Is Office Accounting a 32 bit Application? Does it work 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit SQL?

Yes, yes and no. Some of you have tried to install Office Accounting on a 64 bit operating system (fine), maybe even on 64 bit SQL Server (not so fine). So why is Office Accounting a 32 bit application? Doesn't Microsoft know how to compile in 64 bit? Well we do.

One of the strengths of Office Accounting is the integration with other applications and services, such as other Office applications, payroll, eBay listing (US), Bacs e-payments (UK), import from Microsoft Money and Intuit QuickBooks (US), etc.

Most of the integration components are in 32 bit and the code is written in-process, so this is not going to work in 64 bit (as you cannot mix 64 and 32 bit in-proc). We will basically have to rewrite most of the integration code to run out-of-process in order to ship in 64 bit.

Fine, the app is 32 bit, but why can’t I use 64 bit SQL? As all of the Office Accounting engines (posting, tax/VAT, FIFO, foreign currency) are written in SQL and reside as stored procedures within the database, the database has to 32 bit as well (in order not to mix 32 and 64 bit in-proc).

So for now you will have to run Office Accounting on 32 bit SQL Server on a 32 or 64 bit operating system.