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MultiLedger 7

Stuart Gripman — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:06:48 -0500

If you think this looks modern, you probably yearn for the days of eWorld.

MultiLedger 7 is touted as a "fully integrated accounting program" by its publisher, CheckMark Software. It does indeed have the features you expect from a small-business accounting package -- it tracks financial accounts, customers, vendors, inventory, and jobs. Budgeting, salespeople, and taxes are accommodated too. With built-in networking abilities and cross-platform compatibility, MultiLedger's feature set is quite compelling. But once you double-click the MultiLedger icon, disappointment sets in.

MultiLedger's Achilles heel is its outmoded interface. Navigating our way through MultiLedger's many components took us back to the time when a modern-day Mac had a built-in 9-inch black-and-white screen. It's not just a statement of fashion - user interface has evolved over the past 20 years, yet MultiLedger remains trapped in a System 7 paradigm. Toolbars, admittedly overdone in some applications, are simply nonexistent in MultiLedger. Windows and dialog boxes are nonstandard and often frustrating to use. Many windows, like Account Setup, have no buttons for saving or canceling. You just have to close the window and hope that your changes have been retained. When buttons are present in a window, they're not OS X buttons, and they're placed in the top left corner, not the bottom right as we've come to expect.

One of the most welcomed features among MultiLedger's competing apps, such as Intuit's QuickBooks Pro 2007 for Mac, is the setup assistant, an interview-style process that gathers information about your accounting needs and sets up an appropriate company file the first time you launch the app. Our appreciation for the setup assistant only expanded when we realized that MultiLedger doesn't have one. On first launch, MultiLedger offers no welcome, no offer of assistance, no guidance whatsoever. The app required us to create our new company almost entirely from scratch. This meant typing entries for all of our clients and vendors as well as some 40 accounts. Before setting up MultiLedger, we suggest users crack the manual and study pages 13 through 56. Professional bookkeepers and accountants may find the setup acceptable but tedious, but average small-business owners are sure to lose their patience. MultiLedger does offer some limited import capabilities, but we were disappointed to learn that text files are the only supported format. Address Book import would be a most welcome addition, not to mention some sort of migration assistant from other products.

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For $399, you'd think MultiLedger's main navigation window would have a more-refined design sense.

Once the app was set up, we found day-to-day use equally vexing. Learning MultiLedger is a bit like learning a new sport with a coach who only tells you what you're doing wrong. As you go about setting up, say, a quote, MultiLedger will frequently pop up a message indicating that you've violated some rule or another. This is not a bad thing per se, but we're used to interfaces that preempt such issues rather than stopping us after the fact and forcing us to start over.

MultiLedger is not without redeeming features. At 414 pages, the documentation is thorough, well organized, and well written. The glossary of accounting terms is a kind gesture to neophyte number crunchers, sample charts of accounts are handy when setting up a new company, and the comprehensive index is a welcome departure from the weak or absent indices common to contemporary documentation. We also appreciate the AppleScript support. CheckMark Software suggests using AppleScript to perform custom importing. But resorting to scripting only draws attention to MultiLedger's anemic import offerings.

MultiLedger is cross-platform and networkable, a claim that market-leader QuickBooks Pro for Mac can't make. Unfortunately, MultiLedger's sharing is at odds with Mac OS X and can only act as a guest of a shared file, not a host. If you don't have a Windows or OS 9 server available, you can forget about networking.

The bottom line. If you long for the computing experience of yesteryear and like to do things the hard way, MultiLedger may be for you. We've already moved on.

COMPANY: CheckMark Software
CONTACT: www.checkmark.com
PRICE: $399
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 8.6 or later
Good documentation.
Lousy interface. Difficult setup. Sharing is at odds with Mac OS X. High price.

AccountEdge 2007

Stuart Gripman — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:35:00 -0500

AccountEdge's flowchart-like navigation hub might not jibe with some analytical minds.

There's something of a duopoly in small-business accounting software. Intuit's QuickBooks (which we reviewed in March of this year) may be the market leader, but underdog AccountEdge has a lot going for it. And hey, if anybody understands that market share isn't everything, it's Mac users.

For 2007, AccountEdge sports about a dozen new features. While some of them are arguably trivial - for example, the Allocation Memo field shows up more often in some reports - a few piqued our interest. AccountEdge has added support for sync services, thereby allowing you to synchronize your Address Book with AccountEdge's Cards List. We also welcome the expansion of email capabilities. AccountEdge now allows you to queue up a batch of forms to be dispatched via email. When the batch is ready to go, email messages are created with PDF files attached. While the documentation generally refers to Apple Mail when discussing email, we found it to work fine with Microsoft Entourage as well.

The new features are nice enough, but we found some of the older features to be quite compelling, particularly when compared to the app's closest competitor, QuickBooks. Primary among those features is networking, which permits up to five simultaneous users to access a single file. QuickBooks doesn't offer Mac customers networking at any price. Helping to bridge the PC divide, AccountEdge's file format is platform-independent. It's something we've come to expect from cross-platform applications, and it's vastly preferable to the conversion schemes QuickBooks foists on its Mac users.

Our AccountEdge experience wasn't all adoration, though. We found a disappointing weakness in the custom-forms feature. Intended to help you create professional-looking forms, the custom-forms tools are confusing and needlessly complicated, and they lack depth. Adding an image to a form illustrates the point: With the form editor open, AccountEdge requires no fewer than seven steps to place an image on the form. And no, you can't drag and drop.

Another factor to weigh when evaluating AccountEdge is its peculiar interface. Designed, perhaps, by and for the visual thinker, our more analytical minds struggled with it at times. The MYOB Command Center is the navigation hub of the software. It presents sections such as Accounts, Banking, Inventory, and Payroll across the top of the window, and a flowchart-like menu of options below the selected section. The appeal of this approach will vary by user, but we weren't thrilled.

The bottom line. While we found AccountEdge to be a fine product, we're not so enthused with it that we're going to recommend dropping your existing system to switch. If, however, you're looking for a new accounting package or you're just launching your business, you should seriously consider AccountEdge. Just to sweeten the pot, MYOB offers a free copy for your accountant when you buy a copy. Score one for the underdog.

COMPANY: MYOB
CONTACT: www.myob-us.com
PRICE: $299, $159 upgrade, $150 for additional network licenses
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later (Mac OS 10.4 or later is required for syncing with Address Book)
Networkable. Cross-platform file format. Free copy for your accountant. Universal binary.
Peculiar interface and navigation. Weak forms designer.

QuickBooks Pro 2007 for Mac

Stuart Gripman — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 16:46:51 -0600

Layout Designer: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

The latest update to Intuit's small-business bookkeeping software is finally here. But once we spent some time with QuickBooks Pro 2007, we had a hard time stifling our yawns.

The flagship feature is the Layout Designer. Previous incarnations offered a few pedestrian preset designs for printed documents such as invoices, estimates, and statements. This update offers a way to pretty up your QuickBooks forms while allowing the accountants to maintain control over the default layouts.

The Layout Designer is essentially a rudimentary drawing program with simple tools for layering, arranging, and coloring the layout objects. Sadly, the graphics handling left us wanting. Bitmapped images degraded upon import - bad news for anyone who wants to add a logo to a document - so it's best to stick with vector-based images. While it's a much-needed addition, the Layout Designer's execution lacks refinement.

QuickBooks Pro 2007 is now a Universal app. It can also print deposit slips in much the same way that it's always printed checks, and it includes more icons for customizing the toolbar. One thing that hasn't changed is Intuit's pricing policy. Whether you're buying for the first time or faithfully upgrading for the fifth time, it's still going to cost you the full $200. So much for loyalty.

The bottom line. QuickBooks is the industry standard, but if you own the previous version, we don't see a compelling reason to upgrade.

COMPANY: Intuit
COMPANY: www.intuit.com
PRICE: $199.95
REQUIREMENTS: G3 or later or Intel processor, Mac OS 10.4.7 or later, 256MB RAM, 100MB disk space
Universal binary. Prints deposit slips.
Layout Designer is underdeveloped. Poor value for those who are upgrading.

Billings 2

Cathy Lu — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:14:03 -0600

Slips break down each part of the project by cost, including all of those coveted billable hours.

When you're self-employed, it's up to you to track your hours, expenses, and invoicing. Billings 2, an application that tracks billing time and creates invoices, is as good as any personal assistant, and it won't ask for a raise.

Billings 2's setup assistant quickly runs through your information, such as your location, tax rate, and hourly rate (and you can customize this later for individual parts of a project). From the main window, it's a cinch to enter client information and create entries for different projects. When you enter new clients, Billings 2 conveniently grabs contact info from Apple's Address Book. Project information includes the start date, the due date, and extra fields that you can fill with data such as purchase order numbers. You can even link files and enter URLs so you can launch them from within Billings' interface. Unfortunately, you can't archive completed projects; they remain indefinitely in your projects list, which fills up fast.

Each project is composed of slips, which can be anything for which you'd charge a client, such as expenses, mileage, and flat-rate work. Billings 2 is most handy at tracking billable hours, whether for consulting, editing, or, um, lawyering. The Timers window lists all current timed slips and provides Pause, Play, and Punch Out buttons so you can quickly start and stop the clock. If your client requires an estimate prior to the project, you can create those using slips as well.

Though it's fun to get paid, it's not so fun to deal with invoices. But Billings 2 makes it a breeze. Once a project is complete, simply click the Send Invoice button, and the program creates a PDF containing your name and address (and that of your client), a breakdown of costs, and the total amount due. You can choose from five (mostly attractive) templates, and there are options to email, print, and save the invoice. To a certain extent, you can tweak what information shows up on your invoice, though we'd like to see more flexibility in terms of what you can include and where it appears. After all, it's your business, and shouldn't your invoices reflect that?

The bottom line. If you work for yourself and a healthy amount of your jobs are time-based, you'll benefit from a good, reliable billing application. Billings 2 gets the job done easily and efficiently - just what you want in an officemate. And it won't call in sick, either.

COMPANY: Marketcircle
CONTACT: www.billings2.com
PRICE: $59
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4 or later, 50MB disk space
Understandable interface. Easy time tracking. Simple, attractive invoices. Address Book integration. Universal binary.
Lacks ability to archive old projects. Invoice templates could be more customizable.

Quicken Mac 2007

Mike Hubbartt — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:54:38 -0600

The new Paycheck Detailing feature means you don't have to keep those annoying scraps of paycheck stubs.

Quicken Mac 2007 is the newest version of Intuit's home and small-business financial software. It's not a major enhancement over the previous version, but the new features are useful.

Quicken now has a QuickEntry Dashboard widget (Mac OS 10.4.6 or later is required) that lets you enter data without launching Quicken. It's convenient, but the information entered via widget is not updated until Quicken is launched. Don't rely on the widget as your sole means of data entry; you need to launch Quicken every once in a while so that the data is updated.

Another new feature is a single screen to enter paycheck information, called Paycheck Detailing. It's a great way to enter and track vacation spending, pretax deductions such as 401(k) contributions, and taxes typically shown on most payroll checks. Paycheck Detailing is a nice way to keep track of information without holding on to old paycheck stubs, and it's definitely useful during tax season.

Many people don't track 401(k) investments, but with Quicken's new ability to download and display current 401(k) investment information, your excuses are running out. You can use this feature to help make investment decisions - though you still may need the help of an financial advisor.

Quicken's major improvement is to its syncing your personal financial data with financial institutions, such as banks, credit card companies, and brokerages. Another 850 financial institutions were added, bringing the total to more than 2,700 available to Quicken users, but be aware that the amount and type of data available will vary between institutions.

The bottom line. If you had problems with Quicken Mac 2006's data syncing, upgrading to Quicken Mac 2007 may be worth it. Otherwise, this isn't a major upgrade that you have to run out and buy today.

You can now enter financial data though Quicken's QuickEntry Dashboard widget.

COMPANY: Intuit
CONTACT: 800-811-8766, http://quicken.intuit.com
PRICE: $69.99
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or Mac OS 10.4.5 or later, 1GB disk space, Internet access for some features
Easy to set up and use. Dashboard widget for data entry. Simple yet effective paycheck detailing. Good online product support.
Data entered via Dashboard widget isn't updated in Quicken immediately. Not enough new features to be considered a major update.