I saw that someone said on one of the online forums that there was not anything in Office Accounting for Accountants.  I beg to differ.  This product is not something that offers anywhere near the same capabilities of someone like Iris for Practice Management - it is not designed to do so, it is aimed at small businesses who want a simple to use accounting package and then a tool for accountants to simply extract and manage data from it.

I am not an accountant, but Microsoft offer several areas for Accountants with Office Accounting:

• Ability to customise the product to brand it for a specific organisation, such as an accountant, ISV or partner
• Ability to monitor several people's accounts from the one place and gather updates via an secure online process (through Office Live)
• Client sends accounts to accountant, continues using them and then the changes are synchronised back from accountant without data loss
• Run payroll for multiple clients
• Single Journal entry with VAT that spans multiple dates, customers and suppliers
• Full audit on transactions and modifications to spot fraudulent actions easier
• Ability to produce a number of the reports that accountants may well want to automate
• A Microsoft backed network designed to listen to the needs of accountant and deliver further benefits for them - aka Microsoft Professional Accountants' Network which also provides the following software and support benefits:
• Free Support
• Free unlimited support until September 2009
• Access to managed newsgroups
• Access to invitation-only training events specifically for accounting professionals
• Free Software
• One complimentary license of Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008
• One complimentary license of Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2007

All in all I would say that was quite a lot for something that is potentially free for customers and free for accountants!!

ttfn

David