Electronic tax prep provider Orrtax Software Solutions has released its 2007 IntelliTax Program and Setup package for professional tax preparers.

As Washington struggles to fix the alternative minimum tax to prevent it from spreading to an estimated 23 million taxpayers, consumer tax prep software vendor 2nd Story Software is offering a peek at how the AMT would affect tax returns prepared under either scenario with its TaxAct software.

Sage Software said it reached $1.01 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2007, a 54 percent increase over last year.

MYOB introduced MYOB Premier Accounting 2008, its new small business accounting application for Windows.

Sage is putting its money where its corporate mouth is, and in a way that’s a departure from past practice.

Avalara aims to make the process of calculating sales tax less taxing and more relaxing.The company is so serious about their message that they’ve adopted an island theme for their exhibition booth at technology trade shows, complete with tiki-hut-like decorations and margaritas.

ACCOUNTANTSWORLD BRINGS ACCOUNTING RELIEF TO WEBAccountantsWorld has released its Accounting Relief software with Web 2.0 features that allow accountants to collaborate with small business clients.

Innovation and technology are powerful forces in commoditization. Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term “creative destruction,” a process that involves several stages, beginning with emergence and moving on to growth, status, and a depleted industry.It doesn’t take long to think of several industries that have moved through these stages. Some have transformed themselves to stay relevant, while others have expired. The lifecycle is much shorter now, and commoditization is occurring at an increasing rate. The accounting profession is not exempt.

CCH debuted a Web-based tool designed to find local incentives that can reduce income, property, and sales and use taxes, as well as identify enterprise zones and non-tax financial incentives.

The Bonadio Group accounting firm has released a business intelligence and performance management system aimed at CPA firms.

Copanion released GruntWorx, a Web-based application that captures and organizes tax return documents and data from clients.

Accounting firms need to become more intelligent businesses by better leveraging the time and knowledge of their professional staff, according to a survey released at the CCH user conference.

Most accountants have stopped worrying about their clients bringing bookkeeping in-house. Even with a client performing their own bookkeeping, there's plenty of work that only an accountant can perform, including making adjusting and closing entries, and producing compilation and review reports.In many firms that prepare tax returns for their clients, write-up software is used in lieu of a trial balance application to prepare the client's data for tax processing. Between these engagements, and the clients who would still prefer that you perform the bookkeeping, there's still plenty of need for a good write-up application in many practices.

While partner value and compensation continue to be topics that attract considerable attention at firm summits and practice management conferences, fear of the unknown often trumps any motivation for change or improvement.The Balanced Scorecard - which connects compensation to a firm's objectives - has emerged within many firms during the past few years, but some still resist any new approach. There must be a compelling reason to change, which usually results in winners and losers.

CCH DEBUTS NEW CORPSYSTEMRIVERWOODS, Ill. - CCH has introduced CorpSystem, a line of software for corporate professionals who do tax and accounting work.

Technology Group International has upgraded its enterprise resource planning software, Enterprise 21, with user interface improvements and extra features.

CCH has begun selling its document management system, ProSystem fx Document, in an application service provider version that allows accounting firms to access it online.

Sage Software announced general availability of Sage BusinessWorks 50 Accounting, Version 8, the latest release of its business management software.

Sage Software enhanced its Accountants' Network with new incentives for members while also announcing an upgrade to its Accpac Insight business intelligence software.

Business management software provider NetSuite is unveiling a new component to their application development and integration platform, SuiteFlex, in an effort to create more customization and ease for their customers.Launched today during the company's fifth annual partner conference, NetSuite Revolution 2007, the SuiteBundler component will allow value-added resellers to "bundle" together vertical systems, add-on applications, and end-to-end business process customizations developed with the other components of SuiteFlex -- SuiteBuilder, SuiteScript and SuiteTalk. The technology also includes a host of new micro-vertical capabilities spanning a variety of markets such as software, agriculture equipment dealerships, seaport marina management, point-of-sale retail, shipping materials franchises, electronics wholesale, distribution, pharmaceutical distribution, and human resources."What we've done," said Craig Sullivan, NetSuite vice president of product management, "is allowed these VARs with vertical expertise to take the NetSuite application and to deploy within it, using these technologies, their best practices, their expertise for specific target business, and then resell the application and expertise over and over again."Historically, Sullivan said, many VARs have worked with traditional software vendors that have enabled them to tailor systems to certain markets, but at a high price both for them and their customers."When they move from a traditional software model to the NetSuite application and understand the power of our capabilities," Sullivan explained, "They said, 'Well, hey, I want to be able to deploy this to this next customer of mine and why should I have to re-implement it?' We built this SuiteBundler capability specifically to allow them to very quickly and easily deploy those configurations and customizations out to target customers. Once they've replicated their bundle out to another customer, they can go and work with that customer to further tailor and configure it for their specific needs. We've taken away a lot of the heavy lifting, so to speak."SuiteBundler includes a three-step graphical assistant to help with the bundle-able components such as user roles, dashboards, custom tabs, lists and forms; a choice of three accessibility modes when making these bundles available to customers, including options for shared, private and an open-source community; a bundle repository where partners can go during their development process to save the customer-installation-ready version of their SuiteBundle, while continuing to work on the next iteration of their system in their NetSuite developer account; and installation process assistance."We see this as a revolution for VARs," Sullivan said. "They've long been concerned that [software as a service] would be a threat to their business, given that implementation times are relatively shorter. There is the perception that SaaS or on-demand applications are less customizable than traditional software. I think SaaS, at least in the way that NetSuite is moving forward with it, is actually an enormous enabler for these VARs to take their business to the next level and offer solutions to their customers that they could only dream about previously."For more information about SuiteBundler, visit www.netsuite.com.