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:

Last week, a San Diego consumer rights group announced that according to its math, in recent years companies and institutions have collectively reported the mishandling -- or downright theft -- of more than 93.7 million private records. That’s a pretty weighty scorecard kept by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse but probably not all that shocking to anyone who reads the paper regularly. After all, right around the same time last week, the Commerce Department announced that over the past five years, more than 1,000 of its laptops -- roughly 4 percent of its total inventory -- had been lost, missing or reported stolen from its 15 divisions. Some 672 computers were lost by the Census Bureau -- you know, the one responsible for collecting statistics about the United States, including the country’s citizens and its economy -- with about 250 of those machines containing some personal data. As the quid pro quo of such a disclosure, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was at least able to say that the data was protected by a combo of passwords and complex data formats, whatever that means. Gutierrez said in a statement that to this point, it appeared none of the information had been misused. If anything, Commerce can take solace in that even its collective whoopsie-daisy falls short of the biggest single governmental gaffe -- that happened early this summer, when U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced that a laptop and hard drive containing personal information, including names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth on about 28 million veterans had been stolen from a worker’s home. For those of you keeping score, 28 million Americans of any category is close to 10 percent of the entire U.S. population. If it’s of any consolation, the computer and drive were recovered by June, and last month, a pair of teenagers was arrested for the theft. The feds of course, aren’t the only ones who have had to learn the hard way about the dangers of transporting sensitive info and the need to put some solid safeguards and guidelines in place. In recent month, major accounting names, from Big Four firms to the American Institute of CPAs, have had to reveal major losses of data. The individual incidents, whether the result of seemingly outright carelessness (leaving a laptop in the seatback of a plane) or ill-advised action (sending a hard drive out for repairs via a commercial shipper), should serve to showcase a simple fact -- these sorts of privacy gaffes could happen to anyone. There’s tons of great options when it comes to encryption and physical locks for computers -- and don’t get me started on all the suppliers an organization can turn to when it comes time to offer clients that free year of credit monitoring -- but the only way to stop the data dump is by taking a good hard look at where your organization is storing its data and an even harder look at where that data absolutely, positively, has to travel. And the next time you think it can’t happen to your firm, run the numbers and seriously consider the likelihood that one of those 93.7 million private records could have been you, or one of your clients.

And then there were three -- three major tax software companies, that is. With CCH taking over the operations of ATX and TaxWise, there are very few tax preparation software companies left that are not owned by billion-dollar corporations. The remainder are Drake Software, Greatland, Orrtax, Petz Enterprises, and TaxSimple. Everybody else of consequence is owned by CCH, Thomson (Creative Solutions and GoSystem), and Intuit (Lacerte and ProSeries. If anyone is interested in nostalgia, there's a long litany names that have vanished over the last 15 years, and many of them over the last five. But nostalgia doesn't help to run a business, and the question is what this last rush of consolidation means to preparers. It probably means that the large vendors have greater control over pricing, which is where the battle is increasingly taken place, since most vendors had loaded up on features that make a difference. This doesn't necessarily mean higher pricing, because CCH, which was at the high-end of the market with ProSystem fx Tax, is likely to put pressure on Intuit at the low end. But it means the vendors have more flexibility. Suites, or at least one-stop shops, will get greater impetus. CCH has already expressed its intention to bring other accounting firm applications into the ATX and TaxWise offerings. And Internet-based computing will spread. The larger companies have an advantage in being able to develop Web-based platforms, and a big interest in cutting cost by trying to get out of the business of shipping CDs. They have a lot to gain on the cost-cutting and delivery side, and as they integrate their other applications with document management systems, the Web is a natural place to move.

SAGE TO BUY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT FIRM: The Sage Group will acquire Tampa, Fla.-based Emdeon Practice Services Inc., which sells practice management software and patient data systems to doctors' offices. Sage will pay about $567 million in cash to EPS's parent company, Emdeon Corp., and plans to close the deal this month. For the 2005 fiscal year, EPS had revenues of approximately $300 million and about 20,000 mostly small and midsized customers.EPS software is used in administrative and financial processes - such as the scheduling of appointments and the handling of prescriptions and billing - and has capabilities for the creation and management of electronic health records.

The old adage, "If you can't beat them, join them," apparently also holds true for Microsoft Excel, as software developers of all varieties are implementing features that make their products look more like the universally used spreadsheet program.Coupled with the increasing ability to integrate with Excel and other Microsoft Office products such as Word, adoption of the familiar worksheet interface is designed to make learning other, related applications easier.

Net@Work, one of the largest Sage-only software resellers, announced that it has purchased Eagle Consulting Group, a top Sage Software MAS 90 and MAS 500 reseller in the tri-state area.Eagle Consulting Group's founder and chief executive, Debra Ellis, will serve as manager of consulting services.

Financial reporting and SOX compliance solutions provider Movaris has rolled out OneClose, an application that enables users to automate and standardize account reconciliation tasks during the "last mile" of finance.The company said that five key features of Movaris Account Reconciliation include:

Estimating documentation costs for a technology project that you're managing seems like it's almost outside the realm of possibility, like finding the perfect hamburger or a jacket that fits you just right. Like clothing and food, there isn't a "one size fits all" amount of hours that your company can estimate for each project, because each project and each writer are different.One or more of the following situations may apply to your current project:

Are you happy with your firm's technology? Do you treat technology as a strategic asset by planning and budgeting for it?Questions like these typically result in a variety of answers from personnel within the same firm. It's no wonder that most firms need to work on consensus-building. Unfortunately, those with the strongest opinions typically have the least amount of knowledge.

Sage Software announced that year-end print services for the 2006 tax year will be available through Sage Compliance Services.

Microsoft announced the release of a public beta for Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, formerly called Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting. According to a release from the company, the latest version of the product adds online marketplace integration and invoicing to help small companies conduct their businesses online. The product will still be aimed at small businesses, even if that's no longer apparent from the software's title. Among the specific 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.

CARTESIS REPORTS '06 SOFTWARE REVENUES UP 28 PERCENT: Cartesis, a provider of finance and performance management software, announced that for the 2006 fiscal year, the company saw its software revenues growth 28 percent - including a 61 percent leap internationally and a 57 percent rise in North America. Cartesis said that the success is likely due to additional investment in international sales and marketing and the introduction of its new product line, Cartesis 10, a business performance management solution that integrates internal and external financial data for publication, benchmarking, and merger and acquisition planning.Chief executive Didier Benchimol said that in recent quarters, the business has grown at a rate triple or quadruple that of its competitors. The company also reported:

Tax and accounting software and products provider CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, has agreed to acquire ATX/Kleinrock, a provider of tax preparation and research materials. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.ATX/Kleinrock, headquartered in Rockville, Md., supplies tax preparation, accounting and tax research software products to more than 48,000 tax professionals and CPAs throughout the country.

Not a day goes by without one of our clients asking, "How do I motivate my people?"When I was younger and more apt to answer questions than ask them, I'd launch into a listing of ideas and activities that we've seen motivate teams in the organizations we serve. These ideas and activities have value, and I'll share them in my next article, but first, let's explore the most important idea I have to help you motivate your people: Ask them!

Even the best intentions sometimes have unexpected results. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was enacted in reaction to the Enron and WorldCom financial debacles, where poor internal controls resulted in dubious transactions being unchallenged. The result, as you know, was the collapse of several huge corporations, with many top executives facing considerable jail terms. Add in the document-shredding parties at Arthur Andersen, and in retrospect, SOX seems unavoidable.SOX was enacted in hopes of preventing something like this happening again. It not only holds management responsible for creating and maintaining internal controls tight enough to prevent or expose unauthorized or unusual transactions, but requires that publicly held corporations document how they are accomplishing these goals. There are numerous sections of the reform act, but the two that deal most directly with compliance are Section 302 and Section 404.

According to the most recent salary survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the average starting salary this past recruiting season for accountants was $45,656.With starting salaries at these levels, and escalating salaries for experienced staff, firms should be reviewing their economic model. Too often, partners and owners are busy working in the business rather than working on the business. Is your firm still using billing formulas that were developed prior to the current investment levels in technology and the shortage of accountants?

Accounting software provider Intuit Inc. narrowed its fiscal fourth-quarter loss from a year earlier, boosted by strong performances from its QuickBooks and Consumer Tax businesses.