Accounting Technology articles from April 2007

Accounting Technology archives from April 2007

Putting Things in Perspective.(Editorial)
April 1, 2007... "Dave called and someone almost drowned by the pool today," my wife said as she greeted me at the door. "I heard the word 'almost,'" I quickly responded. The person was fine and the lifeguards at the community pool had done what they are...

The VAR Market.
April 1, 2007... Accounting Technology discusses trends that affect value-added resellers in its annual "State of the VAR Market" and the companion "VAR 100." The business has changed dramatically in the past year as conditions are fuelling merger and...

Street Talk: Reader Views.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... What handheld device has had the most dramatic impact on your business operations? The cell phone. I was in Europe this past summer and was able to return a client's call while in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The client's issue wasn't...

Practice Development News.(SWK Technologies acquired DM Systems)(UHY Advisors sold accounting software reselling business to the TM Group)(Blytheco and Macdonald Consulting Group merged)
April 1, 2007... SECURITY TOP TECH ISSUE The American Institute of CPAs has named Information Security as its top technology issue for the fifth straight year as other security-related issues also made the list. These other issues were No. 2, Identity...

Accounting News.
April 1, 2007... SAGE'S SHERIDAN DIES Susan Sheridan, briefly vice president and general manager of Sage's Accpac operations, died on Feb. 13 after a two-and-a-half-year battle with brain cancer. Sheridan, 51, was named to her position only three...

Tax & Financial Planning News.
April 1, 2007... TAL NET DROPS Wolters Kluwer reported that EBITA for its tax, accounting and legal division dropped to $26 million for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, down 10.3 percent from $29 million a year earlier. Fourth quarter revenue for TAL,...

Show Calendar.(Calendar)
April 1, 2007... April 22-24. Information Technology Alliance Spring Members Meeting, Four Seasons, Chicago. www.italliance.com April 22-25. Sapphire '07 Atlanta. SAP user conference. Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, Ga....

The State of the VAR Market 2007: Customer demands and staffing spur growth.
April 1, 2007... Scotte Hudsmith has no doubt that the future requires his firm to grow. "We need to be big enough and stable enough to create the right talent and create a path for them," says Hudsmith, the president of Nashville, Tenn.-based LBMC...

Weintraub: Small Resellers Seek Security.
April 1, 2007... Many smaller resellers are looking for a way out, says Doug Weintraub, managing director of Socius, an Ohio-based reseller that itself was formed through merger and acquisition. "We are getting a lot of inquiries from smaller VARs that have...

Hudsmith Leaving LBMC.(Scotte Hudsmith)(LBMC Technologies)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... The plans discussed by Scotte Hudsmith as CEO of LBMC Technologies might come about. But they won't be direct by Hudsmith. After the initial interview for this story was conducted, Hudsmith said that he and his partners had agreed to part...

VAR 100 A Year of Change: Market forces have reshaped the software reselling channel.
April 1, 2007... The world of Value-added Resellers that handle financial software has changed dramatically in the past year and the results are reflected in the rankings. The revenue for the No. 100 firm has moved to $3.7 million this year from just under...

VAR 100: The Selection.
April 1, 2007... Companies that were picked for inclusion in the VAR 100 list were selected based their status on Dec. 31, 2006. Companies that were in business as of the date were listed, although some have been acquired or merged with other organizations...

The Var 100.
April 1, 2007... Rank Company '06 Revenue (M) Employees Accounting Software 1. Tectura Tempe, Ariz. $230E 1 1,700 Dynamics AX, GP, ...

Keeping up with Taxes: The pace of change makes research tools essential.
April 1, 2007... With fewer than 400 clients, Ken Sibley, managing director of CPA firm Sibley and Co., may not have the expansive client base of some other firms, but that doesn't mean his need for accurate tax research should be underestimated. "Our...

Tax Research.
April 1, 2007... Aiming to tap into the migration to the Web and offer a new solution for those accounting professionals who enjoy interacting with peers to address questions on tax research, Intuit built internally and launched the TaxAlmanac.org site in late...

Have Payroll Will Travel: Online payroll systems add flexibility to the processing job.
April 1, 2007... Have you ever processed an entire payroll while on vacation? Approved a timesheet while commuting to work on the train or perhaps from the beach in Nassau Bahamas? A few years ago these scenarios would have been laughed at by most business...

Managing e-Overload: Communicating with clients online can be both a help and a hindrance.
April 1, 2007... Try scheduling Bill Parish for a meeting, and the accountant will tell you to log on to his Web site and make an appointment yourself. Messages left on his voicemail are automatically transcribed and sent to his inbox for his records. The...

Choose Subject Lines Wisely.
April 1, 2007... These days, it's not uncommon for people to receive 80 or more emails on a regular basis. Detailed, accurate subject lines can help recipients sort through the bulk and organize related items faster. Here are examples of bad subject...

Take RSS for a Test Drive.(Really Simple Syndication)
April 1, 2007... Accountants looking to test drive RSS before encouraging firmwide adoption don't have to invest any money to do so, and even its name indicates how easy it is to learn. Really Simple Syndication technology essentially serves as an...

New Products.
April 1, 2007... UBCC EREPORTS Universal Business Computing Company has added eReports to its General Ledger Write-up and Payroll Service Bureau programs, enabling users to email reports in PDF format without additional steps required by the payroll...

Deltek Doubles Down on Channel Efforts.(Company overview)
April 1, 2007... It's official- or at least it's starting to be. Deltek is formalizing its reseller network with the Deltek Partner Program, dedicating staff and providing incentives and training. Deltek provides project-oriented businesses with accounting...

Advertisers' Index 4/07.
April 1, 2007... Ad Appears Advertiser on page CCH ATX 21 CCH Tax Group C4 CCH TaxWise 15 Commercial Logic 3 Drake Software ...

CCH's Sabbatis Understands Customers.
April 1, 2007... Mike Sabbatis knows CCH inside and out. He began his career with the company in 1981 installing software and troubleshooting problems. After leaving for a sales and consulting stint with Computer Language Research (later purchased owned by...

'Virtual CIO' Transforms Firms to Digital.
April 1, 2007... Going paperless is a goal many CPAs are eyeing, but aren't necessarily sure how to achieve. John Higgins serves as a virtual chief information officer for those accounting firms committed to making the digital leap, but lacking the IT...

Opening Thoughts: Money: Where it is and Where it is Going.
April 1, 2007... Wealth! My dictionary says it is an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources. In other words, money. Just like that song from "Cabaret," money apparently makes the world go round. Or does it? Most people believe that money...

Financial Planning News: Building Wealth.(National Association of Securities Dealers and New York Stock Exchange Inc. forming a new organization)(retirement planning according to lifestyle)(investing defined benefit plans)
April 1, 2007... OVERSIGHT MERGER ON DECK Forming one organization Members of NASD have approved bylaw changes needed to combine regulatory functions with NYSE Group and form one organization to oversee U.S. securities brokers and dealers, according to...

Estate Planning: Beware of the Deficit Reduction Act: What accountants need to know.
April 1, 2007... Craig Smith, a long-time client, comes in for his usual financial services and planning advice. In the course of the meeting, you learn that his 82 year-old mother is going into a nursing home. Craig asks you, as his financial advisor, what he...

Investment Opportunities: Swap, Hold, or Fold?: Playing your hand in a down market.
April 1, 2007... How do you best advise your clients when the market is falling? Most savvy CPAs relish a temporary down market; this is when they can help their clients distinguish themselves from the herd. When the red-hot bull market of real estate was...

Cover Story: The Great Wealth Transfer: Will Your Services Be In Greater Demand?
April 1, 2007... The greatest wealth transfer this country has experienced will continue over the next 10 to 25 years. Although a lot of wealth was also generated in the late19th and early 20th centuries, this was held by relatively few in the U.S. population....

Financial Planning: Business Succession Strategies That Work: Values, Morals, and Matters of the Heart.
April 1, 2007... A seminal event occurred in 2006 that will have a profound impact on family businesses in the years to come. The first baby-boomer turned age 60 and here is why it's such a big deal. Many of these baby-boomers own successful businesses and...

Estate Planning: The Incredible Sinking ILIT Policy.(irrevocable life insurance trust)
April 1, 2007... One of the standard techniques in estate planning has been to recommend the purchase of a policy of life insurance to be owned by an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT) or to recommend the transfer of a policy owned by a client to such a...

Investment Planning: How To Identify An Advisor You Can Trust.
April 1, 2007... When it comes to home repairs, individuals can be categorized into two broad groups. The first group is what we might call the "Home Depot Crowd," the do-it-yourselfers (DIY). This group has many subgroups. One subgroup belongs because they...

Retirement Planning: Making Most the of Your 401(k) Plan.
April 1, 2007... Everything in life involves risk, and investing for retirement is certainly no exception. Knowing how much risk you're comfortable with can go a long way in preventing sleepless nights and uncertainty during volatile markets. * PAY OFF...

Retirement Planning: The Silver Bullet.
April 1, 2007... In a pivotal study of American retirees in 2002, gerontologist Ken Dychtwald found that the single biggest driver of retiree satisfaction was not in the assets they had accumulated, but in their financial preparedness. So there you have it....

My Two Cents: Fitting Social Responsibility Into the Investment Process.
April 1, 2007... As socially responsible investing (SRI) becomes more popular, advisors might consider what to do when clients want to integrate an SRI component into their portfolios. It's a mistake to begin by choosing investments based on clients' SRI...

Inside the Top 100.(ranking accounting services)
April 1, 2007... Tradition dictates that a 20th anniversary is gifted with china. While plates and saucers may represent an ideal way to celebrate two decades of anything, we'll eschew tableware in favor of presenting our readership with the 20th edition of our...

New challenges, new growth, new list.(for accounting profession)
April 1, 2007... In last year's Top 100 Firms report, we asked whether the accounting profession could sustain a pace of growth anywhere near the torrid 15 percent that it hit in 2005. This year, we have the following answer: Maybe, but it's too soon to tell....

2007 Top 100 Firms Databank.(Accounting services firms)(Company rankings)
April 1, 2007... Overview Top 6 % Firms over % Firms under % Total Top % firms chg. $100 mn chg. $100 mn chg. 100 Firms chg. Revenue (in $mn) 29,644.08 9.65 3,695.73 19.26 3,457.02 15.70...

Beyond the Top 100: Firms to Watch.(Accounting services firms)(Brief article)(Company rankings)
April 1, 2007... The bottom edge of the Top 100 is not fixed in stone, and this year the recasting of our rankings has introduced a new crop of firms whose revenue figures and growth rates put them within striking distance of the list. Here, ranked by revenue -...

New approaches to old issues.(accounting services and human resources management)
April 1, 2007... Help wanted! Over the past few years, that almost desperate mantra has echoed throughout the accounting profession, as firms continually wrestle with an old question: Is good help really that hard to find? The answer depends largely on whom you...

Strong staples, but SOX slows (sort of).(Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002)
April 1, 2007... Attest services, business valuations and litigation support are - for another year - the top reported areas of growth for members of the 2007 Top 100 Firms. Steve Sherman, national leader of the valuation services practice at Big Four firm...

Balancing work/life no longer optional.
April 1, 2007... There's no question that the promise of "work/life balance" is on the lips of every firm in search of talent, but this year's Top 100 Firms are all going out of their way to deliver on that promise. Mentoring initiatives, programs geared...

Economy propels regional boom.
April 1, 2007... The economy continued its growth during 2006, thrusting the regional firms in the 2007 Top 100 to record profits and average revenue growth of almost 17 percent, well above the overall Top 100 rate of 11 percent. The pace of economic...

Checkpoint: The Integrated Solution Tax & Accounting Professionals Want NOW.
April 1, 2007... Today's tax and accounting professionals are required to handle increasingly complex technical issues with a multitude of competing demands on their time. The challenge is to ensure you have the resources to help you understand and implement...

The Top 100 local firms by region.(Accounting services firms)(Statistical table)(Company rankings)
April 1, 2007... (excluding the Big Four and national firms) Rev. Central Midwest (19 firms) Headquarters ($mn) % chg. Crowe Group South Bend, Ind. 422.99 16.07 Plante & Moran Southfield, Mich. 242.56 13.07...

The Top tax firms.
April 1, 2007... Few would argue that tax work is not just a core service at most accounting firms, but also the area where they most frequently find themselves competing with firms from outside the profession. Rather than ignore these important competitors, we...

The 2007 Top 100 Firms.
April 1, 2007... Rank Revenue Personnel 07 06 Firm HQ Chief Year $ % Off- Part- % Profes- % Total % exec end mn. chg. ices ners chg. sionals chg. emps. chg. Fee Split (in...

2007 Firm Highlights.
April 1, 2007... * Amper, Politziner & Mattia: Added a Westchester, N.Y., location for its Litigation & Valuation Group. Formalized its International Services Group. * Anchin, Block & Anchin: Fastest growing niches - business management and litigation...