After years of languishing as a peripheral accounting service, payroll has become one of the hottest trends adopted by CPA firms.

Recent technology and vendor news

Four firms share how they're managing their customer relationships

A roundup of reseller news from the previous month

Microsoft Dynamics GP partner The Resource Group will launch a series of webcasts beginning April 10, designed to educate companies about the hidden costs of entry-level accounting systems.

Epicor Software Corp. has filed a copyright and intellectual property infringement lawsuit against technology consultant Alternative Technology Solutions, which claims to represent the vendor.

Zoho has released upgrades to its Web and mobile Zoho CRM product which include BCC Dropbox, an automatic BCC feature, and integration of MailMagnet, an email filtering function for mobile devices.

During the recent Microsoft Convergence 2013 user and partner event we caught up with Jim Bowman, president and chief executive of SBS Group and inquired about their status as a top reseller, Master VAR and the state of the reseller partner profession in general.

BlumShapiro has partnered with corporate performance management(CPM) software provider Tagetik to make CPM support services available to their client base across the United States.

This week I've decided to give my take on the mega-con that is Microsoft Convergence 2013 as well as the company's views on being more cloudy and mobile.

Microsoft Dynamics Master VAR Tribridge took the opportunity during the Convergence 2013 user and partner event to announce the addition of two new affiliates to its network, CBR Technology and MIC Business Solutions.

Microsoft Dynamics' plans for its products' future are heavily focused on the cloud with some mobile and social aspects, specifically with its latest releases.

Acumatica seems to have rounded out its spate of high-level appointments with the recent hiring of Jeff Wilson as its new chief financial officer.

A recent Sage North America survey of small to midsized businesses found that laptops and smartphones were the most commonly used mobile devices by employees to access work-related information while out of the office.

In a move similar to Facebook’s, cloud accounting software maker Xero will only be developing future mobile apps for Apple and Android platforms, foregoing HTML 5.

Microsoft Dynamics will start enabling mobile functions for Microsoft Dynamics AX users, which will include native experiences for smart phones and tablets, and will work “first and best” on Windows Phone and Windows 8.

SAP has released the SAP Fraud Management analytic application powered by SAP HANA, the latest analytics tool from the enterprise software maker designed to integrate with most ERP systems in order to detect, investigate, analyze and prevent irregularities or fraud activity.

The long-standing communication impasse between accounting software used by businesses and business software used by accountants is finally beginning to dissolve, thanks to the emergence of new cloud-based business intelligence solutions.

Sometimes where you're going is more important than where you've been, accountants and consultants are realizing this for their clients and figuring how to capitalize, but in my case rather than looking at the week that was I'm eyeing next week's major user and partner confab that is Microsoft Convergence 2013.

Sales tax and compliance automation service provider Avalara has introduced AvaTax Consumer Use, its automated consumer use tax offering ,which will be integrated with most billing, financial and ERP systems – the first of which will be Microsoft Dynamics ERP products.