INTUIT BOWS TO BLOCK, WILL CHANGE ADS: Intuit Inc. will alter a $25 million ad campaign for its TurboTax software after H&R Block took the company to court, saying the advertisements were inaccurate.Launched January 9, the television and radio commercials were the centerpiece of the campaign that claimed "more returns were prepared with TurboTax last year than at all the H&R Block stores combined." Intuit agreed to change the commercials after a court ruled that the company could not run ads containing the claim through April 30.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, where Block filed the lawsuit, has not yet ruled on Block's claims for monetary damages and a permanent injunction on running the ads.
Block makes its own software called TaxCut. The company said in its court filing that it prepared more than 26 million returns last year, and pointed to a 2005 conference call where Intuit reported that taxpayers used TurboTax to prepare 21 million returns. Both companies will likely have to produce stronger substantiation for their user numbers.
SAGE, CCH EXPAND STRATEGIC ALLIANCE: Sage Software and CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, announced that they have entered into a new agreement to expand their strategic alliance.
Sage will now have the ability to provide its customers with access to a wide range of CCH information resources, and CCH is considering ways to leverage Sage solutions to enhance its own corporate market offerings. The companies are also exploring continued product integration between Sage accounting and ERP solutions and CCH income tax, sales and use tax, and accounting solutions.
The agreement also includes CCH's acquisition of the Sage Practice Solutions line of business, including Sage Practice Manager, Write-up and Document Manager. The transfer of the business will hopefully allow CCH to offer Sage Practice Solutions' customers better links with CCH products for a complete set of information resources, services and products from a single source.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Sage Software employees supporting the Sage Practice Solutions business line will become part of the CCH team. Customers will continue to work with their Sage Practice Solutions service representatives to ensure a seamless transition to CCH.
The companies first announced their alliance aimed at delivering new solutions to the accounting market in May 2004. Since then, the two have collaborated on product integration projects between CCH ProSystem fx Tax and the Sage CPA Practice Manager and Sage FAS Asset Accounting products.
NETSUITE UNVEILS PARTNER PROGRAM: NetSuite, an on-demand provider of business management software applications, has rolled out its first partner program with 30 business partners in 14 different industries.
"Last spring, we rolled everything into the NetFlex platform - configuration, customization and an application builder - so other companies could build entirely new applications within NetSuite," said Sean Rollings, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite.
As all partners will be using this Standard Object Access Protocol platform, NetFlex, to build their third-party applications on top of NetSuite's base accounting, customer relationship management and e-commerce applications, the partner program was dubbed the NetFlex Application Program.
Partners who have already joined the program are in such industries as automotive services, e-commerce, health care, payroll services, professional services and retail.
"These are not core processes to businesses, they are addressing very specific needs in a certain industries," said Rollings.
Future partners can join the NetFlex Application Program free of charge during the next three months, and applications received in the next six months will be certified free of charge. After three months, there will be a $7,500 charge to join the program for each application certified.
More information and details on how to join the NetFlex Application Program are available at www.netsuite.com.
