"Awesome Applications" Announced for 2013

At The Sleeter Group, we believe that success in small business relies heavily on developing smarter, easier-to-use, and more efficient business processes to stay profitable and competitive. Successful business owners are constantly seeking better accounting software, more productive sales and customer tracking systems, improved product fulfillment systems, and superior vendor management systems.

Accounting professionals are always striving to keep up with the latest solutions in the marketplace so they can make the best recommendations for their clients. In addition, they now want to engage their clients anywhere, anytime to work better, together. So each year, we research the marketplace of accounting software and hardware solutions to identify and recognize the companies and products who deliver “awesome” value.

When the program began 7 years ago, it was designed to enhance the quality and quantity of “QuickBooks add-on software solutions” available in the small- to medium-sized business (SMB) accounting software marketplaces.

Since then, the “new world” of cloud solutions and business process “chunks” have begun to take hold in the marketplace, so we’ve updated the program name to the Awesome Applications Awards.

In order to qualify for an Awesome Application award, the product and/or service must be developed and sold by a solid company with a reputation for outstanding customer support, and the product must have the following attributes:

• Must be fully released and shipping in the U.S. by August 1, 2012.
• Although it is not a requirement that the product integrates directly with accounting data, if it does integrate, it must use the best practices for integration in addition to using the latest integration technologies as appropriate in the view of the evaluation committee.
• Must conform to good accounting principles and operating standards.
• If the product integrates with an accounting program (such as, but not limited to, QuickBooks) it should use appropriate transaction types and field population for recording data into that program, so as to preserve and/or enhance the program’s standard reporting features.

This year our selection process changed to include the accounting community in the selection of the award recipients. The accounting community voted during September 2012 and our expert panel worked during that time to diligently analyze each of the nominees. Community votes and expert panel votes each accounted for 50% of the overall score. 

The results for the community voting totals can be viewed at www.sleeter-awesome-apps.com.
The final Awesome Application Award recipients, selected by the community and the 2012 expert panel are:

Avatax

Avalara Inc.
www.avalara.com

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Bill.com

Bill.com
www.bill.com