Small Business Manager Reviewer's Comments

Microsoft's Small Business Manager has many useful tools to help you keep your company books, but unfortunately, the program falls short in places. The Customer Section helps you maintain customer records and make invoices, but this section doesn't let you customize invoices or track shipping.

The program offers a good Inventory Section but lacks other tools important to a young company, in particular, Time Billing and Job Costing, both valuable tools for a company that must track work completed by outside help. This program does have a Payroll Section to manage regular employee pay, however.

Microsoft's Small Business Manager has several reports available, offering everything you need for Purchases, Payroll, and Inventory, but the program cannot run reports for Time Billing and Job Costing.

Ease of Use:  

Small Business Manager is easy to use; the opening screen is self-explanatory. You can find most features, but typical Time Billing and Job Costing tools are not available. Also, it took time to locate purchase orders and invoices—within the Customer Section.

Installation is simple. We had no errors during installation of both software and the required SQL server. The program was easy to set up.

However, we had a problem trying to print a payroll check. The program froze and the window wouldn't close; after that, every time we tried to start Small Business Manager we received an error saying that the login was already in use. We couldn't tell if this was a compatibility issue or a problem with the program.

Small Business Manager has good navigation; the top tool bar helps you find the category you need. The program also has a Smart List (shortcut) to all the areas of the program. Every part of the software is divided into individual files.

We'd suggest implementing the accounting sections on the left navigation bar of the program instead of only on the top menu.

Help/Documentation:  

The Help Documentation for Small Business Manager is excellent. The program has a small search tool so you can find any term quickly. Microsoft's Small Business Solutions also has a little icon at the bottom of each screen so you have access to the Help Section from any part of the program.

Accounts Receivable:  

These features are in the software's Customer Section. Here you can find all the features you need to manage Accounts Receivable, including invoices, quotes, orders, and other receivable transactions. However, there are a few features we couldn't find.

With this program you can't track shipments or print shipping labels. You also can't process credit cards or memorize transactions (transactions you repeat frequently). This section has only six reports available.

Accounts Payable:  

Accounts Payable tools are located in the section called Vendors. In Vendors, you can purchase items, pay vendors, or perform manual payments. You can create drop shipment purchase orders and print vendor checks. This section has thirty-five different reports available.

Payroll:  

This section allows you to manage employee records, create and void checks, and figure employee's federal, state, and local taxes. But we couldn't find how to print 940 and 941 tax forms to report unemployment. There are twenty-six different payroll reports available.

Inventory:  

The Inventory Section is excellent. You can build item assemblies (kits of grouped items) and adjust your inventory to match quickly. You can view item details and prices in this section. However, there is no way to specify stocking locations (such as a specific warehouse). This software offers twenty-five different inventory reports.

Banking:  

Some choices in this section include reconciling accounts, making deposits and transfers and other transactions, but you cannot void existing checks. This section has six different reports available.

Time Billing:  

Small Business Manager does not include any time billing features.

Job Costing:  

We couldn't find any references to job costing or management in Small Business Manager.

General Ledger:  

The section (named Accounting) has most of the features that typically belong to the General Ledger. Although most of the features in Accounting deal with regular accounts and fixed allocation accounts, there are several reports that explain profit and loss, trial balance, cash flow and balance sheet.

Fixed Assets:  

The Fixed Assets Section is in a sub-directory of the Accounting Section; all fixed assets are managed in this section. This section lets you depreciate assets and check on retired, financial, and transferred assets. Twenty-seven fixed asset reports are available.

Summary:  

Microsoft's Small Business Manager software is a good accounting product if you aren't looking for Time Billing or Job Management tools.