Blog Archives
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Indiana U. Biz Students: “Not Your Father’s Accounting Firm”
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Monday February 1, 2010I just spent the day with 200 seniors at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, one of the top business schools in the country. I have to give these students a lot of credit because they were totally engaged during an intelligent two-way dialog about today’s accounting firm. We all know there’s going to be a reported shortage of talent coming out of business school – students with accounting degrees who want to work for public firms. Recruiting smart, go-getters to succeed in our firms is difficult. Students may become certified, but tell us they want to work in companies, and even start their own businesses, in order to propel them to the top much faster than is possible in an accounting firm. Still, there’s... -
OCR Technology is Good for the Firm and Client
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Tuesday January 26, 2010Recently, when I was scanning my e-mail, a press release from Thomson Reuters jumped out at me calling attention to its Source Document Processing Service: The Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters announced today that its Source Document Processing service is off to a strong start this tax season, having already processed thousands of source documents such as W-2s, 1099s, and K-1s in early January – a nod to an upward trend in user adaptation of this technology solution. Now entering its third year of availability, the Source Document Processing service uses OCR technology to offer automatic labeling and organizing of 1040 client source documents and automatic data transfer to returns. Sure, in part, this is a little PR... -
Embrace Change? What’s the Alternative?
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Thursday November 5, 2009I saw a lot of heads nodding in agreement this morning when Jon Baron, president of Professional Software & Services, Tax & Accounting, for Thomson Reuters, asked the profession to “Forget Same-As-Last-Year; Embrace Change!” How many accountants does it take to embrace change? If you can’t count that high, then it’s too many. A bad joke, but it does prove a point. At the opening address of today’s TR Annual Users’ Conference in Orlando, Jon unveiled two new products, Accounting CS™ and Virtual Client Office™, as well as new enhancements made to TR’s Source Document Processing. These products are a direct result of his mantra to embrace change … to accept these new applications and software enhancements as the next... -
Thomson Reuters Hits Portal Milestone
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Monday November 2, 2009The client portal is alive and well, thanks to companies such as Thomson Reuters, whose strength in numbers was once again demonstrated. The company just announced its users implemented more than 300,000 client portals with NetClient CS®. The milestone is an increase of more than 100,000 portals in 16 months. “We introduced the profession’s first client portal solution in 2001, and it took us five years to get to our first 100,000 portals,” says Scott Fleszar, senior director of Strategic Marketing for Tax & Accounting, Thomson Reuters. “But times have changed. We now have thousands of users implementing hundreds of new portals every day. That says a lot about the technology advances taking place across the profession, and about... -
CCH Conference Delivers on SaaS Promises
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Thursday October 29, 2009The recent CCH Users' Conference in our nation’s capital was very successful, not only for all of us who use CCH products, but for the company itself. While there are lots of vendor/user conferences, it seems the CCH Conference outdoes itself every year with great sessions, announcements and networking. Were you there? I’d like to hear your thoughts about the conference. Here are the highlights I found: After four years and an investment of $70 million, CCH will launch five products on Oct. 30, including the new ProSystem fx Suite with new versions of ProSystem fx Tax, Document and Practice, as well as two new applications, ProSystem fx Workstream (the new workflow product) and ProSystem fx Portal. Following up on several of my blog... -
Accounting Loses 6,000 Jobs in August
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Tuesday October 6, 2009This story on Trendline.com was all over the Internet late last week and over the weekend. According to the story by Rick Telberg, “the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a seasonally-adjusted decline in staffing by 6,000 positions to 928,300 in August. Coupled with downwardly revised figures since May, it represents the fourth straight month of decline. Earlier BLS reports had shown some gains.” I’ve always been the kind of guy who sees the glass as half-full – optimistic about the accounting profession and its infinite possibilities to be a true business partner to clients and customers. Although these kinds of reports certainly do their best to drain the glass, I remain completely convinced that accounting firms can pull... -
CCH Clearly Focused on the Web
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Tuesday September 8, 2009Were you at last week’s Midwest Accounting and Business Finance Showcase (formerly the Business and Technology Solutions Show) in Chicago? I had the welcome opportunity to attend a dinner hosted by CCH for various people in the media and was blown away by CCH’s upcoming plans. Mike Sabbatis, president of CCH, unveiled the strategy and vision his company has worked toward for the past four years. In late October, CCH will launch several new SaaS-based products – software truly written to run in a Web browser, not an add-on program or something that doesn’t entirely use the Web. The products are very exciting because they mean that the end user can be platform-independent (I could use my Mac ) and be accessible, anytime and... -
Are you a Mac or PC? The Lines for Accounting Firms Continue to Blur
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Wednesday September 2, 2009Last week, Apple introduced Snow Leopard, its latest operating system. The real news for those of us living double lives with PCs are the new features in the mail, calendar and address book (contact) programs that now integrate with Microsoft Exchange 2007. Admittedly, I’m an early adopter of most anything because I enjoy the challenges of playing with technology. When Apple touted Snow Leopard as a leaner, meaner operating system, I knew the company would live up to its reputation – but also knew accountants would really like these new features as well, something I’m sure Apple didn’t think about too much, but an attribute very important to accounting firms. Prior to last Friday, I used Entourage, Microsoft’s Mac version of... -
"Speed of Sound" is Almost Too Slow
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Monday August 17, 2009I’ve blogged about how technology has the ability to transform our firms and businesses in ways that are almost super-human. Validating my thoughts is a new article on WSJ.com that talks about how companies are using technology to connect to customers in speedier ways: “Technology is transforming innovation at its core, allowing companies to test new ideas at speeds—and prices—that were unimaginable even a decade ago. They can stick features on Web sites and tell within hours how customers respond. They can see results from in-store promotions, or efforts to boost process productivity, almost as quickly.” I understand Fortune 500 firms have the means and money to do this, but why can’t CPA firms also use technology to more... -
Save Money With Cloud Computing
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Monday August 10, 2009I’ve written a few blog entries about cloud computing – hoping to make an impact on CPAs and accountants reading these entries who can understand how this outsourced technology infrastructure model is secure and efficient. I ran across an article this morning on MSN that talks about the costs associated with cloud computing through this quote: "We know how much it takes to keep servers up and running, and we didn't want to have to do that," says Sean Reed, vice president of Mojo Interactive, an online marketing and lead-generation provider in Orlando, Florida. Four years ago, Mojo migrated its entire sales operation to Salesforce.com, an online provider of customer relationship management services. "Up to that point, each of our sales...
