Some products are "must-have" products and others are "wanna-haves." The former are needed to do business. The latter make life more pleasant. QuickBooks, from Intuit, this year went from the first category to the second, which will be a relief to every QuickBooks user who has upgraded or plans to upgrade. QuickBooks 2006 has leaped light years ahead of earlier versions in usability -- most of it because of a few small changes that the developers should have made long ago.

The most spectacular change came from restructuring the way the user works with information related to customers, vendors and employees. In older versions, the casual users had to remember where developers hid key functions. In QuickBooks 2006, they have smartly grouped this info into all inclusive centers -- a Customer Center, Vendor Center and Employee Center. Instead of moving from window to window to find and use information, you have everything you need in one place, organized in a way that is intuitive, even if you don't use the software every day.

In the Customer Center, for instance, you see a list of all your current customers -- whether they have an open balance or not. Simply highlight the customer's name to show a complete history of that customer, including invoices and payments. Then click a single button to find all the functions you might need as you transact business with your customer -- from creating a new invoice to logging a payment as received.

For the 2006 version, Intuit has upgraded the underlying database on which QuickBooks runs -- so it's more stable and faster.

A subtle change that accountants will appreciate is the ability for the Premier Accountant Edition to morph from an accountant version into versions with special functions for manufacturers, retailers or contractors, and back again -- all with just a few keystrokes.

With a number of additional tweaks that were made to the interface and underlying program, QuickBooks 2006 has finally become the small business accounting solution that it always has had the potential to be.

Single user prices range from $49 to $399 on the street and directly from Intuit at www.quickbooks.com. Multiuser editions also are available.