The Tech Gap

Announcing The CPA Technology Advisor "Productivity Survey" Sponsored by Selden Integrated Systems

Best Practices = Better Productivity = Increased Profitability

The Productivity Survey is free and available to all accounting firms and includes a series of questions relating to professional practice standards, office processes, backup procedures, paperless office technologies, e-mail use, and general technology utilization.

Each accounting firm completing the Productivity Survey will receive their own individualized report with correlations between technology adaptation and overall productivity. The firm will see their own score in comparison to the overall profession and also in comparison to firms of a similar size and in their own geographic area.

Each individual report includes suggestions for improving the productivity in your firm, based on recognized "best practice" processes. Firms are encouraged to re-take the survey (up to three times per year) to see if their results have improved after implementing the suggested changes.

The Productivity Survey uses a proprietary algorithm developed and trademarked by Selden Integrated Systems and implemented by The CPA Technology Advisor. Points are assigned based on survey question responses to establish an overall Productivity Score™ ranging between 0-600 points (600 being the most productive).

This may well be the most valuable 30 minutes of your year. Take the survey now here!!

Illinois CPA Society 2004 Business & Technology Solutions Show is a Hit

Big congratulations to Clare Fitzgerald, overall coordinator, Jennifer Schultz (VP, Member Services) and Wendy Sech (Director, Education) for last weeks' winner in an increasingly long string of the same. Having attended the Illinois Society's Business & Technology Solutions Show irregularly since the early 80's I can attest to the fact that the 2004 version was a real hit with both attendees and vendors. The CPE offerrings were especially well-crafted this year. I was able to sit in on Dave Cieslak's "filled-to-capacity" course on network security and watch him [again] skillfully lead his audience from complacency to panic to competence. Quite a feat in 100 minutes!

If you're in the midwest you'd do well to consider combining a vacation to Chicagoland (best theatre outside of New York City) with next years' show. I'll guarantee your time will be well-spent. I'll most certainly be there!

gll

Is There a Treo 650 on the Way?

Many of you know my passion for the Treo 600. It's a weekend, so I thought I could stray a bit from the "intersection of Public Accounting and Technology" mission and drift over to "cool hardware". This is ALL I KNOW for now, but it appears we'll be seeing a Treo 650 by Christmas! It supposedly will include:

Bluetooth --- High Resolution Screen --- Redesigned Keyboard Backlighting System ---- Video Recording Built In ---- 1.3 MP Camera

Also reported is TOTAL INCOMPATIBILITY WITH ALL ACCESSORIES!!

They simply will not work... not any... not even one (save universal headsets)

Cradles... chargers... not gonna work... Pocket Keyboard? Also no. This is very disappointing.

Of couse, I will get it anyway.

gll

CPAnalyst to launch Online

In an interview yesterday long-time financial statement analysis software visionary Irwin Jarett re-affirmed his passion for helping practicing public accountants expand their services by including formal "financial statement analytical" reports to their clients. His genre'-founding product has been available since the early 90s and is currently undergoing a complete facelift and has been ported to the Web. The renewed offering, a service called CPAnalyst Online, is expected to be available in mid-September.

Jarett, who's product was essentially competitor free until a few years ago, admits that it's "now or never" for the product, as Best, Thomson, Intuit, and CCH have all announced competing products. Practitioners would do well to look at this "old-timer" product and it's chief competitors BizBench and ProfitCents, when considering offering this style of reporting to their clients.

gll

Is there a CCH Users' Conference in the Future?

At the 2004 Illinois CPA Society's 24th Annual Business & Technology Solutions Show CCH Tax & Accounting President & CEO Kevin Robert told me of his intention to launch a CCH Users' Conference in 2005. [Actually RE-launch, since there were CCH-user-planned/inspired conferences back in the early 80s]. CCH VP Jeff Gramlich confirmed that he's currently working out the details.

This is great news for a burgeoning user base rapidly adopting the CCH ProSystemfx Office suite. With the increasing penetration of workflow flow products an the addition of a write-up product CCH has a critical mass of modules wide enough to easily support several days of training. Additionally, their strong concentration in mid to large firms positions them perfectly to attract a great following.

This is an event that really needs to happen and I salute Robert for his leadership in attempting to "make it so". Although I'm a bit weary from a super-agressive speaking schedule this year (over 35 appearances) I'd be pleased and proud to pencil in a slot at the CCH event in 2005. Date and location TBA.

gll

CCH's ProFx Write-Up Sneak Peek

I an extended executive conference today CCH Tax & Accounting President & CEO Kevin Robert carefully detailed for me his vision of the accounting profession of tomorrow and how he intends to have his formidable company assets deployed to serve it. Central to Roberts vision is the concept of "deep integration" and extending the current suite of ProSystemfx products. In Robert's view write-up was the one "missing component" from the current suite. His solution --- a technological "state-of-the-art", .NET / MSDE enabled write-up product due to ship next month. Our demo was very complete and, absent actual review-style testing, I can say we were initially VERY impressed. Screen design is clean and, more importantly, completely user-designable. That makes the product customizable across a wide variety of firms. Add Excel-based financial statements, Profit-Driver, and complete integration with the now-ledgendary ProSystemfx Engagement product and you have the basis for a very solid competitor to inndustry-leading Thomson Creative Solutions' write-up product. [Robert claims a 97% CCH product penetration rate among the Top 100 firms and an 84% rate among firms of over 20.] CCH has wisely partnered with payroll industry-veteran PayCycle to offer client involved, accountant controlled calculating [live] payroll.

CCH has not announced pricing and indicates that its initial target market will be those firms already using a significant number of ProSystemfx products and desiring a common-platform write-up product.

gll

Accountants Can Diminish the Need for Global Outsourcing of Tax and Accounting

Chandra Bhansali, President of Accountants World, recently published an excellent piece on the issue of "outsourcing". Dr. Bhansali is uniquely qualified to comment on this topic and has, I beleive, some excellent points. He has been kind enough to grant me permission to display the article here.

Do You Miss Your Old "In/Out" Board?

I've visited many, many firms over the years and can assure you that there are some things that are pretty common place. A leader in that category would be the "In/Out" board ---- the place the office admins check to quickly see the status of a whole office full of busy accountants. A second close runner-up would be "pink phone slips". Now that we all have networks and Outlook fueled with Exchange is almost ubiquitous (sorry Notes users, but it's TRUE!) we have much more capability, but somehow we've not quite replaced theses two old stalwarts.

I recently ran across a very slick little Outlook companion piece that is single-minded in it's mission to not replace, but improve upon, those functions. And, by golly, I believe they've been successful.
Out'n About! In/Out Status Board is a very robust, yet resonably priced, ($129 for a SITE LICENSE!) single-purpose product. It does what it does, and it does it reasonably well --- if you miss the "In/Out" board and still yearn for "phone slips", I'd suggest a look over here. They offer a 30 day free trial.

Its publisher (Intelligent Concepts, Inc.) claims to be very near to releasing an Outlook add-in. I'll be watching for it.

Stay tuned!

gll

Venali Internet Fax Service -- a "homerun" in my scorebook!

Since I spend my life on airplanes, in hotels, and at conferences and trade shows the whole idea of FAXES just plain annoys me! After all, I can't send them --- and if I do happen to get one the hotel wants to charge me $2 a page! [You should see the look on their face when I say "No, thanks. Just throw it away!] What I need is an integrated network faxing solution that's completely portable and reasonably priced. One of my ATRN partners, Brent Goodfellow, told me he'd seen Venali at Microsoft's Tech Ed 2004. Now I think I've found my solution.

Venali has built a huge network servicing the Fortune 2000 and processes millions of faxes per day through its highly redundant data centers, and has now come "down market" to serve, among others, small and medium sized accounting practices.

Office Tools Pro Sales Grow by 41% in 2003

North 40 Systems (formerly Giardina & Associates), which provides practice management software and full-service technical solutions to small and medium-sized firms, has announced that its 2003 sales for its Office Tools Pro practice management program grew 41 percent over the previous year.

“In a small business office, all employees wear multiple hats throughout the organization,” said Michael Giardina, president of North 40 Systems. “Many small firms still do not realize that there is software available today, such as Office Tools Pro, that meets their firm’s specific needs. Instead, they deal with the high costs of large firm software and the lack of affinity for the small business office workflow dynamic. We believe that our growth shows how essential efficient practice management software is becoming for smaller accounting firms. We are very pleased and proud of the increasing number of firms that have selected Office Tools Pro.”

Office Tools Pro 2004 allows accounting professionals to track client activities and electronic files, including related documents and emails. Visual indicators for data entry and easy access, such as checkmarks, headers and titles and bookmarks, are included. The Office Tools Pro document imaging system is compatible with Microsoft Office®, Adobe Acrobat® and WordPerfect®, and seamlessly integrates with any Twain-compliant scanner, including leading Fujitsu, HP and Xerox scanners. As a premier member of the Intuit Developer Network, Office Tools Pro 2004 integrates with Intuit’s QuickBooks® 2004 products—including QuickBooks: Pro 2004, QuickBooks: Premier 2004 and QuickBooks: Premier 2004 Accountant Edition.

Office Tools Pro starts at $299 per user and is available free of charge for the first 90 days.

gll