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.

Joe Gibbons worked in retail management at a now-defunct national sporting goods company for six years before establishing Gibbons & Gibbons PC, a CPA firm in Vienna, Va.Since then, he has witnessed firsthand how far integration has come between point-of-sale software and back-office accounting solutions.

XBRL International, the consortium working toward global adoption of the Extensible Business Reporting Language, said that it would form a standards board to upgrade its technical materials and to oversee and monitor their production.The consortium said that it would formally establish the board over the upcoming months, and has appointed Michael Ohata of Microsoft Corp. as founding standards board chair and issued a call for nominations to other positions. Ohata serves as controller of reporting standards for Microsoft Finance.

CCH INTEGRATES WITH MICROSOFT DYNAMICS: CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business and provider of tax and compliance software, has launched seamless integration between its CertiTax product and Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning solutions.CertiTax, a Web-based suite for sales and use tax calculation spanning 8,000 jurisdictions, contains a new, quicker and easier-to-use interface with Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly branded as Great Plains), AX (Axapta), SL (Solomon) and NAV (Navision). "The new CertiTax integration can save hours of work by allowing an accounting department to manage sales tax for all its customers and products with a single tax schedule," said CCH sales and use tax product manager Bruce Krumlauf, in a statement.

All too often, companies either rely upon personal knowledge and skill to recover from emergency situations, or they write a multi-volume encyclopedia of recovery procedures. When disaster strikes, neither approach lends itself to rapid response.You simply cannot rely upon any particular individual to be available during an emergency. Neither can you expect your staff to read through pages and pages of process documentation while chaos reins. There is a better way: Think in terms of recovery phases and align your documentation and recovery efforts with them.

Imagine a plane that is about to take off. On the plane are a client's financial advisors. Who is in the pilot's seat? Who is in the co-pilot's seat? Who is in first class and who is in coach? These are questions CPAs should ask themselves in today's commoditized and competitive world.Most clients have a team of advisors and the size of the team is growing. Clients often look to multiple advisors within a firm, as well as to those on the outside.

Numerous upgrades and products were announced at Insights 2006, Sage Software's annual partner conference. Accounting and operations management, customer relationship management, human resources and payroll services are some of the areas in which new products and upgrades will be released by this fall.

Sales tax and compliance software provider Avalara revealed its streamlined sales tax certified editions of AvaTax, a sales tax automation solution line, for Sage's enterprise resource planning applications MAS 90, MAS 200, 500 and Accpac.

Excel rules. This is the one law and will be the one law.

Creative Solutions, a unit of Thomson Tax & Accounting, has acquired the assets of Dunphy Systems, a Columbus, Ohio-based publisher and marketer of tax software.

Is the payment processing business the next great thing for accounting software vendors and their channels?