Thomson Reuters – Engagement CS

The hosted application allows a firm to access Engagement CS, along with the
full CS Professional Suite of products and Microsoft Office products, from a
web browser and not install any software on the firm’s servers or desktop
computers. This delivery method is also known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
SaaS allows the firm to pay for the software on a monthly basis and lets Thomson
Reuters manage all of the software issues. This is an attractive option for
many firms.

Once the product is properly installed, it is fairly easy to set up and use.
Someone within the firm will need to set up user rights and import information
and data into the product, but this is not a difficult task. The learning curve
is quite short, but I suggest that each firm designate a product champion to
teach the firm how to use the product as desired. Thomson Reuters offers additional
training courses aimed at helping your firm use Engagement CS more effectively
as well an annual Users’ Conference to allow firms to share best practices.

INTEGRATION WITH OTHER TAX & ACCOUNTING PRODUCTS:
Engagement CS is the next generation engagement/trial balance product for Thomson
Reuters. GoSystem Audit was the previous product. If your firm currently uses
GoSystem Audit and is interested in upgrading to the new Engagement CS, it was
designed to allow seamless migration. As mentioned above, Engagement CS is just
one of the many tax and accounting products offered by Thomson Reuters and is
designed to integrate and share data/information with all of the Thomson Reuters
products.

Firms can also import trial balance information from most major accounting
packages such as QuickBooks. Simply save the trial balance data from the client’s
accounting package in an Excel or ASCII file, and the information can be easily
imported to the product’s trial balance system.

In addition to sharing accounting data with other applications, Engagement
CS integrates well with its library of reference and research products in Checkpoint.
Products such as PPC Checkpoint Tools, PPC Practice Aids, PPC Workpapers and
SMART Practice Aids can be found in Checkpoint. These products are designed
to increase collaboration and workflow within Engagement CS.

If your firm uses practice aids from other vendors, as long as those practice
aids are converted to an MS Office or PDF format, the user can attach it to
the Engagement CS binder. Practice aids from other vendors work well with Engagement
CS, but you might lose some of the intended functionality or collaboration of
the practice aid.

INTEGRATION WITH OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY APPLICATIONS:
Engagement CS integrates easily with Microsoft Excel and Word. The product allows
you to link trial balance information directly to financial statements and other
documents created in Excel or Word.

You can also attach any MS Office file to the Engagement CS binder. Once the
MS Office file is attached to the binder, the user simply clicks on the file
and it opens in the appropriate application. Once you have finished editing
the file, it is simple to save back to the Engagement CS binder.

WORKFLOW & ENGAGEMENT MANAGEMENT:
Engagement CS has some nice engagement management features that allow users
to more easily manage their roles. You can either directly enter the product
to start working or get an overall picture of the engagement by viewing the
“dashboard.” This allows you to see the status of each engagement
such as what tasks need to be done, which tasks have been reviewed, what the
status is of the review notes that have been left by the reviewer, which tasks
have not been assigned, etc.

My favorite feature of the product is the review feature. This allows the
reviewer to navigate throughout the product and “preview” the workpapers/attachments.
The preview opens the document in Engagement CS and not in the native application
(Word, Excel, etc.). Once the document is opened in Engagement CS, the reviewer
can leave “sticky notes” anywhere on the document. This saves a
tremendous amount of time in the review stage of the engagement.

Another nice feature is the “live” updates of journal entries
to lead schedules and the trial balance. When you add a journal entry to the
application, all relevant data is updated “live.” Once the engagement
has been completed, Engagement CS has some nice roll-forward options. It allows
you to determine if you want to overwrite, delete, roll-forward or update items
in your binder. This is a nice option that saves time at the end of each engagement.

RELATIVE VALUE:
Engagement CS is a very effective engagement application that allows each firm
to achieve workflow improvements. It has many of the same features as other
engagement products, but Thomson Reuters has jumped ahead of the competition
by offering a hosted version of the application. Product pricing starts at $1,200
for four users. If your firm is not currently using Engagement CS, the full-featured
hosted version allows your firm to try it out without making any significant
IT investment (dollars and time).

2009 OVERALL RATING: