Accounting Today - October 2011

to a single product or service, or bundle several together.

Research
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BNA
www.bna.com
(800) 372-1033

BNA, which is in the process of being acquired by Bloomberg, offers a variety of tax-and accounting-related products. For the most part, these are offered as specialized “portfolios” that deal with very specific issues. For example, one of the portfolios in the Federal Tax Research and Guidance Series is Net Operating Losses and Other Tax Attributes — Sections 381,382, 383, 384 and 269. Obviously, unless you have clients for which this an issue, the $400 price tag of the portfolio is not going to be very enticing.

At the same time, that’s not to say that BNA doesn’t offer services and products that are of more general interest and useful to firms with a less specialized practice. The Daily Tax Report is a great tool for keeping yourself and staff in the loop on current and upcoming legislation and rulings.

BNA is also very strong in research and guidance in state taxation, especially sales tax. The Accounting Policy & Practice Series is useful in analysis and decision-making on unresolved tax issues.

BNA’s strong point has always been its emphasis on analysis. The vendor’s services are not primarily geared to searching by code or case. But even if you have another service that is code-oriented, you may want to extend it with one or more of BNA’s Portfolio sets.

CCH
www.cch.com
(888) 224-7377

CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, provides accounting and tax research services under two major platforms — Accounting Research Manager and IntelliConnect.

Accounting Research Manager is a stan-
dards-based research service, targeted at pro-
viding up-to-date data on financial reporting
issues and standards. It covers standards and
pronouncements from organizations includ-
ing FASB, the American Institute of CPAs, the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the
Emerging Issues Task Force, the Public Com-
pany Accounting Oversight Board, COSO, the
International Accounting Standards Board,
the Governmental Accounting Standards
Board, and the Office of Management and
Budget. You can subscribe to individual li-
braries, such as Audit (public or private), Ac-
counting only, Internal Controls, AICPA Risk
Assessment Guidance, and others. Subscrip-
tions can include multiple areas of interest, or
just specific areas. The ARM is aimed at com-
pliance, providing access to areas of concern
with both the way that your clients, and your
firm, operate and conduct transactions.

LexisNexis
www.lexisnexis.com

LexisNexis is primarily known for its law research products, but while the thrust of most of the LexisNexis services and products is aimed at attorneys, accounting practices, especially those that have clients with complex tax issues, will find the LexisNexis Tax Center a useful resource.

To a large degree, LexisNexis is a resource and vendor consolidation system, providing research databases from multiple vendors. This allows a single search to access database products from several vendors, not just a single source. One of the major offerings on LexisNexis is Shepard’s for Tax Professionals, which provides Shepard’s Citations Service on 20 IRS sources. These include revenue rulings, revenue procedures, notices, announcements, private letter rulings, technical advice memoranda, Treasury decisions, actions on decisions, chief counsel notices, chief counsel advice memorandums, and many more.

Shepard’s is primarily a citations service,
which means that it will lead you to the code
that’s applicable to your search terms, but
by itself does not usually provide extensive
analysis on the subject matter. At the same
time, many of the sources that a search points
to will have their own analyses of the subject
matter. Searching Shepard’s can also point
you to other sources of analysis, or include
other agencies or jurisdictions that have rel-
evance to your search.

Thomson Reuters
http://thomsonreuters.com
(800) 950-1216

Thomson Reuters, like CCH, has a wide variety of accountant-oriented products and services, including software for tax preparation on both the firm level and the corporate level. It also offers numerous research products from its RIA, WG&L and PPC divisions.

Of particular interest to tax and accounting research is RIA’s U.S. Tax Reporter Library, which is a code-based service that covers code, regulations and Treasury decisions, IRS revenue rulings, IRS Practice, a weekly newsletter, the Federal Tax Handbook, federal court decisions, IRS publications, tax legislation, indexes, WG&L Journal Previews, productivity tools, and pending and enacted legislation.

Another popular RIA product is the Federal Tax Coordinator 2D. This is available as a print service with 35 volumes that are updated weekly, or as an online subscription, updated more frequently (analysis is updated twice weekly, primary source materials are updated daily). The Federal Tax Coordinator is focused on federal taxes — income, estate, gift, excise, FU TA and FICA. Other Thomson Reuters’ products and services provide coverage of state taxes and sales taxes.

Thomson Reuters’ premier online service is Checkpoint. Checkpoint features an easy-to-use interface that permits searching across many of Thomson Reuters’ individual product offerings, including practice aids from PPC. The latest edition of Checkpoint lets you access the service from your iPad, which is great if you need to reference material on the go. AT

VARnews

SBS GROUP STRENGTHENS SOUTHEAST PRESENCE ATLANTA — Major Microsoft Dynamics reseller SBS Group has expanded to the Atlanta area with the addition of Enterprise Solutions Consultants to its partner network. Enterprise Solutions represents Dynamics GP and CRM products, and is headed up by Bob O’Brien, who will become managing director of the Atlanta operation. SBS Group provides accounting and business products and services to midsized companies through a network of regional offices across the United States, representing accounting and ERP products including Dynamics GP, SL, AX, Sage MAS 500, and Acumatica.

LBMC TECHNOLOGIES JOINS INTACCT PARTNER PROGRAM NASHVILLE, TENN. — LBMC Technologies, the technology consultancy of Top 100 accounting firm Lattimore, Black, Morgan & Cain, has joined the Intacct partner program as a reseller. The tech firm is also part of the Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club, and represents Dynamics products including GP, SL and CRM. With this partnership, Intacct becomes the firm’s first pure cloud-computing-based system. LBMC clients span all major industries, with a particular focus on health care, manufacturing, distribution, nonprofit and professional services companies.

ROSE PARTNERS WITH NETSUITE ROCKVILLE, MD. — Finance and accounting outsourcing firm Rose Financial Services has joined the NetSuite Solution Provider Program. As part of the new relationship, Rose will use NetSuite as part of its overall financial and accounting outsourcing services.

SSYH NAMED TO DYNAMICS PRESIDENTS CLUB ORLANDO, FLA. — Stanley Stuart Yoffee & Hendrix has been named to the 2011 Microsoft Dynamics Presidents Club for the fourteenth time. This group represents the top 5 percent of Microsoft Dynamics partners worldwide. Membership is granted based on their continual, committed efforts aimed at offering solutions that meet the needs of their customers. SSYH specializes in on-premise and cloud ERP and CRM offerings, including Dynamics GP, NAV, SL and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.