Microsoft Office Accounting : DOA

If you are a user of Microsoft Office Accounting, you should probably sit down before reading any further.

Microsoft just announced that they are canning their whole Office Accounting package as of November 16th.

On the FAQ site, the official reason from Microsoft is that “…we have determined that existing free templates within Office used with Excel was a better option for small businesses, and the Microsoft Dynamics ERP products were appropriate for mid-range organizations.”

In addition, they’re yanking the Ebay and Equifax rug out, saying “Online sales from eBay and credit profile from Equifax will no longer be available after December 15, 2009. However, your customers will still be able to pay emailed invoices directly through PayPal.”

Paypal instead of Equifax? Yeesh.

Someone at Microsoft probably woke up this weekend and said “Hey, this product is so easy and stable and cheap, why the hell are we supporting it? Make the low end people buy the whole Office suite! And make the high end people buy the juggernaut called Dynamics! Mu ha ha ha ha!”

Ifya’ want to grab this one before it’s nuked forever, here’s a link to Micosoft’s download page or you can grab the express version directly here.

Here’s the direct link to the Microsoft PR announcement about the product.