The Tech Gap

Maryland CPA Society Launches to Web 2.0 Learning Project

I recently received an email from Tom Hood, who is the Executive Director of the Maryland Association of CPA's (a CITP, by the way) giving me a heads-up on their CPA Learning 2.0 Project. Now I get "ideas" and "suggestions" like this all the time so let me assure you that my heart did NOT go pitter-patter upon receipt of one more. I did, however, follow Tom's link (after all, he IS a fellow CITP!) and boy was I ever impressed. This guy GETS IT!!

MACPA has launched an entire initiative designed specifically to capture the digital natives (AKA 20-some-things / Gen Y-ers) where the live. Podcasts, webcasts, social networks, virtual worlds, IM, SMS ..... you get the picture. And, if you DON'T --- take a peek at Tom's video here and let me know what you think. My speaking schedule for next year includes a new session entitled "Blogs, Podcasts & Social Networks" which will be presented at the AICPA's TECH+ 2008 event as well as several different state society conferences. It's exciting and gratifying to see leaders like Tom Hood helping to spreading the word!

Tom Hood Announces MACPA's Web 2.0 Learning Project

Comments open ....

Good work, Tom!!!

gll

Intuit Bows Out of "Scan & Organize / Scan & Populate" Race

Intuit Pro Tax Division's "Auto Source Doc" will not be offered for sale during the upcoming tax season, Rich Walker, Intuit spokesperson, announced yesterday. The product was introduced fairly late last season to compete with SurePrep's 1040SCAN and Intuit had difficulty managing customer's expectations for a "Version 1" product. It was widely reported to be "disappointing" for the early adopters (several thousand firms) and for Intuit support. The product scanned and organized client documents and pulled certain data from from those documents for automatic input into either the Lacerte or ProSeries tax compliance program. Walker explained that Intuit planned to keep developing the product for later release but that in it's present form "it simply doesn't meet Intuit's rigorous quality standards".

Intuit's exit leaves SurePrep alone with a second year product (it serves ProSystem Fx Tax, GoSystem Tax RS, and Lacerte). CCH has partnered with EMC Captiva and will offer a competing product in it's ProSystem FX Document module for the coming season. They have also announced ""Scan & Fill" a considerably less robust product designed for their Small Firm Services products --- TaxWise and ATX. Meanwhile, Thomson has announced a limited pilot release of yet another competing product as a module of FileCabinet CS which will serve UltraTax CS only. Finally there is a "yet-to-be-announced" product from a "yet-to-be-named" company [my, oh my, I'm tired of this particular NDA ---- just ANNOUNCE already!] which will offer services across multiple tax compliance products --- ala' SurePrep.

We told you two years ago that this concept would soon be hot --- and it appears that it will be, indeed. We discussed this topic in some detail on the last Tech2Go podcast. [Listen here] Last year the returns processed by this model barely reached 5 figures --- look for an order of magnitude increase this year. And for 2008 returns in 2009 ---- Katie, bar the door!!

gll  

He's Baaaaaack .......

Rene' Lacerte, formerly of Intuit and more recently of PayCycle fame, is back --- this time with yet another Web 2.0 application that's sure to be a big hit around the neighborhood at "Technology & Public Accounting". He and his Palo Alto team (physically next door to the PayCycle offices) have launched CashView, a web based electronic cash management service that handles invoices, payments and paying bills. It's centered around a calendar view that tracks a company’s daily cash position --- past, present or future. Not surprisingly the service exports to QuickBooks desktop (2005 and forward) and, SaaS purists note this, seamlessly integrates with QuickBooks OnLine.  Rene' and his team got a big honor when they officially launched last week (see video here) at the semi-annual Demo conference produced by Chris Shipley. The were named DEMOgod for Fall 2007 which is quite an honor in that only eight companies are so named --- from a pool of literally thousands!

If you know Lacerte you know his penchant for doing things right, and he's done  that here again. Just like Ned Miller's old country classic says, "do what you do, do well", CashView does! The application is clean, straight-forward, effective and amazingly simply priced.  After the "free" introductory period (through 2007) it's $10 per user and $1 per bill. If you serve clients that could use some structure (this is a WONDERFUL way to document and enforce business rule workflow) in the A/P and A/R areas, then you might want to take a look at CashView. IMHO it's worth a peek.

gll