Last week I wrote about Office Accounting Express 2008, Microsoft’s free offering for small business accounting, however if you want to give the industry leader in this category a try take a look at QuickBooks Simple Start Free Edition 2009. The name says it all here.

This offering is designed to get you started (/hooked) using the QuickBooks product. This edition is somewhat limited as, for example, you can only have up to 20 customers and cannot download transactions. On the other hand you can interface with Intuit’s payroll service as well as process credit card orders using this free version. You can view a full comparision chart on their web site.

There is no denying that QuickBooks is the leader in the small business bookkeeping arena and I think it is great they are offering a free “gateway” product. If you like it, once you outgrow the free edition purchasing the pro version will get you all the bells and whistles QuickBooks offers.

For people who run small businesses (or manage their personal finances like a business), I have written several times about GNUCash, but if it doesn’t quite work for you then another option you might want to consider is Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008.

Much like all of Microsoft’s Express offerings, Office Accounting Express is completely free and depending on how you manage certain tasks you may find it quite convenient and featureful. It offers several functions which could make your typical tasks a lot easier, including:

• Enter data once and share it seamlessly with other Microsoft Office system programs
• List items on eBay, manage sales and download transactions
• Email invoices and get paid faster with PayPal
• Process credit card payments directly in Office Accounting

Additionally, you can import your data from either Excel or Quickbooks if you are looking to transition.

On a personal note, I did try Accounting Express (the 2007 variety) for a short while and it is a great product, but just was not for me.