Accounting Technology articles from November 2007

Accounting Technology archives from November 2007

V Is for Vertical.
November 1, 2007... Verticalization is the name of the game, and it's being played across the accounting software community. At least, it's being talked about. The speed at which software resellers that handle general accounting software become specialists...

Giving Back to the Staff.(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Business is all about profits, and that's not going to change. But it's also about the people who help organizations achieve those profits, and dealing with their needs effectively is something smart employers do. That's the focus of "Home...

Practice Development News.
November 1, 2007... CLIFTON NAMES CIO Clifton Gunderson has named Barry Robinson as chief information officer of the Peoria, Ill.-based accounting firm to succeed Jeff Hapeman, who left the position earlier this year. Robinson will be responsible for...

Accounting News.
November 1, 2007... NETBOOKS DEBUTS Ridgely Evers, who wrote the code for the original QuickBooks, has come back to the market with an online product called NetBooks. Evers, CEO of the Rohnert Park, Calif.-based company, has put together a board including...

Tax & Financial Planning News.
November 1, 2007... INTUIT PROMOTES GOODARZI Intuit has moved Sasan Goodarzi, who had led the company's professional tax software business, to the position of SVP and GM of the company's Financial Institutions Division. Goodarzi previously served as VP of...

Intuit ProTax Improves Margins.
November 1, 2007... 2007 $291.8 Total Revenue $152.2 Operating income 52.2% Operating Margin 2006 $273.0 Total Revenue $135.8 Operating income 49.8% Operating Margin 2005 $265.0 Total Revenue $132.7 Operating income...

Show Calendar.(Conference news)(Calendar)
November 1, 2007... NOVEMBER 3-6 Sage Summit user conference. New McCormick West Convention Center Chicago. www.sagesummit.com/summit2007 NOVEMBER 4-7 CCH User Conference 2007 Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center. Grapevine, Texas....

Accounting Technology December's Coming Attractions.
November 1, 2007... Disaster Recovery Suppose there 's another Katrina? Worse yet, suppose the office upstairs has a pipe leak. Are you prepared to recover? Project Management After you sell it, how do you get it done? Resellers increasingly are...

Home for the Tax Days: Improving workflow is about a lot more than profits.
November 1, 2007... The long days and Saturdays tax preparers normally work during tax season may be less of an annoyance to Joe Fabiano than the rest of the 30 employees at Kirkland, Albrecht & Fredrickson. After all, he's single. But urged on by the staff,...

Scan First, Ask Questions Later.(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... As firms move toward making their businesses less reliant on paper, many of them have the process backward. They are scanning at the end of the tax preparation process, says Tom Davis, who owns Valdosta, Ga.-based Tom Davis and Associates, and...

The Check Is in...the Bank: Speed counts in the competitive refund loan business.
November 1, 2007... Like many tax preparers, Daniel E. Cavazos of Brownsville, Texas-based Cavazos Income Tax sees bank products, such as Refund Anticipation Loans as being a consumer-driven product. However, the tax preparers who offer them to consumers are...

Military Alert.(loans to military families)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Industry sources agree that when it comes to Refund Anticipation Loans, a major change for the upcoming tax season is that certain taxpayers who have received such products in the past many no longer be eligible-military families. Under...

Applications Made for Each Other: Trial balance and engagement software make a happy family.
November 1, 2007... Almost sixteen years ago, I authored a workbook focused on efficient use of microcomputer tools for audit, review and compilation engagements. At that time many accounting firms considered automated engagement tools "on the cutting edge" and...

Working In A Wireless World: Software vendors are answering employee demands to conduct more business functions on the go.
November 1, 2007... During his son's Little League All-Star game this summer, Eddie Elizando realized he had forgotten to process the payroll for the employees at his small CPA firm. If he didn't complete the task, he'd have to deal with a handful of angry staff...

IPhones in the Enterprise.
November 1, 2007... Technology lovers in any industry always want to be the first to get their hands on the latest new gizmo, but don't let employees push you into purchasing iPhones for the office, not just yet. At least one of the larger accounting firms...

New Products.(Buyers guide)
November 1, 2007... PEACHTREE BY SAGE 2008 The Peachtree by Sage 2008 product line focuses on improving daily tasks, such as invoicing, managing documents and designing forms. Customers who don't require the Business Status Center or product Navigation...

Intacct Seeks VARs 'On Demand'.
November 1, 2007... Intacct is revising its channel program once again, this time focusing on attracting more value-added resellers by throwing additional resources into specialized sales and marketing training. The private company, which provides Web-based...

Advertisers' Index 11/07.
November 1, 2007... Ad Appears Advertiser on page ADP Small Business Services 5 CCH Tax Group C4 Ceridian 3 Commercial Logic 11 Doc.It ...

Avalara's Kushniruk Tackles Sales Tax.
November 1, 2007... Marshal Kushniruk's job is to make paying sales tax less taxing for his customers. Avalara's executive vice president of strategic accounts and customer experience came onboard in early 2004, and headed to Microsoft's Convergence...

Editor's Note: Stimulating Your Debating Taste Buds.(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... See the cover? Rather intriguing, eh? I am fortunate to have one of those art directors who has a penchant for thinking way, way, way outside the box. But even with that in mind, he takes the time to read all the articles before he ventures out...

Thinking of Offering Payroll Services?
November 1, 2007... Here is the unspoken truth about payroll processing: despite all the hype, it isn't for most accountants! While it's true that Web-based, accountant-centric payroll solutions have made payroll processing both easy and hassle-free, most...

Taking the Paper Out of Payroll.
November 1, 2007... There's been a lot of discussion recently of businesses large and small "going green." Of course, it's the nature of business to hang on to endless stacks of papers in overflowing file cabinets. Given the amount of records CPAs preserve and...

Paperless Payroll Increases Firm Profits.
November 1, 2007... For decades, accounting professionals have shunned payroll. CPAs considered payroll time-consuming and tedious, and were unwilling to be burdened with paycheck processing, tax payments, and filings on multiple due dates for many clients. ...

Build Profits and Client Relationships.
November 1, 2007... The question isn't really "How should firms handle clients' payroll processing?" But, rather, "Why should firms handle their clients' payroll?" The obvious answer is increased profits. Payroll is a 10 billion dollar business and a highly...

The Clear Choice.
November 1, 2007... There's a strategic question hanging over today's accounting firms like a dark cloud of uncertainty: Should we handle our clients' payroll processing in-house or do we outsource it to a service provider? I believe that if CPA firms take a...

The CPA as Trusted Advisor.
November 1, 2007... Today's multitude of quality payroll technology choices put CPAs in a great position to serve as trusted advisors to their clients. There are outsourced services, in-house software, software as a service (SaaS), and everything in-between, and...

Choose the Right Partner.
November 1, 2007... Many small-business owners are finding themselves caught in a "Catch 22" situation: The more their businesses grow and prosper, the less time they spend actually running the company. Why? Because as the number of employees in a business...

The Payroll Debate Gets Fuzzier.
November 1, 2007... For years there has been ongoing CPA debate surrounding how best to serve a client's payroll and tax needs. The debate has been fueled by our nation's 6.2 million small business marketplace and the increasingly complex tax and employee...

Fish or Cut Bait?
November 1, 2007... Everyone's checklist for payroll software has the same basic criteria. Can I afford it? Check. Will I be able to make money with it by increasing my productivity without too much of a learning curve? Check. Will I satisfy my clients payroll...

Paperless Options in Payroll Processing.
November 1, 2007... Admittedly, paper still has its place in the traditional office even though the concept of "going paperless" has been around for many years. The payroll process is one such function that has remained very paper-intensive even after the...

Outsource or Not, It's Still a Matter of Time.
November 1, 2007... Whether a firm chooses to outsource payroll processing or keep it in-house, CPAs may continue to have their hands full. That's because outsourcing does not eliminate the formidable task of manually entering employee time records. Bookkeepers...

Late Breaking News.
November 1, 2007... Connecting Businesses Further expanding its support for members of the Sage Software Accountants' Network, Sage Software has announced a new member locator tool accessible to the public via multiple Sage Web sites. The goal of the new tool...

Index to Review Categories.
November 1, 2007... Tax Preparation pg. 4 Client Write-Up pg. 18 Practice Management pg. 22 Document Management pg. 27 Time and Billing pg. 32 Trial Balance pg. 36 Online Payroll pg. 40 Not-for-Profit Accounting pg. 44 ...

Editor's Note.(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Each year it's the same thing-there are things to buy and a limited amount of money to spend it on. What's an accounting professional to do? Of course, nobody has to have a new package in every major category every year. That is a...

Product Index.
November 1, 2007... TAX PREPARATION SOFTWARE ATX /Kleinrock (1040) pg. 7 CCH (ProSystem fx Tax) pg. 7 Drake Software (Drake Tax Software) pg. 10 GoSystem RS (Thomson) pg. 10 Greatland (Great Tax) pg. 11 Intuit (Lacerte) pg. 11 ...

Tax Software 2007.(Company overview)
November 1, 2007... The face of professional tax preparation is changing and is likely to evolve significantly over the next five years as technology developments revolutionize some of the most basic processes in preparation and reviewing, outside of the already...

Tax Season Notes-Things to Look Forward To.
November 1, 2007... NEW ELECTRONIC PIN SIGNATURE REQUIREMENTS The IRS is imposing new requirements eliminating the need for a paper signature document to be sent in support of e-filed individual income tax returns submitted by tax practitioners (IR 2007-130)....

Write-up Is Dead-Long Live Write-up: The death of write-up is greatly exaggerated.
November 1, 2007... For years, the death of write-up services has been predicted by many who felt the labor-intensive service to be too low end to be worthwhile to most CPA firms. These services were thought to be lower-end services easily replaced by accounting...

Swiss Army Software: Practice management software can handle many tasks.
November 1, 2007... One of my most dreaded rites of summer has always been packing up the kids for summer camp. Regardless of how prepared I think I am, the few days before camp are always spent in a mad rush running around to find those last few "must have"...

Tax, Accounting Research Help On One Platform.
November 1, 2007... To help facilitate workflow efficiencies in today's tough marketplace, firms are increasingly aiming to work on a single platform that is easy to navigate, compared with working with multiple platforms with different interfaces for tax and...

In Search of Document Management: Applications are bringing the goal closer.
November 1, 2007... It has failed to materialize so often that the "paperless office" achieved the kind of stature usually reserved for the Lost City of El Dorado or the Holy Grail. Yet in the last two years, a quiet revolution has taken place in the field of...

Large Firm Technology-Sole Practitioner Price.
November 1, 2007... Wayne Schulz operates a one-man accounting software consulting and reselling business. But he has been able to give his firm an appearance of an operation that is sophisticated and far larger than it really is. Here, the Glastonbury,...

Time On Your Books?: If you don't bill, you don't get paid.
November 1, 2007... It's little wonder that in many accounting firms, time and billing is still one of the most critical applications, as well as the one most likely to be neglected. The reasons for this importance are underscored by the name of the application...

A Balancing Act: Trial software still fills an important role.
November 1, 2007... Years ago, write-up software was fairly rare, and the market was dominated by trial balance applications. Over the years, as software applications have become more sophisticated, the distribution has switched, with write-up becoming...

Advertiser's Index.
November 1, 2007... Ad Appears Advertiser on page AccuFund 21 CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business C4 Creative Solutions C2 Serenic Software, Inc. 8,9 (c)...

Have Payroll Will Travel: Online payroll systems add flexibility to the processing job.
November 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...

Profiting from Nonprofits: These packages can solve the special needs of NFPs.(not-for-profit )
November 1, 2007... Though you wouldn't know it from the software, there are serious changes under way in the market for nonprofit accounting solutions. The software showed only small, incremental improvements last year, largely because 2006 was a year of...

And Remember To Market.(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Marketing is the series of activities that generates interest in a firm's products and services. Many firms think they'll achieve their growth goals when they do a lot of promotional activities. In this snapshot Jennifer Wilson, cofounder...