2012 Readers’ Choice Awards
Since we started the Readers’ Choice Awards in 2006, they’ve become a popular way for many of our readers to voice their admiration and respect for certain companies that make technologies for tax and accounting professionals.
See our 2011 review of Sales & Use Tax compliance systems at: www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10290542.
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Sales & Use Tax Exemption Certificate Management
Insight: Not every sale is subject to sales or use tax, of course, and for businesses in specific industries and those with high sales volumes, managing exemption certificates can be a challenge. In this category, which is new this year, only about 15% of all voters had a preference or recommendation/vote for this type of product. Of those who did, Avalara’s AvaTax Certs was the runaway leader as favorite, with programs from Thomson Reuters, Vertex and Imaging Science & Services rounding out the top four.
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Write-Up
Insight: The term “write-up” may be less common these days, but the core tasks that make up that service are still as vital as ever to small businesses: Account reconciliations, GL and journal corrections and financial statement generation among them. While basic bookkeeping programs may have simple tools for performing a few of these, it’s about the same as comparing a butter knife to a surgeon’s scalpel. Professionals need professional tools to perform professional quality work, and to do so efficiently. Which means the need for specialty write-up programs is still strong. The leader in this category is once again Intuit’s QuickBooks Accountant system, which is ubiquitous in most firms because the majority of small businesses use the system. Other significant vote receivers were were PC Software Accounting’s Client Write-Up System, Certiflex Dimension from The Versatile Group and the Client Ledger System from Financial MicroSystems, Inc.
See our review of Client Write-Up packages at: www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10314306.
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Trial Balance
Insight: For solid business returns, many firms still consider a full trial balance a must-have. The market for this specialty software has remained fairly steady over the past few years, and as with last year, among firms citing use of a trial balance system, Thomson Reuters’ Trial Balance CS retained the top spot in our reader voting, followed by programs from CCH, CCH Small Firm Services and Pendock Mallorn.
See our review of Trial Balance & Engagement Management systems at: www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10296054.
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Engagement Management
Insight: Audit engagements require greater diligence in managing processes and checklists, and engagement management systems streamline these workflows while also offering enhanced managerial insight and control. Although most small firms don’t offer audit services, close to 20% of our voters did specify a preference in engagement systems, Thomson Reuters was again this year’s favorite, beating out runners up CCH and CaseWare.
See our review of Trial Balance & Engagement Management systems at: www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10296054.
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Audit/Engagement Tools
Insight: In addition to engagement management programs, firms who perform audits also often use specialty tools that provide specific niche functions for audit processes. These are not mutually-exclusive programs, so voters were able to select multiple systems. As with the audit engagement systems, about 20% of our voters selected a product in this category. The leaders were Thomson Reuters’ PPC SMART Audit Suite, TopCAATs from Reinvent Data, Confirmation.com from Capitol Confirmation, and CCH’s Knowledge-Based Audit tools/Knowledge Coach.
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