Accounting Technology articles from December 2006

Accounting Technology archives from December 2006

Sage Whacks the Stack.(Sage Software Inc.)
December 1, 2006... Sage has delivered on a pledge outlined more than a year ago by Sage Software CEO Ron Verni as it struck a deal last month for the worldwide use of MySQL, a database engine. To go back to the reasons for this move, just examine what Verni...

The Sales Game.(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... When most software resellers started their business, everybody was on equal footing. It was all new and few had any expertise in running operations. But now, the market has matured and customers are more technology savvy, business is...

Need Insights?
December 1, 2006... Editor Robert Scott also writes "Consulting Insights," a free, twice-monthly electronic newsletter that addresses issues concerning the consulting and reselling market. It's insight with an attitude. If you want to subscribe, put the following...

Street Talk: Reader Views.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... What is the biggest improvement you would like to see in the tax software you or your clients use? The biggest improvement would be in terms of seamless sharing between local staff, remote staff, and clients. This involves an integrated...

Practice Development News.(SAP hired Steve Thompson)(RSM McGladrey has named Tom Dobosenski)(Tectura acquired Euroinfo Systems)
December 1, 2006... TECTURA ENTERS INDIA Reselling giant Tectura resumed its global growth with plans to acquire Euroinfo Systems, a New Delhi-based company that will give Tectura development services for Dynamics AX and NAV and global offshoring...

Accounting News.(Radiant Systems Inc. increase in revenue for the third quarter)(Epicor net income fell for the third quarter)(Serenic Software Inc. posted a profit)
December 1, 2006... SAGE INKS MYSQL The Sage Group, which promised earlier it would consider using non-Microsoft database engines, has signed an agreement with MySQL. MySQL, which is an open-source database, will be used in the 2007 versions of Sage...

Tax & Financial Planning News.(Unger Software launched financial planning software)(Securities and Exchange Commission has notified Intuit that its investigation for backdating of options)(Centage Corp. relocated its headquarters to Massachusetts)
December 1, 2006... METHUSELAH LINKS TO DBCAMS Unger Software, which makes the Methuselah financial planning plan, has released a data interface between its product and the dbCams line from Financial Computer Support. New York-based Unger says the link...

Show Calendar.
December 1, 2006... December 4-6 Fourteenth International XBRL Conference & Exhibition, Philadelphia. http://conference.xbrl.org. December 12-13 Ohio Society of CPAs Business & Technology Expo. Greater Columbus Convention Center....

Accounting Technology January's Coming Attractions.
December 1, 2006... Open Portals. Open Data? Just what is a portal anyway, and what does it mean to tax and accounting professionals? Can portals give users a view of their data that makes them more productive? Tax Season Preview It's tax season time...

The Selling Game: Passion is necessary, but skills take a reseller further.
December 1, 2006... It wasn't that long ago that there wasn't much to the sales techniques used by Stan Kania and his team at Software Link. "When I first started doing sales," recalls Kania, owner of the Atlanta-area based Sage reseller, "it was show me the...

Syspro: Start at the Beginning.(Joey Benadretti and his management techniques)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Resellers will have a happier ending if they concentrate on a better beginning in the sales process. That's the view of Joey Benadretti, president of Syspro US, which markets manufacturing software. And like Microsoft and Sage Software,...

Track Selling and the Science of Selling.(Max Sacks International)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Buddhists may have the Eight-Fold Path, but for the Max Sacks Track Selling System, the processing of selling has seven steps as part of a process that the company calls the science of selling. The seven steps are coupled with six buying...

Solomon: Owners Have the Upper Hand.(Net<at>Work's Alex Solomon concentrated on customer relations for growth of the company)
December 1, 2006... As a reselling company gets bigger, it has more sales know-how, and has a better track record in competing with smaller VARs. Right? It doesn't always work that way, according to Alex Solomon, one of the founders and owners of NetWork. As...

The ABCs of Certification.(accountants)
December 1, 2006... Does it really make a difference to a client that Louis Gutberlet is Louis Gutberlet, CPA, CQA, CMA, ATA, ABA? Just how valuable are all those letters on his business card? "It's a very simple thing for me," says Gutberlet, who has been in...

Making Sense of Alphabet Soup.(certification courses for certified public accountants)
December 1, 2006... The letters may roll off the tongues of credential holders easily, but beyond the broadly accepted designations, such as CPA, many technical and professional credentials are only vaguely familiar outside of their home turf. Credentials...

Finding and Branding Tax Pros.
December 1, 2006... The IRS estimates as many as 600,000 tax preparers are getting paid for their work. But with just roughly 300,000 CPAs and 45,600 EAs, who are the rest of these people? The National Association of Enrolled Agents, National Society of...

NFP Software Evolves: Users can benefit from the maturity of nonproift accounting applications.
December 1, 2006... Technology has evolved rapidly over the last nine years and the nonprofit accounting software world has worked hard to keep pace with the changes. Not only have reporting requirements become more stringent, but the Internet has become...

ATF: Life After Payroll.
December 1, 2006... After-the fact payroll isn't one of the hottest areas in software. Many firms offer it only as a convenience to clients, not as an active practice area. In fact, it's something of a program for companies that don't need to hire a...

Paying to Stop at One Shop.(payroll processing software)
December 1, 2006... While firms do not look to get specifically into after-the-fact payroll, many are looking to get into payroll services as businesses increasingly look to their accounting firm as a one-stop shop. In fact, a payroll research report described it...

Quick Takeaways for ATF.(after-the-fact)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Has your firm received a request from several clients to offer after-the-fact payroll? If so, industry observers have offered some quick tips that will prove helpful. * Be sure that the program can handle the type of clients the firm is...

New Products.
December 1, 2006... Bookkeeper 2007 Bookkeeper 2007 incorporates a redesigned user interface that provides pending checks and invoices to print, payables, receivables, and bank account balances on one screen. Other enhancements provides the ability to...

Intuit's Bennett Eyes a QuickBooks World.(Steve Bennett)(Interview)
December 1, 2006... When Steve Bennett joined Intuit in 2000 as president and CEO, Intuit had about 4,500 full-time employees and revenue of nearly $1.1 billion. When the company's fiscal year ended on July 31, it employed about 7,500 people and had revenue of...

NetSuite Breaks for Vertical Expertise.
December 1, 2006... Sometimes a break is for the best. After skipping its reseller conference in early 2005, NetSuite returned with a vengeance this October, looking to take charge of countless vertical industries through its channel program. It's a new...

Advertisers' Index 12/06.
December 1, 2006... Ad Appears Advertiser on page AccuFund 27 ADP Small Business Services 5 ATX/Kleinrock 1 Blackbaud 21 Canon...

Wineries Toast Management Software.(Elypsis offering e-commerce software for wineries)
December 1, 2006... Those bottles of bubbly bringing holiday cheer to so many company parties can serve as big lumps of coal in the stockings of winery owners who don't have the right accounting packages. They must keep track of the special magnum-size gifts...

Index to Review Categories.
December 1, 2006... Tax Preparation pg. 6 Tax Research pg. 16 Client Write-Up pg. 20 Practice Management pg. 26 Time and Billing pg. 36 Trial Balance pg. 41 Not-for-Profit Accounting pg. 46 Financial Planning pg. 51 ...

Editor's Note.
December 1, 2006... You can't tell the players without a scorecard. In this case, the scorecard happens to be the reviews that tell practitioners about the tools that they use-or rather, it's about telling them about the tools that they are considering purchasing,...

Index to Review Categories.
December 1, 2006... Tax Preparation pg. 6 Tax Research pg. 16 Client Write-Up pg. 20 Practice Management pg. 26 Time and Billing pg. 36 Trial Balance pg. 41 Not-for-Profit Accounting pg. 46 Financial Planning...

Product Index.
December 1, 2006... TAX PREPARATION SOFTWARE 1040 (ATX /Kleinrock) pg. 7 ProSystem fx Tax (CCH) pg. 8 UltraTax CS (Creative Solutions) pg. 8 Drake Tax Software (Drake Software) pg. 10 Great Tax (Greatland) pg. 10 Pro...

Tax Season: The Year Ahead: The trends of the past are the trends of the future.
December 1, 2006... In one way, the big story of the tax preparation market is not the continuing consolidation of vendors, the increasing price competition, integration of products, or the growing importance of the Internet. All of those things, of course,...

One-stop Tax Research: Tax research users are looking for greater alignment between software and content.
December 1, 2006... What's the best approach to tax research? Go with a one-stop shop? Or maybe it's like going to the doctor, you often need a second opinion? It can be like that when practitioners choose tax research services. Despite the effort of some...

Addressing Research Needs.
December 1, 2006... LexisNexis provides a wide variety of tax research tools. But it found its users wanted to not only have it all, but to be able to find it without searching every service individually. So in the early spring, it introduced the LexisNexis...

Beyond Traditional Tax Research.
December 1, 2006... "In today's global environment, companies want more than the traditional tax research consisting of rates and product taxability," says Mehrdad Talaifar, Sabrix's vice president of Business Consulting. When it comes to tax research, the...

Tax Research Vendors.(software industry)(Directory)
December 1, 2006... BNA Washington, D.C. (800) 372-1033 www.bnatax.com CCH Riverswood, Ill. (800) TELL-CCH www.cch.com Kleinrock Publishing Rockville, Md. (800) 890-1503 www.kleinrock.com LexisNexis Dayton, Ohio ...

Write-Up Heats Up: The category gets hot with more offerings and more features.
December 1, 2006... Record-breaking temperatures have topped the headlines this summer-unprecedented heat waves continue to occur throughout the country, shattering century-old historical records. One surefire way to "beat the heat" is to head indoors and catch up...

Software That Puts It All Together: Practice management applications assemble key functions.
December 1, 2006... Not too long ago, a CPA firm might have purchased a package to track due dates for client tasks. If might have also invested in an application to track staff schedules and engagements. Each piece of information in its own database, making the...

The Revolution Arrives: Document management begins to live up to its promise.
December 1, 2006... The concept of the "paperless office" has been around for nearly three decades, long enough for it to have become an almost meaningless piece of jargon-the revolution that never happened. Yet in 2006, the ability to electronically store and...

The Time and Billing Investment: This software promises a good return to its users.
December 1, 2006... Fewer software packages have the potential to provide as big a return on investment as time and billing. Used properly these software packages turn idle time into money. Coupled with the latest technologies-including wireless email, paperless...

The Right Balance: Trial balance applications-When write-up isn't right.
December 1, 2006... Many accountants think of trial balance software as a subset of write-up. After all, the ultimate product of both applications is a set of financial statements. The intent of each application, however, is quite different. For many...

Nonprofit Software Focuses on Accountability.
December 1, 2006... If there were a single word to describe the state of the not-for-profit marketplace, it would be "accountability." The scrutiny given many nonprofits in the wake of the tsunami and hurricane crises of the past 18 months, combined with some...

The Challenge of Financial Planning: Pay attention to security, identity theft, and pension problems.
December 1, 2006... Three serious challenges are coming to the financial planning industry, and while none of them reflect poorly on the otherwise excellent software and ASP offerings, they portend serious problems that financial planners will have to manage in...

Advertiser's Index.
December 1, 2006... Ad Appears Advertiser on page AccuFund 23 CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business C4 LexisNexis 5 Positive Systems 1 ...

The Return of Payroll: As accountants re-enter the business, the Web becomes more important.
December 1, 2006... Over the past five years, the reality television show American Idol has soared in popularity, gaining more viewers with each episode. For millions of households, incorporating this show in their weekly viewing has become a must. Similarly,...

Fixed Assets Face Changes.(financial software)(Product/service evaluation)
December 1, 2006... Transitions are difficult for any class of software, but fixed asset management programs have had more than their fair share of adjustments in the past few years. What began as a simple spreadsheet noting assets and their depreciation...

Editor's Note: Striking the Right Balance.(accountants)(Editorial)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... "I hand him a lyric and get out of his way." This was the modus operandi Oscar Hammerstein described in his relationship with Richard Rodgers. It was perhaps the perfect partnership. Like the artwork on the cover, it was just the right...

What are the Signs of a Genuine Partnership?
December 1, 2006... We believe that the most important indicator of a genuine partnership is that the partner in the position of strength puts the interest of the other partner ahead of its own. The mission of AccountantsWorld is to help accountants advance...

Commitment To Investment And Innovation.(CCH Computax Inc. creating new tax softwares)
December 1, 2006... "With the backing of Wolters Kluwer, CCH is investing more today in our software and research technology than at any other time in our history," said Kevin Robert, President and CEO of CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, in his keynote address to...

Intuit Reinvents QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
December 1, 2006... Many accountants strive to expand their services and increase their revenue but they don't have the proper tools to market themselves and spur their growth. Professional associations such as Intuit's QuickBooks(r) ProAdvisor(r) program are...

OnLine Payroll: A Win-Win Partnership.( PayCycle)
December 1, 2006... At PayCycle, we are dedicated to creating winning outcomes for accountants and their clients. Our leadership in the on-demand payroll market and rapid adoption by thousands of satisfied professionals across the country speaks to our commitment....