Intuit's Next: Microsoft Targets QuickBooks Users with Small Business Accounting

Published: January 18, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft has a lot of sticks in the fire right now. At the same time that it's gearing up its attempt to replace PDF with XPS as the dominant document format on the Web, and hawking new solutions for migrating Domino environments to Exchange, why not start a battle with Intuit and its popular QuickBooks small business accounting package?

So on Monday Microsoft declared "Out with the old, in with the new," and offered a discount worth up to $100 to people who purchase the full version of its "QuickBooks-killer"--Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006, of course--at one of these fine stores: Best Buy, CompUSA, Office Depot, Staples, and OfficeMax. Microsoft is also offering one year of free support for customers who take advantage of this promotion, which expires April 30.

What's more, the software behemoth got its old partner in crime, Dell, in on the action when Dell agreed to drop the price it charges when customers buy Small Business Accounting 2006 and Microsoft Office Small Business Management Edition 2006 on desktops and notebooks. (Dell's Small Business Accounting Web page shows models available for between about $1,050 and $1,350, a discount of $200 compared to the price Dell has highlighted in the strikethrough font on the page.)

There was also some outright QuickBooks bashing. "If I had stayed on QuickBooks," said Rob Gorski, CEO of JBG General Contractors in Canton, Ohio, "I would have had to farm out a lot of this work. But with Small Business Accounting I can easily do it myself." Gorski claims to save $2,000 a year as a result of the switch from QuickBooks to Small Business Accounting. To see if you can save like Rob Gorski did, check out www.officesmallbusinessaccounting.com.