Periodically companies push out new product up dates. Car manufacturers do it, cereal makers do it, hardware vendors do it and definitely software vendors do it. Best Software's Peachtree accounting program is no exception.

Although there are no revolutionary enhancements in Peachtree 2005, for current customers of previous versions of Peachtree who wanted specific features, some of their requested features might be found in 2005 and thus worth the upgrade.

For customers already using a competing product like Intuit Quickbooks, Intuit Quicken, ACCPAC Simply Accounting or Microsoft Money their desire to change to Peachtree Software would not necessarily be based on an incremental upgrade. Switching from a program you are used to using, especially one you have used for years, have invested training in and run your business on - is not done lightly.

Therefore, for the most part, product upgrades, and this is no exception are written for existing customers and to keep up with the competition.

Although Peachtree has set out to make Peachtree as easy as possible, it still recognizes that technology is not easy to use for everyone. New in 2005 are over 20 instructional demos which help users learn key tasks and processes.

This feature should have been in early versions of Peachtree, but in 2005 users can now take their Peachtree customer, vendor and employee lists and mail merge them to Word for custom lists, letters and etc.

For all businesses, but especially small business keeping the right inventory levels is very important. Seeing this need, Peachtree 2005 lets users define triggers to automatically create purchase orders on products needed when inventory levels reach a certain point.

UPS and Federal Express are in a fight to get their products integrated into the business management tools of software vendors. Well, UPS won this battle. In Peachtree 2005 users can automatically calculate shipping costs, print labels and add tracking numbers to customer invoices.

One of the other high-lights to Peachtree 2005 is enabling the creation of PDF reports and financial statements and automatically generating an email via Outlook.

Furthering the closer collaboration of its business units, Peachtree has integrated an optional payroll service into Peachtree 2005. Peachtree already offers payroll services as a separate service to its customers. But now Peachtree has integrated the general ledger postings, job and employee information direction into its Peachtree payroll services. No double entry needed.

Peachtree offers seven different Peachtree products, namely:

Peachtree Premium Accounting, Complete Accounting, Accounting and First Accounting to fit the complexities and sizes of just about any small business.

In addition its three industry specific products for manufacturers, distributors and accountants are also available.

There's several more features available in Peachtree 2005, so visit http://www.peachtree.com for more information.

Contributed by: Ramon Ray, Smallbiztechnology.com