Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting has signed an agreement to acquire Acclipse Limited, a provider of online accounting software for firms in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region.
The acquisition is expected to be completed on Friday, July 13, Wolters Kluwer said Thursday. The deal will expand Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting’s existing cloud-based systems for accounting firms and corporate finance professionals.
Acclipse will become part of the Tax & Accounting division's Asia Pacific-based business, marketed as CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business. The company has 55 employees and is headquartered in Christchurch, New Zealand. Acclipse services over 1,000 firms and 10,000 licensed users in New Zealand, Australia and the Asia Pacific.
"The acquisition of Acclipse will further advance Wolters Kluwer's leadership position in providing software and cloud solutions for accounting firms and finance professionals, and our strategic expansion into collaborative accounting solutions, building on our acquisition of Twinfield in the Netherlands in 2011," said Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting CEO Kevin Robert in a statement.
The Acclipse acquisition will complement Wolters Kluwer’s 2011 acquisition of Business Fitness New Zealand, a provider of practical content and workpapers to accounting firms, to standardize many of the common processes for compliance work. Business Fitness New Zealand is already integrated with the Acclipse Document Management system, so Business Fitness New Zealand clients will benefit from its content being available online.
Acclipse CEO Mike Chisholm said his company is pleased to join CCH. "This acquisition will allow Acclipse to remain focused on our core competency—offering accountants and their clients great online accounting software,” he said. “The global reach of CCH and Wolters Kluwer will allow us to expand the reach of our iFirm and iBizz products, and integrate these with relevant content sources to bring accountants and their clients together and achieve significant productivity improvements.”
