If you ask typical small or midsized accounting practices what their cornerstone applications are, chances are that they will tell you tax prep and write-up. Even with all of the businesses moving their accounting and bookkeeping in-house, write-up engagements are still the mainstay of many accounting firms' practice.Even when a client does most of their own bookkeeping, or has an in-house accounting staff, there's still a need for someone with in-depth accounting experience and knowledge - you. Even a full-time staff accountant probably doesn't have the time or inclination to keep abreast of the latest Financial Accounting Standards Board statements and Internal Revenue Service rules on depreciation and amortization. Closing and adjusting entries are another place where many accounting practices earn their keep.

Is your firm's technology limiting its growth? Do you continue to invest in the same technology year after year, or is your firm integrating back-office operations at the same time that it's investing in new integrated core production applications such as tax return preparation and financial reporting?Notice that I use the term integration. There has been confusion among many in the accounting industry regarding the difference between linking applications and integrating applications. Linking allows data to transfer from one application to another, and it is generally a one-way link. Integration is more robust and allows applications to share data stored in one or more databases. Most firms still have far too many databases and spend an inordinate amount of time reconciling data.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has awarded a trio of contracts totaling $54 million to transform the financial statements in its Edgar database into interactive information.Included in that strategy was some $5.5 million earmarked for XBRL US Inc. to complete the writing of XBRL taxonomies, so that every item in a company's financial statement, such as net income or gross sales, can be assigned a unique, computer-readable label.

In its latest attempt to become a player in the accounting software space, Microsoft had released a free stripped-down version of its software -- targeting small businesses that are late adopters and rely on pencil and paper or Excel for their bookkeeping needs.

Delivering the keynote address at the 2006 CCH User Conference, CCH president and chief executive Kevin Robert outlined a number of the company's new technology initiative investments.

Nearing the November elections, Intuit Inc. has given $1 million to a California political action committee called the Alliance for California's Tomorrow.The group has already spent $66,000 supporting the campaign of Republican Tony Strickland for state controller, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Few hobbies have been more revolutionized by the Internet than genealogy.Exchanging information with others was once an ordeal that involved subscribing to a publication in which researchers placed classified ads. A reader would look for those that were promising, send a query with a self-addressed stamped envelope, and hope for replies that were about the right family. Someday.

A new version of Sage Software’s business management solution for small businesses, Sage BusinessVision 50 Accounting 7.1, has been released.

Beware of people who tell you technology is important.

SBA TO GO BY 'OFFICE ACCOUNTING' IN 2007: Microsoft announced the release of a public beta for Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, formerly called Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting. According to the company, the latest version adds online marketplace integration and invoicing to help small companies conduct business online.Among the new features are integration with eBay and online payment via Paypal. Specifically for accountants, where SBA failed to generate the massive response it had initially hoped for, a new "Accountant Navigator" has been designed to help accountants manage multiple clients, and a dashboard-driven payroll center should allow payment processing to be run for multiple clients from a single place. Among other features are an Accountant Transfer Wizard, which allows a business to share and update files directly to an accountant; and a Journal Entry worksheet designed to let accountants quickly enter multiple transactions and closing entries.

Does your CPA firm recognize that the real purpose and value of a Web site is to serve as your most important marketing tool?Does your site sell by providing prospects with information that meets their needs and answers their questions? Or does your site merely inform prospects of your services, specialties and experience - from your standpoint? A really effective Web site is written from the prospect's standpoint - not from yours or your firm's.

Workflow at its simplest is the movement of documents and tasks through a work process. The concept of workflow is not native to information technology. However, workflow is an integral part of document management and imaging. With this said, are your firm's processes efficient, and do they take advantage of available technologies and team members' skills?While firms utilize many processes, they often don't incorporate any accompanying standards. And if they do, there is little adherence to them.

LOGICALAPPS TAPS NEW EVP OF SALES AND OPERATIONS, AND NEW CFO: LogicalApps, a provider of governance software for enterprise applications, has appointed Daniel Rawlings as executive vice president of sales and field operations. In his new role, Rawlings will be responsible for all revenue generation, including sales, professional services, business development and customer care. His resume includes sales and executive management positions at such companies as Oracle, Lawson Software, PeopleSoft and Ariba. Prior to joining LogicalApps, Rawlings was executive vice president of worldwide sales and services at Perfect Commerce Inc.In another top-level appointment, the company named Peter B. Harker as its chief financial officer. Prior to joining LogicalApps, Harker served as CFO at New York-based Medidata Solutions Inc., a software developer in the clinical data management space. Before that, he was the CFO at Optum Inc., a provider of supply-chain solutions. Harker also worked at Big Four firm Deloitte & Touche.

After spending most of 2006 talking to users and revamping its QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program, Intuit is looking to add another 15,000 accountants and small business consultants to the program over the course of the next year."All of our ideas for the new ProAdvisor program resulted from listening to what our customers wanted and trying to deliver solutions and programs to meet their needs," said ProAdvisor manager Nancy Lee. "We've invested a lot of time and resources, and really feel that we've pretty much been able to incorporate everything accountants were asking for."

Sage Software announced the promotion of Karl Grass to senior vice president and general manager of its Specialized Business Solutions unit. In his new role, Grass will assume a leadership role for Sage Abra HRMS, Sage FAS Fixed Assets, Sage Payroll Services and Sage TimeSheet, as well as additional products.Grass, who was named to Accounting Today's 2004 Top 100 Most Influential People list, will report to Jim Foster, Sage's executive vice president and general manager for Mid-Market Business Units.

Transitions are difficult for any class of software, but fixed asset management programs have had more than their fair share of adjustments in the past few years.What began as a simple spreadsheet noting assets and their depreciation information for tax purposes has now become a major class of software that can have a significant impact on the bottom line of a major corporation.

Professional service firms that are on the path to exponential growth have a few things in common, one being a more strategic approach to planning. They take time to think about where they are going and how exactly they will get there.Why a summit, not a retreat?

What were statistics about worldwide small business formation doing in a presentation by a senior Intuit executive? After all, Intuit has spent more time pulling out of other countries -- Japan, for example -- than it has spent moving into markets other than the United States in the last few years. There’s not much about QuickBooks that’s international. But there, in an investors’ day presentation by SVP Brad Smith, was a slide showing the number of SMBs outside of the United States (325 million), that many QuickBooks users do business outside of the United States, and that the number of SMBs started somewhere other than in this country are 17 times the rate here. The response to my query to Intuit about these statements was that there’s nothing in the immediate future. However, I don’t think that someone as smart as Brad put those statistics together just for comparison to U.S. figures. He makes about $1.25 million a year. People making that much money don’t tend to do things by accident when they present to Wall Street investors, at least not with figures that specific. Those statistics are part of a slide about trends, and it’s got to be hard for a company in search of growth to ignore the international market and numbers of that size. Besides, the recent alliance with Google also suggests that the Internet will pull Intuit users into other markets. If businesses increasingly accept credit cards -- Intuit has moved into the payment processing business -- and its software line can handle businesses with larger operations -- with the advent of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions -- it’s hard not to end up with international aspirations. Of course, it will be easier to expand with multi-lingual and multi-currency capabilities. But I bet Intuit gets there in the next two to three years.

Payroll and benefits outsourcing provider Paychex Inc. posted a record $135 million in profits for its first-quarter period, which ended Aug. 31. The figure is a 17 percent rise in profits compared to the year-ago results. The company headquartered in Rochester, N.Y., attributed the rise to a 9 percent hike in payroll services revenue coupled with a 21 percent jump in revenue from its human resources services unit -- to $337.5 million and $92 million, respectively. Meanwhile, system-wide revenues were $459.4 million, a 14 percent increase over the first quarter of the 2006 fiscal year.

Intuit Inc. has officially released QuickBooks 2007. The company’s worked hard in recent weeks to build buzz around the latest incarnation of its flagship product -- first by unveiling improvements to its ProAdvisor program, and then by announcing a partnership with Google Inc. to tie online marketing services into the software. And though the latest version of QuickBooks is equipped with the expected bells and whistles, Intuit executives are quick to note that a host of other improvements in the 2007 version focus on making day-to-day tasks easier to complete. Intuit Small Business Division product manager Samir Khosla said a number of ideas for refinement grew directly out of the on-site visits to QuickBooks customers the company regularly conducts. He said a prime example was a simplified setup in the 2007 version, geared to helping new users label their income and expense accounts more accurately with a simplified Chart of Accounts. “We’re trying to get ahead of the game, so we can prevent errors before they ever get to the accountant,” Khosla said, who added that about 85 percent of QuickBooks customers use an accountant. According to Intuit executives, the financial management software category grew 37 percent last year, with Intuit continuing to hold on to more than a 90-percent share of the marketplace and, at the same time, fending off a new entry into the field, the recently renamed Microsoft Office Accounting, which Intuit says was held to a market share of less than 2 percent. QuickBooks has more than 3.4 million active users, and this year, Intuit is aiming to move more than the 1.4 million units it sold of the 2006 version last year. Among the other new QuickBooks features Khosla highlighted were: