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.

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.