Intuit QuickBooks Pro 2006 review

In terms of features, there's little to separate QuickBooks Pro from rival bookkeeping application MYOB Accounting Plus 15. Like Accounting Plus, QuickBooks offers an exhaustive list of more than 100 standard reports, including balance sheet, profit/loss and debtors'/creditors' lists. If Accounting Plus has a slight edge in terms of quantity, we found QuickBooks Pro's reports easier to work with, thanks to touches such as a drop-down calendar-selection tool, which makes it easy to delimit and adjust reporting dates.

In fact, QuickBooks Pro's support for online commerce is unmatched by anything else available at this price. Like MYOB Accounting, QuickBooks Pro offers P14 and P35 electronic payroll e-filing through the Inland Revenue, but it also offers an optional credit card service so that customers can pay with Visa, Mastercard or Switch - and electronic payroll payment via BACS. This originally cost £10 per month for up to 100 transactions, but has now risen to £45 per month. Surprisingly, though, you still can't electronically file corporation or self-assessment tax returns - an absence in the feature list that's all the more strange given that Intuit has withdrawn the excellent TaxCalc tax-return software from sale.

But while it isn't perfect, QuickBooks Pro remains our accounting package of choice for its sheer flexibility and level of online integration. And while there isn't much here to tempt hardened users to upgrade, both the potential of the API implementation and the focus on ease of use make it a more palatable investment for newcomers.

Author: Tom Gorham