Better workmen
Productivity Consulting and Tax Pack
CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business
http://cchgroup.com
A good workman may be known by his tools,
but it hardly seems fair to say the reverse; after all, tools don’t get much choice in which
workman uses them. We wouldn’t suggest
that CCH doesn’t think you’re worthy of their
tools, but they have launched a Productivity Consulting service for their ProSystem fx
Suite and research tools, where they’ll consult with you both online and in your office to
make sure you’re getting the best out of their
offerings. From their interviews and workflow
analyses, they’ll develop a list of efficiency
gains that you can implement immediately,
as well as a recommended deployment plan
for longer-term improvements.
Separately, as an example of the kinds of
CCH tools that you should strive to be worthy
of, the company recently released Tax Pack, a
combination of products aimed at making tax
preparers more efficient. Its Tax Prep Partner
Series offers all sorts of research materials,
guidance, practice aids, compliance tips and
more that are focused on the needs of practitioners who prepare large numbers of non-complex returns, while its TaxScripts Tax Pro
streamlines the process of submitting disclosure authorizations to, and getting transcripts
from, the Internal Revenue Service.
An aid to inertia
Customer Manager and
QuickBooks Conversion Tool
Intuit Inc.
www.customermanager.com
Of all the laws that govern the physical universe, the one that businesses should be most
grateful for is that of inertia, since it explains
the majority of their customer retention.
There is always the chance, however, that
some outside force will come along and prod
customers out of their torpor, which is where
tools like Intuit’s new Customer Manager
come in handy. It’s a customer relationship
management tool for small businesses, bringing all of a company’s customer data together
in one place, from contact info to past due
balances (it automatically synchronizes with
Intuit’s QuickBooks), so users can make sure
inertia is still operating in their favor.
Meanwhile, proving that it is not relying
on inertia, Intuit separately released a tool
to help users of Microsoft Accounting, which
was discontinued in November, convert their
data to QuickBooks.
Donations, real or not
iDonatedIt
BMG CPAs LLP
www.idonatedit.com
You know the drill: You ask, “So, did you make
any charitable donations last year?”
And they say, “Um … yeah? Yes? Yes! Of
course! I made many charitable donations!”
Needless to say, most of the donations they
go on to describe (including those that actu-
ally occurred) are undocumented, and the
IRS is getting pickier about that. To help, CPA
firm BMG has created an iPhone app called
iDonatedIt that donors can use to track and
value their non-cash donations right at the
moment of giving. It creates a permanent
record of what they gave when, and to whom,
and how much it was worth. They can even
attach a picture of the item for documenta-
tion, and then e-mail the whole thing to you
for tax prep. At the very least, it will relieve
you of the embarrassment of sitting there
while they “remember” all their donations.
Debtors and creditors
Expense management functionality in Logon2
Patersons HR & Payroll Solutions
www.patersons.net
A company’s employees are, in effect, its main
creditors, having advanced it labor, which it
then pays back in cash. What’s more, employees are often creditors twice over, when you
take into account the travel and other expenses that they often cover. Considered that way
(and in a whole lot of other, less academic
ways), the addition of expense management
functionality to Patersons HR and Payroll
Solutions’ Logon2 Software-as-a-Service
human resources and payroll management
platform makes good sense. Employees can
now easily create an expense report through
their self-service portal from any Web browser; the solution then notifies the appropriate
manager that the report is ready for denial,
and lets the employee know when it has been
denied. If the manager should accidentally
approve the report, payment is processed in
the same manner as a paycheck.
The final hurdle remains
Sabrix Managed Tax Service
Sabrix Inc.
www.sabrix.com/sabrixmts
The latest release of the Sabrix Managed Tax
Service, which handles outsourced sales and
use tax compliance and management, offers
all sorts of new features. It has enhanced re-
porting capabilities, including period-close
reconciliation reports, and returns summary
reports with a summary of tax to cash for each
return; it also offers new tax services, includ-
ing tax rate scenario testing, which lets users
implement and test tax changes for accuracy
prior to production. But for all its good points,
it still doesn’t fulfill Corporate America’s sales
tax dream: not having to pay them at all.
Tell us what this is
The Manual Number Cruncher
The Superficial Intelligence Co.
www.themanualnumbercruncher.com
For those who enjoyed the “That was easy”
button, but may have thought it was a little
generic, the Manual Number Cruncher is an
office novelty aimed squarely at those who
crunch numbers (though it can be inflicted
on the broader public during “crunch” times).
To be perfectly honest, we’re not quite sure
exactly what the Manual Number Cruncher
is, but that doesn’t matter: It repeats recorded messages that involve the word “crunch”
whenever you like, which should be all you
need to hear to know that you need to order
two or three dozen to strew around the office during tax season. Whether it is, in fact, a
“hand grip manipulator” and a “whole body
workout system,” as its maker claims, is beside the point.
Pin down the ephemeral
iCyte
www.icyte.com
Unlike a printed page, a Web page is a dy-
namic, ever-changing entity, which is great
— unless you bookmarked the page and were
relying on the information that used to be on
it before it got all dynamic and ever-changing
on you. The new iCyte service lets you high-
light the text, pictures or whole pages that
you want to refer to, and save them as they
are, with your own tags and notes attached.
Individual “cytes” can be organized by proj-
ect, and projects can be accessed through
a dashboard of all your content, and even
shared with other users, making research
much easier and more reliable.
E-invoices for all
billFLO
Anoowa Inc.
www.billflo.com
Say what you like about paper invoices, they
have the benefit that they can be read by everyone who can read. Electronic invoices, on
the other hand, may or may not be readable
by a recipient’s accounting system, which
is why billFLO has released a new application program interface to make it easy for
accounting system vendors to integrate its
electronic-invoicing functionality with their
products. It’s one step closer to cutting down
on the 20 billion paper invoices sent out every year.
New Navigator
Serenic Navigator 2009
Serenic Corp.
www.serenic.com
Serenic has released the latest version of its
accounting software for nonprofits, which
applies the technology and functionality of
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 to add a number of new features, including a new user
interface; Role Centers that personalize the
user’s experience based on the information
and tasks most relevant to their jobs; built-in support for Web Services to make it easy
to connect to other applications and share
data; and tight integration with Microsoft
Office products.
New and improved!
Speed Tax has released the SAP Tax Bridge
for Speed Tax, so SAP users can use its sales
tax solution. … NetSuite has released NetSuite One World for Oracle, so users of Oracle’s E-Business Suite can also use its SaaS
business management and accounting application. … Internet fax service MyFax is
now available through the Intuit App Center
in QuickBooks 2010.
Send new products for consideration to
daniel.hood@sourcemedia.com.
