You might think that five years after a bill was passed, figuring out how to comply with it would be pretty much cut-and-dried. That's simply not the case with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.While there is a good understanding of the kinds of excesses and vulnerabilities that its major sections are supposed to prevent, exactly how to go about implementing compliance procedures - and to what extent different-sized companies are responsible for compliance - is still very much up in the air.

COUGAR MOUNTAIN UPDATES LINEUPCougar Mountain Software released Version 12 of its CMS Professional Accounting, Fund and Point of Sale products.

xTuple introduced Version 2.2 of its OpenMFG enterprise resource planning software and said the free, open source version, PostBooks, has been downloaded more than 12,000 times since it was introduced a month ago.

Busy season, long days, work on weekends, that’s all inevitable, right?

CCH said it would improve its ProSystem fx Scan software for capturing documents in accounting firms by using EMC's Captiva software as the scanning engine.

Journyx has upgraded its Web-based time-tracking and expense management software with new user interface features.

The phrase wasn’t intended to be delivered as an epitaph. But it may have been.

CCH's Small Firm Services unit introduced software that lets tax professionals scan W-2, 1099 and other information forms directly into clients' tax returns.

CCH introduced a CPE Podcast Center with downloadable audio files that accountants can listen to on their iPods to earn continuing professional education credits.

Sage Software has unveiled its latest versions (7.6 and 8.3) of Sage Abra HRMS, the company’s human resource management system for small and midsized businesses and organizations in North America, featuring Employer Information Report EEO-1 and compatibility with the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.

Tax Compliance Inc. has released an upgrade of its Property Management Tax System with improved asset-mapping tools.

Business software developer Epicor expanded its Latin American presence by allying with Technology Coast Partners in Chile and Ability Data in Colombia.

Gina Gwozdz realized just how valuable blogging can be when, as a sole practitioner vying for clients with three other CPA firms in the small town of Bullard, Texas, she started looking to expand her reach beyond writing articles and columns in her local newspaper.Research led her to find a blogging community within the accounting and tax profession, and there she discovered that she could jumpstart her new practice by taking the plunge. She decided to go online and start Gina's Tax Articles at http://glgcpa.blogspot.com.

Over the past 10 years, technology has become more ubiquitous, as well as more complex.In accounting firms, the definition of technology is now "anything that plugs into the wall" - including telephone systems and copiers/scanners. Previously, these systems were part of the administrative budget. Today they are integrated with the network and should be managed by the IT department.

NETSUITE FILES IPO REGISTRATION FORMOnline business management applications provider NetSuite has filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its planned initial public offering.

Sage Software released Sage Master Builder V. 13, adding the ability to drill down multiple levels from reports.

Sabrix introduced a subscription-based, outsourced service that handles tax determination, return preparation and audit administration for sales and use taxes.

Can Intuit bring CPAs back to the technology game?

Thomson Tax & Accounting received a U.S. patent for its ePropertyTax software's ability to manage multi-jurisdictional property tax information.

KashFlow has added features to its bookkeeping software to make it more usable by accountants.