Coffee Gets Nervous
QuickBooks Premier Accountant 2010
Intuit Inc.
http://quickbooks.intuit.com
In its eternal quest to unseat caffeinated beverages as the single greatest source of workplace productivity, Intuit has really upped the ante with the recent release of QuickBooks Premier Accountant 2010, building on past improvements and adding new ones to its industry-leading accounting software.
To start, it has improved the performance of the solution as a whole, so that even though QuickBooks boasts more capabilities than ever, the company claims it launches, runs and generally functions as much as 15 to 20 percent faster than before. Intuit has also enhanced its Client Data Review to help accountants more quickly clean up their clients' all-too-frequent mistakes. New features there include the ability to easily and quickly reclassify transactions, troubleshoot inventory, and write off invoices. The company has also improved the performance of its Intuit Statement Writer add-on, with more customization and document templates available.
The improved Company Snapshot, with more at-a-glance reports, more customization, and better drill-down capabilities, should help accountants and their clients improve their businesses, while a new Marketing Center add-on makes it easy to pull data from QuickBooks to identify potential marketing targets (such as those who haven't made purchases in a while), and lets users create e-mail marketing campaigns online.
A further addition is the new QuickBooks Document Center, which lets you store all manner of electronic files - such as invoices, receipts, contracts and the like - and attach them to QuickBooks records for easy reference and sharing. The service is currently free for up to 1 MB of storage, with a sliding pricing scale for more storage space.
Intuit has also created a new online resource to match new users with an appropriate QB consultant to get them up and running faster, and launched an App Center to highlight Web-based applications developed by third parties for QuickBooks.
With all that, it should come as no surprise that QuickBooks owns a huge chunk of the accounting market. But then, coffee owns all of it.
Time, and Time again
Smart Time
Smart WebParts
www.smart-webparts.com
When we here at New Products look back on our day and wonder where the time went, no one cares - but if you or your staff find yourself wondering that, it means you may well be losing billable hours. At that point, you can either "remember" it (make it up), or turn to Smart Time, a new Web-based time capture and entry system that knows what you're doing even when you don't. It searches network applications that the individual timekeeper uses, such as Exchange, document management systems, VoIP switches and the like, and presents the timekeeper with a detailed journal of their daily work activities, to which they can then assign project codes. The more you use the system, the more its relationship engine identifies which phone numbers and e-mail addresses correspond to which engagements, so it becomes more self-sufficient.
May Contain Needles
Find Combinations add-in for Excel
Lyquidity Solutions
www.lyquidity.com/findcombinations
When we describe something as a needle in the haystack, we mean that it's difficult to find, but we rarely focus on the fact that the needle represents a serious danger to hay-munching cows and unsuspecting hayriders. This thought came to mind as we considered Lyquidity Solutions' new Find Combinations add-in for Excel, which lets users analyze ranges of numbers in a spreadsheet to find the total for a selected value, which can prove extremely useful in discovering discrepancies and mistakes that could end up choking some poor cow. The add-in is free and works stand-alone, or with Lyquidity's ComplyXL for monitoring and controlling spreadsheets.
Never too Small
CertCapture
Tax Technology Services LLC
www.certcapture.com
Tax authorities are extremely egalitarian: No matter how small your business is, they're willing to audit it, and crush it with fines and assessments if you're not complying with all sorts of requirements, such as managing sales tax exemption certificates properly. Large companies can dedicate people and buy software to handle exemption certificates, but small businesses were on their own - until recently, that is. Tax Technology Services has released three different editions of its CertCapture exemption certificate management software, designed to offer small and midsized businesses of varying sizes the sort of capabilities previously reserved for large companies. The Silver, Gold and Platinum Editions are geared to different numbers of users and certificates that need managing, and all are Web-based.
Caesar's Waiting
Parish accounting system
Right Networks
www.rightnetworks.com
With their very long-term view, churches are naturally focused on more otherworldly concerns - and yet, with all the money pouring in from collection plates and raffles, and worldly outlays for steeple maintenance and all those candles, they still have to render unto Caesar and various other financial authorities (to say nothing of assorted bishops, Popes and the like). To help them, Right Networks has created a turnkey hosted accounting system that uses QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Payroll. The system offers collections of churches and parishes uniform, easy-to-use and transparent systems, with parish and diocesan users able to securely access church accounting data on the Web in real time, and should save church officials both money and time, freeing them up to focus on less worldly concerns.
Saved from Yourself
RoboForm Online
Siber Systems Inc.
https://online.roboform.com
Passwords serve two purposes: The first is to keep other people from accessing your private accounts. The second, less well-understood purpose is to keep you from accessing them. This added security is guaranteed by the fact that the average user will forget or lose most of their passwords, or have so many that they can't keep track of them and give up in disgust. If you want to breach this important security feature, consider Siber Systems' RoboForm, which is now available in a Web-based version. RoboForm Online lets you save all your passwords, log-ins and identities in a secure online "vault," as well as on your computer, and will fill in the appropriate information for you with a single click. Its security features mean your passwords will be safe from everyone - except you.
New and Improved!
Sage North America has made its Sage MAS 90 and 200 Extended Enterprise Suite V. 1.3 available as a hosted application on Applianz technology. ... CCH Inc. has partnered with Global Tax Management Inc. to make its CCH CorpSystem sales and use tax solution available for users of Oracle systems. ... Internet infrastructure services provider VeriSign Inc. has launched a Web site, https://www.verisign.com/smallbusiness, to offer resources on selling more, and more securely, to more customers online. ... MISys has released Version 4.0 of its MISys SBM manufacturing software, with a new Shop Floor Control module. ... Expense management solution vendor Concur Inc. has launched a version of its Concur Mobile for the iPhone. ... Construction management software vendor Maxwell Systems Inc. has released a new Estimating Touch Screen Monitor that lets contractors use an electronic pen to annotate computer images, navigate screens more quickly, and more. ... Compiere Inc. has released Compiere ERP Connector for Salesforce CRM to integrate the two solutions by synchronizing data between them.
Send information on new software, hardware, services and books to Daniel Hood at daniel.hood
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