Our information on product weaknesses is available only through our special engagements which  are priced at $6,000 per day (this fee includes travel within the United States and Canada). We will travel to your offices at our own expense; we will bring 3 or 4 computer systems and full color projection systems to your offices; we will deliver a 4-hour presentation with a live demonstration of each product focusing on the weaknesses and missing features of up to 4 products (which you select). We will also supply you with a table of strengths and weaknesses comparing these products against one-another. We will make ourselves available the remainder of the day for consultation on related topics such as planning, budgeting, the selection process, the implementation process, selecting a reseller, evaluating needs, remote access, wide-area networking, etc. We require that you provide a meeting space and projector screen as well as dial up or  high speed internet access. If you are interested in engaging our services, please contact Mary Lou at 770.734.0950 or marylou@accountingsoftwareadvisor.com . 

How We Identify Product Weaknesses

We have compiled an extensive list of the product weaknesses for several dozen of the top accounting software products. These weaknesses have been compiled using the following methods:

1. Preparation of extensive feature tables comparing top products to their competitors. The preparation of these tables has been and is a major undertaking. We work directly with the accounting software publishers and our consortium of top resellers in order to identify and understand the feature sets provided by the current versions of the top accounting software solutions. We then build these tables in Excel and use complex formulas and macros to extract the key missing features for each product.

2. We install and study each product, writing reviews on particular features. For example, we print financial statements to the screen for each product and then compare and examine the results to ferret out the differences and weaknesses. This approach helps us see missing gaps not only in functionality, but also in the look and feel and navigation of the product.

3. We receive continuous feedback from users and resellers in our lectures and seminars as well as from our web site chat rooms and e-mails from around the world. We take measures to verify all weaknesses before incorporating them into our reports.

4. We have worked hard to identify those weaknesses that matter most to end users. While we also provide an extensive list detailing hundreds of missing features for each product, we have extracted those weaknesses that seem to matter most. Based on our experience and knowledge working with tens of thousands of businesses over the past seventeen years, we have a fairly good idea as to which missing features are deal breakers. The truth is that certain features really don't matter that much. For example, Platinum for Windows has a feature that allows you to control the shape of the tabs on top of the dialog box. Obviously this does not matter much to anybody. We've recognized this difference and have worked hard to separate the key missing features from the others.

We know that our extensive data regarding product weaknesses is very valuable. Using this information, end users can easily eliminate obvious wrong choices and avoid making a costly decisions to purchase products that do not meet their needs. Resellers can utilize this information to help them beat their competitors and land sales. Accounting software publishers can use this information to market against their competitors and to identify holes in their own products. For this reason, we make this information available to you as follows: