During Sage Software's annual Insights partner conference, resellers such as Kevin Stanton, manager of marketing communications at Winn Technology Group, were especially interested in all the new offerings that the company is poised to launch this year."Lots of things have piqued our interest," said Stanton during the three-day confab, held here. "The most interesting was the broader range of services to partners through all the acquisitions and releases. It's always good to have more options [for customers]."

How do you evaluate your professional information technology staff?Who is responsible for those evaluations and how often do they occur? While these are basic human resources questions, we find that many firms do not have fair and equitable systems in place to ensure the anticipated results, as well as to provide a professional career path for the internal IT professionals. Simply using the tools currently available to evaluate accountants may not be enough. Additionally, we recommend multiple tools and frequent communication with IT personnel.

Creative Solutions Inc., a unit of Thomson Tax & Accounting, has acquired the assets of Dunphy Systems, a Columbus, Ohio-based publisher of tax software. Terms were not disclosed.Creative Solutions said that it will be making a special offer to Dunphy customers to transition to UltraTax CS, part of its CS Professional Suite. Renewal incentives for transitioning users include price protection at Dunphy renewal rates and special training options.

The personal information of up to 2,200 Oregon taxpayers may be in the wrong hands after a former part-time employee downloaded pornography and a hidden spyware program.

At one point, it seemed that shows in the accounting market were like the California condor--still around, but not terribly numerous.

In conjunction with the launch of the Peachtree by Sage Accounting 2007 line, Sage Software has announced a new Peachtree by Sage Quantum - Accountants' Edition, which will be available exclusively to members of the Sage Software Accountants Network.

Intuit Inc. said that its new QuickBooks Merchant Service for Web Stores offers a hassle-free way for small businesses to sell online, accept credit card payments and obtain up-to-the-minute sales reports.

It took High Liner Foods Inc. in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, 10 years to find a viable and affordable business intelligence solution, said chief financial officer Kelly Nelson."What we had was JD Edwards' [enterprise resource planning system] and another sales reporting system. It was OK for people to use, but not so user-friendly," said Nelson. "All the BI applications were very expensive and took too long to install, so you lost cost from the expense of the system and the effort of installing it."

Staffing is one of the biggest concerns facing CPA and IT firms today.And yet, as I shared in the first article in this three-part series on recruiting, very few firms have a written strategic recruiting plan in place. In the previous article (May 1-14, page 24), we explored the importance of identifying your firm's competitive differentiators, defining your open position(s) and developing your recruiting calendar. In this article, we'll explore activities that work when recruiting the best and the brightest to your firm.

NETSUITE UNVEILS VERSION 11.0: NetSuite Inc., an on-demand software provider, unveiled the latest edition of its flagship product, Version 11.0. The upgrade offers a new services vertical for mid-market companies, along with a new Asynchronous JavaScript and XML interface, more customization, and new verticals for wholesalers and distributors.The two new mid-market vertical suites are NetSuite Services Company Edition and the Wholesale/Distribution Edition. The Services Company Edition offers paperless expense reports, project accounting functionality and advanced project tracking. The Wholesale/Distributor application includes industry-specific features like advanced inventory and order fulfillment, demand-based inventory replenishment, and customer relationship management software for distributors.

Many accountants have made the investment in a write-up package. With this investment already made, they often use the write-up software even when it may not be the best tool for the task.Many accountants think of trial balance software as a subset of write-up. After all, the ultimate product of both applications is a set of financial statements. The intent of each application, however, is usually quite different.

One of the advantages of consulting and having relationships with leading firms is being able to witness how firms leverage technology as a strategic asset.Innovative thinking is one thing, while innovative "doing" is another. Take Fuller Landau (www.fullerlandau.com), a Toronto-based chartered accountancy and consulting firm, which has recently unlocked the secrets to successfully managing and carrying out information technology initiatives in a dynamic firm setting. Under the direction of Vlad Guzenberg, the IT director, and his team, Fuller Landau is paving the way to achieve a new level of synergy by creating a revolutionary tool: an all-inclusive, customized, user-friendly intranet.

Intuit revealed a new channel initiative, the QuickBooks Enterprise Solution Provider Program, at their first annual QuickBooks Enterprise User Conference.

Business software developer Sage Software unveiled a new Warehouse Automation module for its Sage MAS 500 ERP enterprise resource planning software.

Thomson Tax & Accounting's GoFileRoom announced the release of TaxSort, an add-on module for the GoFileRoom Web-hosted document management application.

Whoever originated the phrase, "Keep It Simple, Stupid" didn't have Really Simple Syndication in mind.

Spurred by a double-digit increase in its Consumer Tax unit, accounting software provider Intuit Inc. posted a 14 percent gain in third-quarter revenue, to $956 million, versus the year-ago period.

The recent purchase of a Microsoft reseller by a company from Iceland must have raised a few eyebrows in the accounting software channel.

During a recent panel presentation on blogging, accounting firms considering launching their own blogs kept turning the discussion to the worries holding them back -- an inherent fear factor that encompassed concerns about everything from liability issues, to their work getting lost in the cyberspace shuffle.

Market research firm the Yankee Group announced that Intuit, Sage and Microsoft have reconfirmed their dominance in the small and midsized accounting and enterprise resource planning software markets.