Microsoft might have hurt the feelings of businesses a bit when it dropped the words "Small Business" from its accounting software (even though the newly named Office Accounting 2007 is still aimed at companies with 25 or fewer employees, a Microsoft spokeswoman said). However, new features that add a direct link between accounting and eBay and PayPal services may make up for the name change.

Last week, the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced the availability of a beta version of new version accounting software, which you can download here. The new version is designed to help smaller companies do more business on the Web thanks to the addition of e-commerce integration and online invoicing features.

For example, according to Microsoft, Office Accounting 2007 will offer new integrated services to allow you to sell more easily on eBay. Taking advantage of eBay's APIs, you can select products from your inventory, list items for sale on eBay and view status of those listings from within your accounting application.

As long as you have an item in your inventory in Office Accounting 2007, you can easily add it on eBay. Rather than adding the item through multiple screens on eBay, you enter all the data on a single screen in Office Accounting 2007.

Once you upload the data, the product is live and available on eBay. You can later down eBay sales transactions and fees from eBay into your accounting software.

This type of integration promises to both save time (especially if you're a Power Seller offering hundreds of products) and reduce the risk of error from manually entering eBay results into your accounting system. For multiple channel businesses, this level of integration holds great promise. A Microsoft spokesman told ECommerce-Guide that some Office Accounting 2007 beta users are currently using Microsoft Point of Sale software for their bricks-and-mortar store sales and the new eBay features for online sales. That is, you can sell products through multiple channel and monitor and generate sales reports in one central application with no need to re-enter information.

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 melds eBay and PayPal with your finance software. Click for larger image.

Microsoft also reports that it is working with PayPal to offer two new payment services — Invoice Payment Service and Merchant Processing Service — that will be accessible from within Office Accounting 2007. The services are designed to let you accept payment transactions with PayPal, either through e-mail or through direct credit card payments. For example, you can e-mail an invoice and let the recipient pay the bill with his or PayPal account.

Thanks to a partnership with Equifax, the new version of Microsoft's accounting offering is also designed to let you monitor the credit status of customers, vendors and your own business on an ongoing basis directly from within the accounting software.

According to information released by Microsoft, the new version of the software formerly known as Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 will provide what it describes as "enhanced integration" to let you share and update a single list of customers across your business. This will, for example, let your salespeople access key Office Accounting reports and launch marketing campaigns from within Microsoft Outlook with Business Contact Manager.

Office Accounting 2007 will be available by the end of the year, according to Microsoft.

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