I, too, have used MS Money for quite some time. I have not really used the ‘budgeting’ side of it, but I have used the expense tracking and investment tracking sides to great effect. I am also using MS Money to track business expenses reported on schedules C, E, & F.
As you might gather from my handle, I can certainly offer more expensive alternatives, but I think Money is good enough for a start-up. The key is setting up the g/l accounts in a manner that makes filing the returns very easy.
It works well enough, and it came pre-installed on my last two laptops so it did not cost me anything.
Unfortunately, my friend doesn't think at all like an accountant. She's a people (and cat) person, not a numbers person.
Good chance that there is near zero overlap between those programs that you (or I, for that matter, who would have been wearing a green eye shade if they hadn't invented computers needing software) would find useful, and those programs that my friend could make any sense of.