If you're contemplating new software to manage your business, take these 10 benefits into consideration. You'll see why Microsoft Dynamics Small Business Financials  can help you work more productively, integrate your business, and access information to make more informed decisions.

Enter information once and share it among applications.

Do you use Microsoft Excel to manage your budgets and financial statements, Microsoft Word to send personalized letters to customers, Microsoft Outlook to send pertinent reports to colleagues via e-mail, Microsoft MapPoint for obtaining driving directions, and other internal or industry-specific applications to manage other key day-to-day tasks? Microsoft Small Business Financials allows you to keep using those familiar packages, but uniquely integrates all of these applications and data together so you don't have to re-key data.

Find answers to daily questions faster and analyze your business performance more easily with flexible and unique reporting tools.

Do you want instant, on-screen access to a list of overdue customers, daily sales activities or year to date vendor purchases? The SmartList real-time query tool allows you to search for specific information, so business data that's important to you is only a click away. As well, over 80 customizable standard reports enable you to easily analyze business metrics. And because the flexible account structure of Microsoft Small Business Financials allows up to 25 characters and five segments, you can leverage your accounts to manage multiple departments and produce departmental reports for even greater reporting insights.

Don't worry about audits—Microsoft Small Business Financials provides full audit trails and double-entry accounting to help you follow accounting rules.

Microsoft Small Business Financials helps you to follow accounting rules so that if you are ever audited, you have a complete audit trail code and balanced records which can be easily analyzed. To begin with, double-entry accounting is enforced, so debits must equal credits when posting journals. Secondly, all transactions are assigned an incremental audit trail code number, so you can easily track information within the system. Finally, posted transactions cannot be randomly deleted; instead, to protect the audit trail code of your system, void procedures are in place or correcting transactions can be posted to make needed changes. This gives you full, accurate visibility of all activity in your system so there won't be questions about your books.

Keep your data secure by defining what parts of the software each employee can access and use.

Your company "administrator" can specify which parts of Microsoft Small Business Financials each employee can use. For example, perhaps some users should be able to view information through inquiry windows and reports, but should not be allowed to actually enter new transactions or change setup information. This flexibility to set up security parameters by user will help you keep data secure and safe in an environment where multiple employees have access to the accounting database.

Get a competitive edge.

Multiple users can access data at the same time without performance problems. With Microsoft Small Business Financials, you can set up an unlimited number of users, with a maximum of five concurrent users accessing the data at the same time. Because it uses industry-standard technologies like Microsoft SQL 2000 Desktop Engine or Microsoft SQL Server 2000, the stability of performance and reliability of data is much higher than competitive solutions on the market.

Process vendor checks, customer statements, and employee checks quickly and easily.

Wizards throughout Microsoft Small Business Financials assist you in completing what can otherwise be complex tasks. Step-by-step questions guide you through the processes, giving you ultimate flexibility when choosing which vendor bills to pay, sending out customer statements, and processing employee checks.

Take control of your sensitive payroll processes with an on-site solution integrated with the rest of your accounting software.

The U.S. Payroll Suite in Microsoft Small Business Financials allows you to easily integrate payroll processing into the rest of your on-site business management. You'll always have updated tax tables as part of your service plan, to ensure that taxes are tracked and reported correctly. In addition to its many features and benefits, another highlight of the Payroll Suite is the ability for each employee to choose to have funds electronically deposited to their bank or receive a check.

Use reminder and alert tools to schedule and remind users of routines that need to be performed at a specific time.

Within Microsoft Small Business Financials, the Reminders window immediately launches to provide users the ability to be reminded of timely tasks to be addressed, such as customer invoices to be collected on or checks you owe your vendor. You have ultimate flexibility to mark tasks as recurring, as well as the ability to assign them to individual users or everyone in the system.

Quickly create personalized communications with custom business letter templates.

Imagine looking up a customer's information and seeing that they have a past due balance; now take that information to instantly generate collection letters. Designed to be quick and easy, these letter-writing capabilities can originate from customer windows, vendor windows, and employee windows as well so you can keep in touch with all of your constituents.

Keep your sensitive accounting software on-site while extending some of your sales and marketing services to the Internet.

Whether you want to build an online business presence, deliver stronger sales and service, or manage business operations, Microsoft Small Business offers the solutions and valuable information you need. Microsoft Small Business has solutions that are perfect for new businesses just starting out or established companies ready to grow their business online. Microsoft Small Business Commerce Manager, List Builder, and Appointment Manager work with Microsoft Small Business Financials to increase and retain your customer base.