Farm vs. firm
CCH Community
CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business
http://community.cchgroup.com
We doubt many farmers go on Facebook to play FarmVille, the social networking site's oddly addictive game about managing a virtual farm. On the other hand, we'll bet that plenty of accountants, auditors and tax pros join CCH Community, the software and research provider's new social networking site. It offers plenty of blogs, discussion forums, information resources and networking opportunities for the profession, as well as updates on CCH products and offerings, and ways to connect with the company. Think of it as FirmVille - only it's not a game, it's keeping up with the trends and information that are crucial to your firm's ongoing success.
Arm garters online
Digits Calculator for iPad and iPhone
Joshua Distler and Shift
www.shift-apps.com
In our headlong rush into the digital future, we often overlook some of the more useful aspects of the old physical ways of doing things. For instance, it's easier to add a giant column of figures on a computer or calculator than on an old-fashioned, tape-equipped adding machine - but then you have no tape to check when errors crop up. The Digits Calculator for the iPhone and now for the iPad elegantly solves this by giving you a digital tape for double-checking, and goes one better by letting you make corrections and edits directly to the tape, and then automatically updating the total. You can also label items in the tape with comments, e-mail the figures for use elsewhere, and share and back up tape files through iTunes. It just goes to show there's some value in the old ways. Next up: the green eyeshade app, and digital arm garters.
Recovery audits
Lavante Recovery
Lavante
www.lavante.com
Statement audits can discover un-offset credits in a company's suppliers' records, but they can also be time-consuming and complicated. Lavante Recovery automates the entire process to make sure companies recover as many dollars as possible. The on-demand solution makes it easy to communicate with suppliers, collect their accounts receivable data, discover credits and return them to the company. It also yields useful insights into suppliers, and can help identify and correct systemic sources of transaction errors.
New corporate tax tools
onesource Property Tax 9.4.02 and Reporting for onesource Indirect Tax
The Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters
http://onesource.thomsonreuters.com
Thomson Reuters continues to expand and improve its onesource platform for corporate tax professionals, with new versions of its property tax and indirect tax reporting solutions. Property Tax Version 9.4.02 lets users coordinate all their property tax functions in one place, with a Tax Manager interface that provides instant updates and easy access to all data, new graphs and reporting tools for tracking the valuation and tax history of a property, and more. The new reporting for onesource Indirect Tax, which is available as an add-on, includes customizable views of data with the ability to drill down into audit detail, new analysis tools, a library of common reports, and more.
More to lose
BullGuard Mobile Security 10
BullGuard
www.bullguard.com
It used to be that the most valuable thing you could lose while out of the office was your wallet, and if you're like us, that never contained more than three or four crumpled, sweaty singles, a couple of pawn tickets, and some maxed-out credit cards, which could easily be cancelled if lost. Now, though, we're all carrying smart phones jam-packed with valuable data, from personal details like bank account numbers to client information like, well, bank account numbers. Not only are they vulnerable to loss, but using them to surf the Web leaves them open to viruses and spyware, which means that every time you use yours on the bus or in a bar to download Angry Birds, you're running a wide range of appalling risks.
Fortunately, BullGuard Mobile Security addresses all of these risks: It includes a mobile antivirus engine; locks your phone to prevent unauthorized access if it's lost or stolen; lets you track it down through GPS; and has a Wipe function to destroy all the data if the phone is unrecoverable. It also allows you to save your contacts and calendar in your online account, so you can restore them to a new phone, if necessary. It's that, or have the thing chained to your wrist.
On the wall
RingO Mounting System
Vogel's
www.ipadonthewall.com
As with all things Apple, the iPad isn't just a useful tool - it's something of a work of art. With that in mind, it seems perfectly natural that people would want to display them through something like Vogel's RingO mounting systems, which let you mount iPads (and some other tablet computers) on the wall, in your car, on your desk or just about anywhere else you want to add an aesthetic touch. You could create a gallery of your favorite digital adding machine tapes (see above), or of highly confidential client data (see below). Or you could use it to get a little hands-free work done, like when you're eating lunch at your desk. You wouldn't want to sully a beautiful iPad with your greasy hands, would you?
Always adapting
Adaptive Planning Spring 2011, and Sales Planning & Analysis and Multi-Entity Planning & Analysis
Adaptive Planning
www.adaptiveplanning.com
On-demand business performance management solution provider Adaptive Planning announced the release of its Spring 2011 version, as well as two new solutions, Sales Planning & Analysis and Multi-Entity Planning & Analysis. The Spring 2011 release includes the new multiple instance capability, which allows complex businesses to maintain and coordinate multiple levels of modeling, preserving the autonomy of independent organizations while offering greater control for headquarters. It also offers a new Hosted Connector, to make it easier to integrate with other cloud-based systems like Salesforce.com and Intacct, as well as enhancements to its already-deep integration with NetSuite. In addition, channel partners can now white-label Adaptive Planning for their customers.
The new Sales Planning & Analysis solution lets sales and management teams streamline and enhance revenue forecasting and sales expense planning, improve pipeline and sales analysis, and integrate sales and financial plans. Multi-Entity Planning & Analysis, meanwhile, is aimed at helping larger companies coordinate planning, reporting and analysis among their divisions and business units, to decrease reporting times and simplify administration.
New and improved!
The latest release of Thomson Reuters' Software as a Service for CS Professional Suite lets users access their applications and data through the iPad. ... Concur has added a number of features to its Concur Breeze mobile expense-tracking solution, including the ability to capture car mileage, track spending on business guests, itemize hotel costs, personalize expense reports, track ancillary airline fees, and more. ... Maxwell Systems has released Version 2.6 of its ProContractorMX construction business management software.
