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Microsoft accounts package pulled

IT | John Tate | 30 Nov 2009

As 2009 draws to a close, industry news continues to drive change in the sector, says John Tate.

Office Accounting pulled

One rather sad piece of news came out on 30 October from Microsoft, who announced that it was terminating the sales/distribution  of its Office Accounting software products with effect from 16 November 2009. Cut-down versions of Office Accounting have been available for free and there have been significant discounts available to the charity sector for the full product. While reviews have highlighted the basic nature of the application, it was good to have a Microsoft offering as a choice. There has been hope that future development of the product would make it more suitable for widespread use in the sector.

Office Accounting has not been around for long – it was launched almost exactly two years before the above announcement. Claims were made that the early release of the Express version as a free download over the internet generated 1.9 million customers in the first year in the United States and 100,000 downloads in the UK. Despite this Microsoft clearly felt that this was not a success and decided to discontinue the product.

Microsoft suggest that the more powerful products in their portfolio branded under the Dynamics name provide an alternative offering. However these are more expensive and difficult to use.

From a support perspective, Microsoft has teamed up with another Accounting Software vendor – Mamut, who will be offering technical help to existing users for the foreseeable future. However support for the UK payroll module will terminate on 15 December this year. Clearly this is not going to give existing Microsoft Office payroll users long to change to a new system and it is a great shame that they could not have continued support for the product until at least the end of the tax year.

So if you are an existing Office Accounts user, what should you do about this? As Mamut will offer support you don’t need to panic. However as future R&D by Microsoft is being terminated you probably need to think about changing systems in the medium term. Tedious I know, as it will not have been long since you selected and implemented your software. In terms of choice of a new product this is not easy. The market leader in the UK for small business accounting software is Sage. However this does not get great reviews from the bulk of its charity users. The ICAEW has a discussion forum and there has been a recent dialogue on accounting software  for small charities that has provided some useful information. More details at http://www.ion.icaew.com/itcountsforum/18299

On a closing note on this subject this announcement does highlight the transient nature of the IT industry and the need to be prepared for anything to happen. If a software giant like Microsoft can release and then withdraw a product in c. two years it must leave a risk that they could make a similar decision with other products.

IT security/risk audit

Over the last year I have talked to a wide range of charities about their challenges with IT. One of the most common questions is around the choice of accounting software products. The above news takes  one product off the list of potential suppliers.

There have been two phone calls this year however that have stuck in my mind – both from medium to larger-sized charities and both to do with IT security. The first called just after its hard disk crashed and it discovered it did not have a backup of its accounting software data. However it was the second call that really got me worried. The charity who called had decided to outsource its server management and had developed the basis of a ‘cloud’ infrastructure. All its servers were hosted remotely and maintained by  a third-party supplier. These servers were accessed from many remote sites. Apparently, the supplier had  a disgruntled employee and one day he hacked into the servers – and deleted all the programs and data files from the computers – not just  of the charity but of other customer accounts. It took the charity two weeks to get its basic information up and running again and caused huge disruption to the operation.

So if you are inclined to new year resolutions I’d make one suggestion – get an external IT risk/security audit as soon as possible. A useful website to get you started is http://www.itsecurity.com/features/it-security-audit-010407/ which suggests a  ten-step process to such an audit.

On that bright note may I wish all readers a very happy Christmas!

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Who's Who: John Tate