customers complained in droves. Said they'd leave. Microsoft dropped the plan, after a lot of work was done on the new platform - which became MOA. MSFT went ahead and released MOA hoping it would be a "QB killer", but didn't put enough money/time/energy/whatever behind it; and it never acquired sufficient market share. As they are wont to do, after a few years of not getting market share in "non-core businesses" (although who the heck would call Xbox a core business?) they cancelled the product; especially after the updates started to impact share in the other platforms that MSFT never killed off. Rest In Peace. It's actually a pretty darned good product, in my experience. Regards, Michael B. Smith Consultant and Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, May 10, 2010 4:59 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Small business/SOHO accounting >>But MSFT dumped it late last year, and 2009 SP3 is probably the last update >>we'll ever see. Really? Why does Microsoft keep playing with Home/Business Accounting software if they're not going to keep up with it? -ASB: http://XeeSM.com/AndrewBaker On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:59 PM, Michael B. Smith <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Really, truly, I think QB is the only mainstream alternative left. Personally, I and a number of other Microsoft people use Microsoft Office Accounting. But MSFT dumped it late last year, and 2009 SP3 is probably the last update we'll ever see. My plan is to, sometime next year, move over to QB. I may try one of the free alternatives, but probably not. My accountant is giving me pressure to move to QB as well. He's tired of CSV's. Regards, Michael B. Smith Consultant and Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Monday, May 10, 2010 2:43 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Small business/SOHO accounting Hello, world! Anyone care to give recommendations in the small business/SOHO accounting product space? QuickBooks is very common, but also rather expensive, and in the past I've had horrible experiences with Intuit customer service, and I've learned that "most common" does not mean "best". For this user, traditional software and web services are both acceptable. They've got just one PC, running Vista. I Googled "quickbooks alternatives" and found a bunch of hits, but this is one of those areas where practical experience is invaluable, so I thought I'd see if anyone here has anything they'd want to share. Recommendations on what to avoid would also be useful. advTHANKSance -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
