Targeted at businesses with fewer than 25 employees, the standalone version at approximately $200 has "an eye toward security and audit trails." It includes 60 customizable financial reports, a "dashboard" to view the overall status of the business, and different levels for cash-flow management and forecasting.

The software will also be available in a new version of Microsoft Office Small Business Management Edition 2006 (price to be determined), a package that will contain the familiar Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, Outlook 2003, and most notably the new Business Contact Manager Update that integrates with Outlook and links email, notes, and appointments to financial data for each customer account.

Also, Microsoft has partnered with payroll provider ADP to integrate payroll, checks, forms and tax processing into the software for an additional fee.

According to Fortune Small Business, Microsoft studied "CEOs, accountants, salespeople, marketing executives, and others as they navigated the working day," looking for "points of 'friction,'" defined by Office SBA development leader Rajat Taneja as "time wasted getting information that already exists elsewhere."

The Microsoft team developed Office SBA aiming to eliminate paper Post-It notes that oftentimes contain important information (such as a potential customer's phone number) only to be lost forever to the trash bin or temporarily under a stack of files, said FSB.

After conducting a beta test, PCWorld noted that the benefit of Office SBA over the popular Intuit QuickBooks and Best Software products is the familiar Office user interface and "a high degree of integration with that suite."

Writes PCWorld columnist and SBA tester Richard Morochove: "In my tests of the beta, I found that if you create invoices using Word, track product inventory in an Excel spreadsheet, and maintain customer information in Outlook, Office SBA can tie this information together in an integrated accounting system. It does this using Microsoft's SQL Server Desktop Engine database, which is included with the program." Read his full review.

For more information from Microsoft about SBA and other accounting services, visit www.microsoft.com/accounting