Sage North America has opened an online portal for small businesses that provides them with free online invoicing and other services.

Blum Shapiro Consulting, a unit of CPA and businessadvisory firm Blum Shapiro, has become a reseller for business intelligence andforecasting applications provider Prophix Software.

Accounting Technology magazine has published its annuallist of the Top 100 value-added resellers ofaccounting software.

Like everybody else these days, WebCPA is now jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.

Like many good ideas, Weiser's Buddy System started over drinks.

How can companies turn the Securities and Exchange Commission's XBRL mandate into an opportunity? By implementing an XBRL-enhanced document management strategy as part of their internal corporate filing workflow, which will both boost compliance and save money.Document management is based on applying the principles of structured content - documents that have been chunked into meaningful component parts and tagged in a systematic fashion. In the case of the corporate financial reporting process, the structure now being applied to financial content is XBRL, the financial XML standard that promises to transform, and perhaps revolutionize, how companies create and use their financial information to meet business objectives. With the SEC mandating the use of XBRL, now is the perfect time to take advantage of these two converging industry best practices.

DYNAMICS AX GOES GREENMicrosoft has added the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard to Microsoft Dynamics AX to help midsized businesses capture data that will allow them to measure indicators related to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions as part of their business processes. The tool will be available to Dynamics AX 2009 customers for free.

This sounds like an easy question, but it may be one of the most important decisions your firm makes as you move forward in rapidly changing times. In some firms, the name of the person will be obvious, while in other firms, people may name multiple people or simply say, "No one is really in charge of technology."Even in firms where the name is obvious, you should ask, "Do we have the right person in today's economy and rapidly changing technology?" Hopefully the answer is "Yes," but let's answer some probing questions before simply accepting the current IT leader. You should have a single person who acts as a focal point for leading IT. This does not necessarily have to be someone in the IT department. It can be a partner or other firm leader.

CCH has introduced IntelliConnect, the next generation of its widely used online information service, Tax Research NetWork.

The best of times, worst of times description is one of those overused literary allusions. But it may well apply to the business of selling accounting software over the last year.

Accounting software provider Cougar Mountain has released Denali 2.7, completing the company’s core accounting line with the Denali Purchase Order module.

In order to include provisions in the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters has updated its Planner CS program.

The gallery of faces listed as “people you may know” paraded a number of accountants and software resellers, along with a picture of my 18-year-old daughter sticking her tongue out.

CCH has expanded the audit modules in its Accounting Research Manager database with expert guidance on topics such as construction and not-for-profit accounting.

Jean-François Champollion, the man who discovered the Rosetta Stone, which provided the clues to the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs, had an advantage: He didn’t have to call tech support or read software documentation to figure out the meaning of those carvings. And if you have seen that Rosetta Stone, the software sold in those chunky, yellow boxes that nobody at the airport seems to buy, I would say language is the easy part of the process.

A year ago, the emphasis in document management systems remained on the core areas of scanning, storing and retrieving documents. But the emphasis has changed in the past year, making it clear that document management alone will give way to integrated workflow in which document management is only one part.This makes sense, given that the concept of managing documents simply to produce a "paperless office" never really got off the ground. It wasn't that accountants were disinterested in saving trees or eliminating the cost of storage. Rather, it was the fact that document storage was relatively cheap and the systems used to store and retrieve documents were already integrated into the practice workflow.

COUGAR MTN. NAMES NEW PREZ/CEOCougar Mountain Software has appointed Chuck Gossett as the accounting software company's new president and chief executive, succeeding his father, Bob Gossett, who is retiring from the company he founded in 1982 but will remain chairman of the board. His son Chuck has been a full-time employee since 2006 and has served on the family-owned company's board of directors for many years. He has also been a local business owner for over three decades and will retain a passive interest in one of his businesses, Gossett and Davis Appraisal Services.

Knowing what the future may hold for you and your firm is tremendously valuable in these uncertain times. While I can't provide every answer, I can offer some tools that will improve your thinking and the accompanying results. Perception is real, so how you perceive the current situation determines your reaction and behavior (good or bad), and that reaction will greatly influence the results. Steven Covey calls this the "See-Do-Get" paradigm.Over the past several months, I have witnessed leaders at numerous firms present varying tones when meeting with employees. These range from, "We must cut every possible cost in order to maintain partner earnings" to "Our firm has decided not to participate in this recession."

Automated sales tax solutions provider SpeedTax and CPA and business advisory firm Wipfli have partnered in a venture to deliver SpeedTax’s software-as-a-service sales tax applications to Wipfli’s Microsoft Dynamics GP customers.

Prophix Software, a provider of business intelligence applications and services headquartered here, has partnered with BI and performance management consultancy Paradigm Analytics, whereupon Paradigm will offer Prohix’s Corporate Performance Management applications to its PerformancePoint Server and ERP customers.