Accounting Technology articles from December 2007

Accounting Technology archives from December 2007

The Lack of Power of One.
December 1, 2007... It seems like a good idea-provide products with a common code base and deep integration. Yet, both Microsoft and Sage Software are taking steps away from the concept of unifying their product lines, at least not in the sense that the two...

Avoiding disaster.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... Disasters come in all sizes, ranging from Katrina down to the person that accidentally wipes out a hard drive. But they all can cripple a business that doesn't plan for recovery. In "Preparing for the Worst," Associate Editor Alexandra...

Show Calendar.
December 1, 2007... DECEMBER 4 Fifth annual SAP Influencer Summit, SAP, Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, Boston. DECEMBER 9-11 Tax Update: Using the Latest Technology for Profitable Results. Sourcemedia. The Rio Suite Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas....

Practice Development News.
December 1, 2007... SAGE NAMES TOP RESELLERS Sage Software has named five top resellers for the year ended Sept. 30, with the listed dominated by some well-known names in the reselling channel. Steve Blythe's Blytheco, which carries the MAS 90/200/500...

Accounting News.
December 1, 2007... SAGE DUMPS MANAGEMENT Four top executives have left Sage Software in a move the company's English parent said stemmed from issues involving culture, and a move to more divisionally focused operations. Gone are CEO Ron Verni, CFO Jim...

Tax & Financial Planning News.
December 1, 2007... INTUIT DROPS SOURCE DOC Intuit has pulled its Source Doc scanning product from its 2007 tax software, after a year in which it faced technical difficulties. The system is supposed to recognize data from W-2 and 1009 forms, but there...

Preparing for the Worst: What actions can firms take to continue work in an emergency?
December 1, 2007... A fire at Joanne Day's office didn't cause her consulting firm to lose any money, time or even paperwork. That's because it was a fire drill that Day had staged in order to test whether her disaster recovery plan would work in case of a real...

MacQuarrie: Don't Back Up Everything.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... Backing up every application and every piece of data in a firm is costly. Many vendors charge based on the amount of data stored and how quickly customers want to retrieve it. Accountants looking to safeguard their files don't need to go...

Disaster Preparedness Checklist:.
December 1, 2007... Recovering from a disaster might not be as difficult for firms that prepare ahead of time. Here are some tips on how to get started: * Back up your files daily, preferably offsite * Devise a plan, put it in writing, and keep it offsite...

Tax Organizers-Worth the Effort?: Can anything make clients use these tools?
December 1, 2007... There's no doubt that one of the biggest challenges facing accounting professionals who offer tax organizers is simply getting clients to fill them out come tax season. However, Patricia Schwan, the practice director for the International...

Using Tax Organizers to Make More Money.
December 1, 2007... Attention all tax preparers who are interested in making an extra $11,000 this tax season. Some industry sources say that those tax preparers who don't stress the importance of tax organizers or don't even send them to clients at all are...

Growing into Non Profit Software: As organizations get bigger, off-the-shelf won't do.
December 1, 2007... When the size of the budget is small, not-for-profit organizations can use just about any brand of accounting software that is available. Typically the off-the-shelf offerings, such as Intuit's QuickBooks or Sage Software's Peachtree, fill the...

Making Projects Behave: More firms seek experts to keep projects on deadline and under budget.
December 1, 2007... Even if they don't plan it, most consulting firms end up with some kind of project management process. "Generally speaking, most of the better business partners develop [a project management approach], by natural evolution," says David...

A Project Manager Wears Many Hats.
December 1, 2007... Project leaders need to have some of the most diverse talents in an organization. The first requirement, according to business consultant Pam McGee, is the ability to focus on the customer. That is followed by the ability "to inspire a...

Sample Customer Assessment.
December 1, 2007... Rate the resources in the following categories. A scale for each provides a continuous range of possible points Budget size. Is the project considered by the customer to have a large budget? Considered large by the customer (2);...

New Products.
December 1, 2007... QUICKBOOKS 2008 The QuickBooks 2008 line concentrates on connecting with other applications and helping companies promote their businesses online. QuickBooks Pro and Premier (including an industry-specific edition for accountants) now...

Infor Sets out for Structure.
December 1, 2007... Structure and consistency are the driving forces behind Infor's channel program. After acquiring roughly two dozen companies in the past five years, the $2.3 billion software vendor needed to pick pieces from each business in order to hold...

Advertisers' Index 12/07.
December 1, 2007... Ad Appears Advertiser on page AccuFund 23 ADP Small Business Services 3 Blackbaud 29 Cougar Mountain Software 21 CCH Tax Group...

Bansali Plugs in to Online Accounting.(Company overview)
December 1, 2007... Chandra Bhansali and his wife, Sharada, could have retired after AccountantsWolrd sold its Windows-based Tax Relief tax preparation software to Thomson Creative Solutions for $20 million in July 2003. Instead, the couple continued pumping...

Editor's Note: Making Your Life Better.(Editorial)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... "Drive thy business or it will drive thee," said Benjamin Franklin, who must have forecast what we see today. A 2007 Litchfield Readership Survey of the Accountants Media Group found that 61 percent of our readers offer small business...

Supporting Accountants Who Support Small Businesses.
December 1, 2007... Accountants understand the complexities and pressures of running a small business. In addition to payroll and tax compliance, which can be hard enough, they know that small business owners also have to manage a wide variety of HR, worker's...

Challenges for Your Clients; Opportunities for Your Practice.
December 1, 2007... Like so many smaller accounting firm professionals, you're likely to be on the lookout for ways to diversify and grow your practice-as well as better serve the clients you have. Operational and resource issues, increasingly complex...

Web Portals Compliment Accountants Serving Small Business.
December 1, 2007... The difficulty shared by all accountants and businesses in general is the challenge of transferring information securely. Accountants work with sensitive data daily, and are supposed to know how to handle client information to keep it secure....

Financially Sound Strategy for Firms and Their Clients.
December 1, 2007... The single-service firm is quickly becoming an endangered species in the profession. Today, many professionals have adopted a full-service philosophy, offering their clients an array of services including tax prep, payroll, write-up,...

Financial Benchmarking for Small Businesses.
December 1, 2007... Put yourself in the position of your small business clients and ask: "What is the most beneficial service my CPA can provide to my company?" The answer is continuous improvement in the creation of wealth, in both the short term and long term,...

Easy and Profitable.
December 1, 2007... For decades, offering payroll services typically required a part or full-time staff member who was well-versed in managing payday entries, paying taxes, and filing forms. This hands-on payroll management approach was tedious and time-consuming....

Workflow Automation Software Powers Paperless Office.
December 1, 2007... CPA firms moving toward a paperless, technology-driven environment have learned that doing so effectively means implementing the right tools and re-engineering existing paper-based and paperless processes. Adopting technologies to scan, store,...

Optimizing Business Operations.
December 1, 2007... Document management technology has many benefits and they are applicable to accounting firms and by extension their clients. Some of key benefits include: Once documents are electronic, backup is relatively simple * Finding documents...

A Tool That Makes Sense of Financial Numbers.
December 1, 2007... Most people who run small businesses have a good understanding and working knowledge of the operations side of a business. They understand their customers, they know how to sell, and they know how to deliver good products and services. However,...

Real Savings Integrating Documents and Workflow.
December 1, 2007... Just storing documents or changing the way we work: Things to consider when combining a workflow and document system. Document Management has many known benefits promoting cost savings, but is going paperless enough in an effort to save...

Playing Well With Others.
December 1, 2007... Just as today's accounting firm provides an array of services to small businesses-everything from tax compliance, payroll, consulting, and financial statements, to bookkeeping and beyond-so too, should today's firm require more than a single,...

Doing All My Heavy Lifting.
December 1, 2007... Three years ago, after years of working as a CPA in public accounting and insurance, I ventured out on my own and started a small tax and accounting practice. I am a sole practitioner that built my practice through word of mouth, serving...

Managing Documents in an Occasionally Connected World.
December 1, 2007... As professional services firms move towards completely paperless engagements, several key questions arise. How can they meet increasingly stringent document and email retention requirements? How do they manage documents and workflow seamlessly...

Late Breaking News.
December 1, 2007... INTUIT COMING UP STRONG FOR 2008 Intuit QuckBooks is delivering a full set of solutions designed to help small businesses succeed. These include payroll, checks and supplies, training, credit cards acceptance, point of sale, and financial...

Editor's Note: The Year Ahead 2008.(Editorial)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... Hardly anyone who has gotten through elementary and secondary school has not seen the fortune-telling 8 balls, the ones that have brief answers floating around that come to the one clear area of the ball's surface after it has been shaken. ...

Survey: Staffing Leads Concerns for 2008.
December 1, 2007... Jobs, jobs and jobs. Unless the economy goes south in 2008, it's clear that tax, accounting and technology consulting firms continue to see a shortage of qualified job seekers as the leading barrier to growth. Not everyone is looking for...

People to Watch in 2008.(Company overview)
December 1, 2007... The roster of People to Watch in 2008 isn't just one of new faces. In many cases, it's a story of old faces in new places, people who have found themselves in new roles, some willingly, some less willingly. There are others who are...

Products to Watch in 2008.
December 1, 2007... First of all, this is not a list of top products in the tax and accounting market. It is a list of interesting products, products that have taken a different approach, some of which are new to the market. Most have provoked user interest. ...

Looking Ahead: Leaders Look at Trends.
December 1, 2007... Everyone would like to have a crystal ball to predict the future, and anyone buying technology services and products wants to know the direction these services and products will take. Accounting Technology asked four leaders in the...

Vendors Foresee a Healthy 2008.
December 1, 2007... There aren't a lot of publicly held companies that break out meaningful details about the outlook for the tax and accounting market each year as the numbers are buried in large companies and aren't material to results. But the numbers that...

Forget Accounting. There's Gold in Them Thar Medical Bills.
December 1, 2007... In a few years, some of the companies that have been historically thought of as playing in the tax and accounting market may be something completely different. That's because as the players look for faster-growing markets, some of the...

Some Exits of Note of 2007.(Company overview)
December 1, 2007... Every year brings change and 2007 has been no exception as executives who make decisions affecting the tax and commuting move on, some to better jobs in the same company but outside of the market. Others left for other opportunities, whether...