Intuit and Sage have owned the small business accounting software market for the last few years. There are some powerful network effects at work here. Most small businesses will take the advice of their accountants, who will recommend the packages they are conversant with. In addition, it’s easy to find staff who are familiar with these packages.
So these companies have built very strong positions.
A couple of years ago, it looked as though Microsoft were going to break this duopoly apart. Their Office Accounting (OA) product was priced at less than $200 with the cut-down Express version available for free.
Reviews of its functionality were very favourable and while it was rather resource hungry and slow on older computers, you had the benefit of the Microsoft behemoth standing behind it and there seemed no reason to recommend Sage or Intuit.
The product has proved very successful, particularly in the USA. I’ve personally steered several people away from the established products and used OA whenever I’ve needed to implement a new package for the last year or so.
Now, quite suddenly, Microsoft have announced they are stopping marketing and development of OA. Support will discontinue in 2014.
Annoyed, embarassed, infuriated, spitting with rage - I’m not happy about this!
MS’s website says
we have determined that existing free templates within Office used with Excel was a better option for small businesses..which is clearly dangerous nonsense. Nobody in their right minds would use Excel for accounting in place of properly structured software.
But what can you do? Microsoft aren’t going to listen to me.
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