Acclivity has announced AccountEdge 2011 for Mac and Windows. The latest version of their small business accounting software marks a new era for the 20-year old desktop application, with a feature list including an app for iPad and iPhone, a new time-tracking web application, and advanced retainers and progress billing capabilities.

“We’re happy to announce our iPad and iPhone app will let people take their business on the road,” says Managing Partner Tom Nash. “You will be able to enter sales and expenses from anywhere and sync that data with your company’s Mac or Windows desktop version of AccountEdge.”

AccountEdge Mobile is currently available in the Apple App Store (iPad only, with the iPhone version soon to be released). The free app syncs cards, items, activities, and jobs, to create quotes and orders, and service and time billing sales, activity slips and expense transactions.

Time Tracker is a web application that lets employees and sub-contractors enter time sheets and activity slips remotely, whether they are across the office, across town, or across the country. Time Tracker lets users apply time to both jobs and payroll, and then sync with AccountEdge 2011.

Time Tracker is soon to be released and is free while in beta, with a "modest" subscription price to be announced at a later date.

Progress billing is new in AccountEdge and allows for work to be billed as completed, with the option to bill by percentage of a total quote, by a percentage for each line item, or by invoice line items individually in dollars or percentage. Contractors, architects, engineering firms, and others that bill by project or by job can use AccountEdge to manage the invoicing of an entire project from start to finish.

Retainer management, new in AccountEdge 2011, lets attorneys, graphic designers, and others that work on retainer receive payments and add expenses to a retainer account to pay bills on behalf of clients. A minimum retainer balance can be set, and replenishment requests and printing of customer retainer statements can be completed with a single click.

For a full list of new features available in AccountEdge 2011, go to http://www.accountedge.com/mac/features/ for AccountEdge for Mac. AccountEdge is available through the AccountEdge web site (http://www.accountedge.com) and other online outlets, mail order catalogs, and select retailers. AccountEdge is priced at US$299 for new users, and $159 for upgraders (it's $249 for the Network Edition).