Microsoft Office Accounting came along at just the right time for Robert Lindley.
As president of Innovative Systems, Inc., in Little Rock Arkansas, Lindley is charged
with keeping an eight-person shop running.
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QuickBooks worked well at the start for his own service-based business. But he
eventually had problems with the time tracker, and he wanted a way to move time
entries from Outlook into QuickBooks.
Along the way, they tried several versions of Microsoft CRM, only to find that each
time, they needed additional programming to get features they needed. Plus, the
solution provided no accounting software interface unless you used Great Plains,
which was more than he needed.
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Partner Benefits
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Improved time & billing efficiency
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Better visibility of staff billable time
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Enhanced reporting through Excel
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Works better on Small Business Server
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Lindley looked at Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2007 and Outlook 2007
with Business Contact Manager in November of 2006, and he was hooked. He made the
switch on January 15, 2007 – all 12 years of financial detail.
“Office Accounting provided something I’d never seen in a small business accounting
program,” Lindley says. “It had the ability to move over transaction detail.”
Lindley’s crew has already taken advantage of some of the modifications possible.
They’re using Microsoft Excel and Access to generate additional reports specific
to their business, and they’re working now to develop a customer-facing SharePoint
site to access the customer’s BCM project tasks.
They have also modified the create-time-entry process to grab the comments field
of the appointment to replace the default subject field when creating a time entry.
This provides a much better description of the services provided by the technician
while onsite.
They also use the SQL Report Engine to build ad hoc reports. They’ve created an
hourly report that they use in Tuesday technical staff meetings, which is used to
jog everyone’s memory and monitor billable time.
Lindley sees lots of opportunities and integration and partnering using Office Accounting.
Small businesses that bill for time, like attorneys’ offices, can benefit greatly.
“Using Microsoft Office Accounting and Outlook with BCM is a great, inexpensive
solution for any office that provides professional services,” he says. “Attorneys,
CPAs, financial advisors, etc. can benefit from the tight integration between these
two great products.”
Probably 90% of his company’s installations involve Small Business Server, which
open up Office Accounting possibilities even more.
He is currently developing a partner relationship with a local Microsoft Partner
Accounting Network (MPAN) member. They provide the accounting services, and Lindley’s
team supports the network and product integration. “This is a great product, and
it provides an excellent opportunity for growth in our services businesses,” he
says.