CPA Technology Blog

Accounting Technology Fashion Weeks, 2011

The last week of October and the first week in November each year is where many of the major conferences are held.  National conferences from CCH, Thomson Reuters, and the Sleeter Group take place this time of the year, and many state CPA societies have large conferences for their members.  These conferences are also where publishers announce new products and services for the coming year.  Most of us in the accounting technology business are running around the country trying to speak on various topics, take webinars on the big announcements from the publishers, write up what we learn, and in our spare time, travel to the next site and, occasionally, sleep.  (Nah – we don’t really sleep.  It’s a blur of receipts, airplane peanuts, taxicabs, and caffeine this time of the year.)

Some major trends have emerged from these announcements.

• Mobile is the new “must have” product offering.  CCH and Thomson Reuters both had big announcements (CCH, TR) about mobile strategy in the last week, and both promise more to come in the year ahead.  The new apps work on smartphones and tablets, and have expanded to include not only Apple’s iOS (iPad and iPhone) platform, but also includes the popular Google Android smartphone platform. 
• Hosting will be the way many locally-installed applications first move away from on-premises installation.  Many hosted offerings are helping organizations move to the cloud without giving up the option of running an application on their internal servers in the future.  Some notable examples include:
• Microsoft’s Office 365 bundle of hosted Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync
• Intuit’s hosting provider program and Sage’s hosting programs (PT, Simply, MAS 90) are making on-premises accounting software available from anywhere.
• CCH announced a new hosted version of its ProSystem fx Scan tax document automation application.
• Cloud-based offerings are moving from the “hot and trendy” category to the “must have wardrobe basics” section.  We are seeing the cloud-based offerings from many of the publishers mature, and there are a wide range of new, on demand offerings from every publisher. 
• Yesterday Intuit announced a new version of its QuickBooks Online product targeted at accountants (the aptly-named QuickBooks Online for Accountants).
• Doug Sleeter’s keynote address yesterday detailed many major cloud offerings, and his conference is the ground-zero for the web-based accounting revolution.  Major releases from Sage, Intuit, Xero, SmartVault, and many others will all be announced at this event, which continues through Wednesday in fabulous Las Vegas.
• Thomson Reuters announced a new product to be launched next year – Workpapers CS.  This tool will be a new cloud-based integrated workpaper management system, and although I didn’t get a chance to see it during my trip to San Diego for their conference, I’m hoping to see it in the near future.
• CCH announced the integration of Speedtax’s SaaS applications into the CorpSystem product line, and also highlighted how the newest versions of their solutions make it possible to rapidly develop, create, and deploy applications such as the new CCH Tax News Highlights App, which was designed, created, and deployed to mobile devices running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android OS reportedly in just six weeks.

There is some consolidation going on in the marketplace, especially for venture-funded companies.  This summer, major acquisitions include Drake’s purchase of tax document automation provider Copanion, CCH’s purchase of sales tax provider SpeedTax, Sage purchased Alchemex (the publisher of most of the Sage business intelligence offerings), and enterprise computing giant Citrix purchased secure portal provider ShareFile.

Where in the world is Brian?  Well, I spoke at the Thomson Reuters User Conference in San Diego and at the PA Institute of CPA’s Emerging CPA’s Conference last week.  This week, I’ll be speaking at the Tennessee Society of CPA’s Accounting & Auditing Conference (today), then jumping on a plane to the CCH User Conference in San Antonio, and wrapping up the week at the Arkansas Society of CPA’s Technology Conference on Thursday and Friday.  (I really wanted to go to the Sleeter Conference in Vegas, but there were not enough hours in the day for me to make all of that happen). For more information about the goings-on, follow me on Twitter (@BFTCPA).  There’s some really fabulous stuff rolling out to the profession this week, dah-lings.

(Now, where’s that sugar-free Red Bull I just opened….)

2010 K2 Enterprises 9th Annual Quality Awards

Hammond, LA – September 27, 2010 ‐‐ K2 Enterprises today announced the recipients of their annual quality awards as follows:

· Reseller Program – Avalara

· CPA Program – QuickBooks ProAdvisor – Intuit, Inc.

· Installation Channel/Methodology – Intacct

· Reseller Channel – Sage North America

· New Product – iPad – Apple, Inc.

· New Module – MIP Fundraising Online - Sage

· New Technology – Intelliconnect - CCH

· Management Strategy – Thomson Reuters

· Technical Support – Conexxus

· Customer Satisfaction – AccountantsWorld, Inc.

· Ease of Use – Confirmation.com – Capital Confirmation

· Marketing Communications – Thomson Reuters

· Overall Quality – Windows 7 – Microsoft, Inc.

· Tax – Pro Systems fx - CCH

· Accounting Industry Press Coverage – CPA Technology Advisor

· Audit – Knowledge Coach - CCH

· Financial Reporting - BizNet

· Workflow – XCM – XCM Solutions

· Small Business Solution - Freshbooks

· Small CPA Firm Solution - Drake

K2 Enterprises is the premier provider of technology continuing professional education (CPE) in both the United States and Canada. With seminars in over 46 states in 2010, 1,000+ presentations, special events such as their turn‐key Annual Technology Conferences, CPE & Ski, K2 Enterprises ‐ Canada, they are the largest provider of technology CPE in North America.

K2 Enterprises CEO, Val Steed, announced five new categories this year.  “We feel like after nine years we needed to expand our awards a bit.  The accounting technology industry is becoming more specialized and I would imagine we will add a few more categories next year”.  Executive Vice President Randy Johnston said “I am especially pleased to see so many good candidates this year.  It certainly makes voting much more difficult and expanding the awards is the right thing to do”.

K2 Enterprises Annual Quality Awards are determined by a simple voting poll of the K2 Enterprises instructor team. The polling members of this team are Randy Johnston, Will Fleenor, Val Steed, Bob Spencer, Alan Salmon, Lawrence (Mac) McClelland, Tommy Stephens, Brian Tankersley, & Ilene Eisen.

K2 team votes are influenced by, end user feedback, and experience from consulting and extensive teaching. Detailed biographies on each of the polled members can be found at:

http://www.k2e.com/team

 

K2 Enterprises Websites:

www.k2e.com

www.accountingsoftwareworld.com

www.cpafirmtech.com

www.totallypaperless.com

 

Press Contact:

Caron Choate

K2 Enterprises

1250 SW Railroad Avenue

Suite 240A

Hammond, LA 70403

caron@k2e.com

(985) 542-9390

Thoughts on Auditing from Across the Pond

Dennis Howlett, an accountant/blogger who is a British CA and lives in Spain recently posted to his blog (www.accmanpro.com) a story about Auditing and traditional financial reporting being over.  Interesting discussion (and it makes me wonder why our business model is exempt from being reengineered)... thought some of you gentle readers might enjoy it.  I may post a rebuttal after I've contemplated the article and formulated my thoughts.  Whether you agree or disagree, it is thought provoking.

Howlett's post: http://www.accmanpro.com/2009/02/03/auditing-its-over-cuz-its-not-smart/

The post that started it all: Umair Haque's "Smart Growth Manifesto":
        http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/01/davos_discussing_a_depression.html

Blogs, Wikis, and Portals. Oh My!

Many tech consultants have observed that CPA's are "technology challenged" as a group.  This statement is generally followed by an apology to "*-challenged" people for lumping them in with a group such as us.  (As an aside, I tend to believe that the technology aptitude of CPAs follows a bell-curve just like the tech ability of any profession - there are leaders and there are followers in every group, and I choose to think of myself as a leader rather than a member of an impaired group).

With this in mind, two electronic publishing technologies have recently swept the web.  The first, blogs/newsfeeds, has been written about extensively in the press.  Most of you who don't know me personally from either my practice or seminars are probably here because of Eva Lang's article on blogs from the June 2005 Journal of Accountancy.  The second, wikis, has not been discussed as much, but represents a way for charitably minded professionals (or maybe just those of us with egos out of control) to share their knowledge with others. 

A Wiki is like a user-maintained encyclopedia, with the readers contributing articles as they look for information on a topic.  The granddaddy of all wiki websites is wikipedia.org.  This site is typical of most wiki sites I've interacted with.  It has a great deal of useful information, but it also has a great deal of garbage in its ranks.  One example - we're all very sick of the Gwen Stefani song, "Hollaback Girl" (actually I heard entirely too much of it, to the point that it was ingrained in my brain).  I looked "Hollaback Girl" and "bananas" up at Wikipedia (HG)(B) and at at urbandictionary.com (HG)(B).  Note the difference in the two sets of definitions - Wikipedia has well edited and thought-out definitions, with discuss the commonly used definitions of the words, while UrbanDictionary has about six definitions for each word, some of which don't even make sense.  Moral: Some wiki good, others bad.  Choose carefully, and check before you link.

(At this point, many of the parents of teenagers are telling their kids that they are grounded for various issues related to "Hollaback Girl" and racy music videos, and the rest of you are wondering what in thunder Gwen Stefani has to do with accounting and technology.... Well, here it is-

The POINT

We all remember the promise of CPA2Biz, and how it necessarily had to fall short of the huge expectations of all websites after the "dot com" crash of 2001.  This week I received links to two interesting sites (Intuit's TaxAlmanac and First Horizon's CPA First Resource) seeking to join AccountantsWorld, CPA2Biz, AccountingWeb, AICPA, and your State CPA Society as your daily portal of choice..  Both Tax Almanac and CPAFirst Resource appear to be vendor-controlled resource listings, and strike me as hybrids between a blog and a wiki.  Intuit's venture, TaxAlmanac, appears to be more of a Wiki than a blog (the main page includes:

TaxAlmanac is a free tax research resource brought to you by Intuit (http://www.intuit.com). It is a revolutionary leap forward in how accountants research tax laws, create and share knowledge....

TaxAlmanac is written by tax professionals from across the country and takes advantage of the knowledge of academia as well as practioners - in short, the real tax experts. The site includes key information that tax professionals find useful when conducting research - including the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, Tax Court Cases, and a variety of Articles.

First Horizon's CPAFirstResource takes the form of an aggregation of weblogs instead of a wiki.  Its historical market data is actually a link to CBS Marketwatch, and its market news feed is a subscription based feed from financial data provider FinWin.  It is an interesting and useful site, and although it seems to sell First Horizon well, it appears to be in the early stages of its existence.

Blogs and wikis have funny names, and allow you to do some amazing things on your website on the cheap (for example, see www.bftcpa.com) and how I keep my website current with this blog.  CPA's should be careful with what they take on the internet on faith.  I like what I've seen of both these websites, and I think they will help practitioners be more productive and successful, but I also think they must be taken with a grain of salt (e.g. I don't think you'll see ads for Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Amsouth, Creative Solutions, or CCH on these sites), and the advice is probably only worth what you pay for it.  Although some good samaritans will do good work in these forums, some others may give bad advice, and only time will tell how well these sites will be edited for factual accuracy.

The other point to this rambling post is to call your attention to the democratization of the web.  Just four years ago, CPA2Biz was going to revolutionize how we all did business with our clients, and it did - by showing our profession that the democratization of information on the web makes it possible for any of us (even me) to have a website that looks as good as those of the big boys - we just have to decide what we want to accomplish and compile the data feeds which address those information needs.  The sooner you see the web and your intranet/Sharepoint site as a toolbox and not as a temple for super freaky geeks, the more opportunities you will see to optimize your communications to your target markets, and increase your team's productivity through targeted information sharing.  And that's what it is all about, isn't it?

Disclosure: I use Intuit's Quickbooks and Lacerte products, and am a fellow member of the Tennessee Society of CPA's, as well as a member of its professional development committee and the TSCPA Council,  TSCPA is First Horizon's partner in CPAFirstResource.com.  I am also a MS Registered Member, and teach courses for AICPA and Becker CPA review.  The thoughts here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect any of the above organizations in any way, shape or form.  Just like the fuel economy sticker says on the window of a new car, your mileage may vary.