Microsoft has announced general availability and promotional pricing for Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 and Microsoft Office Small Business Management Edition 2006, two new Microsoft Office offerings designed to enable small businesses to manage all their sales, marketing and financial processes within the Office environment.
"These solutions were built from the ground up to support the ways that small businesses actually work, and to be incredibly easy for employees to implement and use," said Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft, in a statement. "Together with our partners, we're proud to deliver new innovations that enable small businesses to be more productive and profitable."

Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 is a full-featured financial management software solution that is available as a stand-alone offering or as part of the larger Office Small Business Management Edition 2006 bundle. That bundle also includes Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 and Microsoft Office Access 2003.

Customers and accountants requested 50,000 trial copies of Small Business Accounting, making it one of the most anticipated Microsoft small-business solutions ever. In response to feedback from customers, accounting professionals and partners since the beta release, Microsoft also is providing new features for Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006 that let users memorize frequently entered transactions and save them as templates for reuse, manage payroll manually using an integrated Excel solution, back up the company's database to share with an accountant or other consultant, and create profit-and-loss statements by class or business segment.

The new software will be widely distributed through multiple channels. Microsoft has entered into deals with several major big box and online office products dealers, buttressing its reseller and retailer outlets. OEM deals are also in place. Dell is the marquee OEM for Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006, and will offer the software preinstalled on selected Dell small-business computing systems, including Dimension desktops and Inspiron notebooks. Gateway Inc. will also offer Office Small Business Management Edition 2006 on its new S-series of desktop and notebooks.

"By launching Small Business Accounting 2006, Microsoft is going to revolutionize the market for accounting solutions, " said Jens Davidsen, CEO of WPA Mobile. "The product is capturing the best from all Microsoft products and technologies. It holds all the experience from MBS, is perfectly integrated into the Office family and provides an easy .NET development platform for add-ons like our WPA Mobile solution"

Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 is available for an after-rebate price of $149 (U.S.) ($179 estimated retail price less $30 mail in rebate). ADP Payroll for Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting is available for $169 (U.S.) per year. Microsoft Small Business Management Edition 2006 is available in the U.S. for an after-rebate price of $569 (U.S.) and to existing Microsoft Office customers for an upgrade price of $399 (U.S.) (product estimated retail prices are $669 and $499, respectively, less $100 mail-in rebates).

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