SOFTWARE
The reviews are in
Audit Watch Productivity Locator for Review
Engagements
Thomson Reuters
www.auditwatch.com
Good reviews can make all the difference to
a movie, book, play — or accounting firm.
The new Productivity Locator for Review
Engagements consulting program from Audit Watch aims to gauge the strength of your
firm’s review engagements, and identify ways
to improve their quality, efficiency and consistency. And while the average movie, book
or theater reviewer is a failed director, author
or playwright, Audit Watch’s consultants are
experienced experts who will examine two
of your review engagement files, and then
give your practitioners feedback through a
Web-based conference call on areas including planning and risk assessment, engagement management, performing inquiries,
performing strong analytical procedures,
avoiding unnecessary procedures, reviewing
evidence and documentation, differentiating between bookkeeping procedures and
review procedures, and more. Not only will
it help you make your firm’s engagements
better and more profitable, it’ll help make
sure you’re complying with the new and significantly revised requirements of SSARS 19,
which makes the service a lot more useful
than the average five-star review or thumbs-up/down.
Know thy firm
ProSystem fx Practice Intelligence
CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business
http://cchgroup.com
Numbers don’t lie, but if the numbers aren’t
around, they can’t tell you the cold, hard
truth. That’s why, if you’re worried what the
numbers buried in your firm systems might
reveal, you should steer clear of CCH’s new
ProSystem fx Practice Intelligence, which
drills deep into that data to quickly and unflinchingly report all sorts of data on your
firm’s performance, from who your most
profitable clients are to (gulp) who your most
productive partners are. This type of analysis
gives proactive firms the information they
need to hone their operations, prune their
client (and partner) lists, and boost overall
productivity and profitability, but for those
that are, shall we say, less forward-thinking,
Send information on your new products,
services and books to Daniel Hood at
Daniel.Hood@SourceMedia.com.
it may lead to nothing more than fear and
squabbling among the partners. Best to know
what kind of firm you are, before you find out
what kind of firm you are.
Where is everyone?
TripIt for Business
TripIt Inc.
www.tripit.com
Hectic travel schedules and the growing
reach of mobile computing mean that the
average office is increasingly empty. Although those of us who are left behind enjoy
the peace and quiet, things can get complicated when we need to find one of our more
mobile colleagues to answer a client question, attend an important meeting, or lend
us money for lunch. TripIt for Business is an
online tool that lets the office-bound keep
track of gadabouts simply and easily — administrators just forward flight and other
travel confirmation e-mails to TripIt, and it
creates itineraries that travelers can view any
time and anywhere; at the same time, the
TripIt for Business dashboard lets the administrator see at a glance exactly where everybody is at any given time — and if they’re
ever coming back. How much they have to
lend us, however, is not tracked.
Calculable losses
ACL Calculator
ARCSys
www.arcsysonline.com
In response to the new standards on accounting loan and lease losses, ARCSys has
released its new ACL, or Allowance for Credit
Loss, Calculator. The Web-based calculator
simplifies and streamlines the process of adhering to the new regulations, with enough
flexibility and power to handle a huge range
of variables and risk factors.
Kiwi accounting
CashManager Business
Accomplish
http://us.accomplishglobal.com
or www.handytech.us
There’s an interesting story behind how Ac-
complish’s CashManager reached the U.S.
Originally developed in New Zealand, where
it has a strong user base, the inexpensive
small-business accounting software came to
the attention of Handy Tech, a U. S. distribu-
tor of solutions for the visually impaired,
which discovered that it worked extremely
well with screen-reading technologies. Han-
dy Tech used the software itself, and liked it
so much that now it distributes it in the U.S.
Designed to be easy for non-accountants
to use, it handles all the basic bookkeeping
functions and includes invoicing. There’s
also a not-for-profit version, and the com-
pany has plans to introduce its Plus version
in the U.S., with a full general ledger system
that’s designed for accountants.
Forms for functions
doForms
Mobile Data Technologies LLC
www.doforms.com
Form may follow function, but forms rarely
do — unless their function is to confuse and
annoy, in which case they’re a huge success.
The new doForms mobile data collection solution aims to bring the process of creating
forms and getting them filled out into the 21st
century. First off, a drag-and-drop interface
and library of customizable pre-built forms
make it easy to create a digital form for collecting exactly the information you need,
from simple multiple-choice answers right
up to sketches, signatures, and even audio
and video clips. Then it lets you deploy the
forms you’ve created to PCs, tablets and
smartphones wherever you like. Finally, it
gives you a personalized Web site for viewing, mapping and managing the data you
receive, as well as publishing it to the Web or
exporting it for use in other applications. It’s
currently available for a range of Android and
BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, with
iPad and iPhone versions scheduled for release this summer.
Horses for courses
Scanjet Professional 3000
and LaserJet Pro
CM1415FNW
HP
www.hp.com
Once you start the move
to the paperless office
(and you will soon, trust
us), you’ll realize that dif-
ferent types of scanning
require different types of
scanners, from the light-
weight ones you can carry
with you, to the back-office
monsters that can handle
giant piles of documents.
Aiming square in the mid-
dle is HP’s new Scanjet Professional 3000, a
600-dpi scanner that will fit on a desktop, but
can still handle up to 20 pages a minute, and
50 at a time. It integrates with leading content
management applications; scans in a variety
of file formats from PDFs to TIFFs, JPEGs, and
MS Word files; and can detect misfeeds on
its own. The LaserJet Pro CM1415FN W color
multi-function printer, meanwhile, is good
for smaller scanning jobs or the occasional
one-off scan, but also offers high-quality col-
or printing and fast black-and-white printing,
as well as fax capabilities.
Sources of courses
Compliance CPE Package, Professional CPE
Package and Premier CPE Package
The Tax & Accounting business of
Thomson Reuters
https://checkpointlearning.thomsonreuters.
com/bundle/index
Other than an angry summons from the SEC
or the IRS, there are few things more terrifying to the proud CPA than discovering that
they’ve endangered their license by somehow failing to keep up with their CPE requirements. Thomson Reuters has begun offering
three different bundled subscriptions to its
Checkpoint Learning courses that include
tools to automatically track certification requirements from 100 different regulators.
New and improved!
Nelco has released new tools for its Nelco
Software Developer Suite, including the new
Web Reporting Center, a portal interface with
complete federal, state and recipient e-filing, printing and mailing services; the Wage
and Information Reporting Engine, or WIRE,
which takes raw data from any software
application and merges it with government reporting forms; and the
Wage Filer, to allow developers
to add e-filing and automated
form printing and fulfillment
to applications. ... CCH has
achieved Oracle-validated
integration for its CorpSystem Sales Tax Rates 1.0 and
CorpSystem Sales Tax Office 3. 5, so it can now offer
the CorpSystem Sales Tax
Solutions for the Oracle E-crosoft Dynamics AX.
