Overview

Microsoft has chosen to implement a system of voids. I can only assume they want to appeal to accountants who will be able to see any records that had been altered.

If anyone from Microsoft reads this I would ask them to consider these questions:

• Do accountants really value the system of voiding entries? Would they miss the absence of this feature?
• Their real customer (the one who pays the bill) is the end user. This system of voids is nothing but an absolute nuisance. There are no clear benefits for the end user. Surely Microsoft should meet end user needs?
• Other accounting systems do not use this approach – including Microsoft Money and MYOB – once popular in the UK. Why can’t MOA follow their approach?

Specific Problems

1. Checking invoices – You cannot correct even minor errors without causing a void record.

The only way to check a print preview for an invoice is to save the invoice. (This is ok and indeed other accounting systems have this approach). However as soon as you now preview or print the invoice, you get the message :

It is not possible to then go back to the original invoice and correct any errors. This in turn means that in order to make a correction the whole invoice is voided.

So any tiny error in an invoice will mean that your sequence of invoice numbers is screwed up with a void entry.

It is of course unnecessary. Microsoft could perfectly easily write the software so that reversal of errors is possible without causing a void.

2. Reports have spurious entries

The report below is an extract from an aged debtor report.

The two rows towards the end of the report showing $0 outstanding both relate to problems caused by voids.

In each case a customer payment was corrected (and became a void record) and the payment was then corrected by a further payment.

MOA does not seem able to recognise this situation and continues to show an outstanding balance of $0 – presumably for ever! I will add further entries as I come across further problems.

Please respond to this blog if you know of any further problems.

In conclusion

Microsoft Office Accounting is in many ways an outstanding product. For me this insistence on voids is the greatest failing in the product.