All About Accounting Software

Sage wants its customers to be prepared for government financial regulations, and last month they launched a new certification program for the non-profit organizations using their Sage MIP Fund Accounting. The program helps non-profit professionals enhance their skills through continuing professional education (CPE) workshops, each lasting two to three days.

Seminar sessions are web-based, and tout certification in less time and at less cost than alternative programs. There has been a growth in non-profits in North America over the last decade, and the need for certified financial professionals is especially pressing in this economic climate. There are a number of certifications offered. From the high-demand disciplines, there are courses in Accounts Payable, Controller, Financial Reporting, and Senior Accountant. Other options include Budget Analyst, Financial Manager, Procurement, and Payroll, to name a few.

Sage reportedly serves 2.9 million SMBs and non-profits in the US and Canada, so these certification options are a good source of revenue. At the same time, it is a nice gesture to give financial experts a means of increasing their professional value.

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This week, Intacct received a 2009 K2 Quality Award for the outstanding technical support offered with its accounting applications. K2 Enterprises provides technology of continuing professional education (CPE) in the US and Canada, and their Quality Award winners are picked from amongst leading vendors in accounting and financial software. More specifically, the awards are given based on the decision of the K2 Enterprises instructor team (comprised of knowledgeable industry experts) after they examine end-user feedback and get their own hands-on experience with the products.

Part of the efficiency provided by cloud-based offerings is the opportunity it creates for rapid support response, and K2 Enterprises’ CEO, Val Steed, was especially pleased with Intacct’s cloud offering.  “Cloud accounting is a hot area in the CPA profession and Intacct has taken a strong leadership position in the space,” he said. Intacct offers a commitment to customer success and satisfaction called the Buy with Confidence℠, which is a guarantee of rapid response from their support team, and regular follow-up communication to keep clients posted on new software updates and scheduled maintenance.

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Yesterday, Salesforce.com and CODA announced that they would be joining together to create a new financial software company, FinancialForce.com. Unit 4 Agresso, which owns CODA, will be the majority shareholder in the company, and it is currently unknown what Salesforce’s stake will be.

We do know a few specifics, however. First, FinancialForce will incorporate the on-demand application Coda2go. Coda2go is based on the development platform of Salesforce’s “platform-as-a-service,” Force.com, and it can thus be assumed that Salesforce will provide support for the new application, even though it will technically be a separate entity.

Support aside, the new company will reap the marketing benefits of the –Force suffix. The company’s CEO, former CODA CEO Jeremy Roche, calls FinancialForce an extension of the Salesforce data model, and also praised the application’s myriad integration abilities. Some, like 451 Group analyst China Martens, consider the application as a solution for companies looking for a step up from Excel or Quicken. Others don’t think of it as a threat within the financial software market and consider other products to be more mature than Coda2go. Still, FinancialForce is a smart addition to the Salesforce gallery. And despite Coda2go’s relative immaturity, it is hard to argue the benefit—regarding visibility and development—that FinancialForce will receive from being under the Salesforce umbrella.

Several public hearings this year suggest that the federal government may place new regulations on tax preparers and preparation, which could prove fruitful for accounting software vendors.

Universal Accounting, the US’s largest training center for accounting, bookkeeping, and tax preparation is recommending that professional tax preparers invest in continuing education programs so they won’t be caught off guard by expected regulations. This call to arms is a bit self serving, but the information is no less valuable. Given recent economic events, Universal’s speculation on government tax regulations is valid. They offer a new tax preparer program to aid in the event that regulations include new testing of tax preparers, which is a good idea to keep tax preparers from relying entirely on accounting software for formulas. But considering these impending regulations have not been made explicit, it is also a good idea to invest in advanced tax and accounting software and keep all bases covered.

New Edition Offers Improved Ease-of-Use, Streamlined Functionality, Simplified Access to Data, and Includes Many Other Customer-Requested Enhancements

Irvine , CA – Nov 06, 2008 – Sage Software announced today the availability of Sage BusinessWorks 50 Accounting 2009, the latest version of one of the company’s popular business-management solutions for small to medium-sized businesses. Sage BusinessWorks 2009 includes many new time-saving features and enhancements, and is even simpler and easier to use than ever. The 2009 edition offers customer-specific pricing, detailed open credits and deposit tracking, unlimited line items on transactions, and increased sales account entry capacity, in addition to check printing efficiencies, and other time-saving and technical enhancements.

“Sage BusinessWorks 2009 exemplifies the ongoing commitment and focus Sage Software has for producing a superior product,” says Stan Stankowski of Apex Software Group, a Sage BusinessWorks business partner located in Orlando, FL. “I’m especially impressed with the new open credits and deposits functionality, and the new customer-specific pricing feature, which allows you to easily assign different part prices for individual customers. I believe these and the many other new features and enhancements included in Sage BusinessWorks 2009 make it a significant, worthwhile upgrade for existing clients, and a smart choice for new ones.”

Increased Ease-of-Use, More Efficiency, and Greater Flexibility
Sage BusinessWorks 50 Accounting 2009 offers a number of new and improved features that help streamline accounting tasks, make the sales process easier, help companies save time and money during the check printing process, and make servicing and contacting customers even easier. Sage BusinessWorks 2009 includes:

• Customer-specific pricing, which helps eliminate data-entry errors and allows businesses to improve their customer service. Sage BusinessWorks 2009 makes configuring customer-specific pricing easy, by allowing users to import customer part prices and providing tools to copy part prices to other customers.
• Detailed open credits and deposit tracking, which allows users to easily reconcile open credit and deposit balances for customers. Sage BusinessWorks 2009 eliminates confusion by tracking each open credit and deposit as an individual transaction. Additionally, new detail reports help save time during the reconciliation process by displaying all new transactions that affect the open credit or deposit balance. These new, detailed reports also include drill-down capabilities, making researching details about transactions even easier, and helping to reconcile balances more quickly.
• Unlimited line items on quotes, sales orders, and purchase orders, eliminating the need to create multiple transactions for a single order and saving data-entry and reconciliation time.
• Increased sales accounts capacity in the Accounts Receivable and Order Entry modules, so users can enter up to 999 unique sales accounts on each transaction and better track sales.
• Check printing efficiencies that help save time and money. Sage BusinessWorks 2009 can now print regular payroll checks on payroll check stock and Direct Deposit Pay Stubs on plain paper, saving valuable payroll check stock. Sage BusinessWorks 2009 also helps save time by allowing users to print a check register containing a company’s entire payroll run in one procedure.
• Enhanced data-exchange procedures that allow users to export data in a format that they need to easily share customer, vendor, part, and employee data with third-party applications.
• Enhanced hyperlink capabilities that make it even easier to contact customers and vendors. These hyperlinks can be used to easily generate e-mail messages to customers and vendors from the most frequently used tasks.
• Enhanced Microsoft® Vista™ compatibility with Windows® Aero Glass support and an updated comprehensive HTML Help system.

Sage BusinessWorks 50 Accounting
Sage BusinessWorks is a feature-rich, modular-based accounting solution that helps small- to medium-sized businesses increase operating efficiencies through process automation. The solution includes General Ledger, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable modules; along with cash management, inventory, order entry, payroll, job costing, and utility features. Sage BusinessWorks also offers more than 200 built-in reports with graphical reporting capabilities, plus it seamlessly integrates with other Sage Software applications to create an integrated front-office and back-office business solution that increases productivity and profitability.

Pricing and Availability
Current customers with an active ClientCare Support agreement receive a Sage BusinessWorks 2009 upgrade for no additional fee. For new customers, Sage BusinessWorks 2009 is available through local, authorized Sage BusinessWorks business partners. New single systems that include General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Cash Management modules, plus a one year support contract (includes upgrades, maintenance updates, and 10 technical support cases) start at a suggested list price of $1,694. For additional information, contact the Sage Software Sales Department at 800-477-5700, or visit www.sagebusinessworks.com.

Technorati Tags: Sage BusinessWorks 2009, Sage Software

Canada’s Leading Provider of Enterprise Application Software to Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB’s)(1) offers New Version with Efficiency and Customization Enhancements, Improvements to Core Modules, and Fixed Asset Management Integration

Mississauga , ON – Mar 12, 2008 – Sage Software announced today a new version of its business management solution for growing small businesses, Sage BusinessVision 50 Accounting 7.2. This latest release includes an extensive list of customer-focused enhancements designed to deliver a better, more intuitive user experience, along with many new performance improvements and features in several modules, which further demonstrate Sage Software’s ongoing commitment to providing products that meet the needs of its customers.

Sage BusinessVision 50 Accounting is an affordable, easy-to-use business management solution for growing small businesses that require a step above entry-level accounting applications, but don’t yet require a more sophisticated, full-fledged enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, such as Sage Accpac ERP. Sage BusinessVision 50 Accounting helps small businesses automate processes throughout their operations, including receivables, payables, inventory, payroll, job costing, and point-of-sale, among many others. Its advanced functionality, easy to use features and affordable cost make it an ideal choice for companies that have outgrown entry-level bookkeeping software such as Intuit® QuickBooks®.

“We continue to deliver on our promise to provide Sage Software’s customers with the tools they need to help further streamline and automate their business management processes”, said Sam Hunter, Sage Software senior vice president and general manager of the Value Business Unit. “Sage BusinessVision 7.2 also represents our commitment to innovation by ensuring it is meeting clients’ business needs both today, and in the future.”

Version 7.2 offers even more benefits that help to make internal business processes operate faster and easier, so users can spend less time focusing on daily tasks and more time on planning for future business success. It also runs on the new Microsoft® Windows® Vista™ operating system.

User Efficiency Updates in Purchase Order and Order Entry Modules
New functionality in Sage BusinessVision 50 Accounting version 7.2, such as the ability to more easily e-mail purchase orders and update vendor specific costs, plus improved, faster order entry processes will help users get their work done faster, and more accurately.

New Customization Options
With version 7.2, users can now further customize their Sage BusinessVision system to work the way they do, with the flexibility of even more configuration options. For example, the Sage BusinessVision Desktop can be personalized for and by each user, and security protocols that designate employees’ access can be applied to custom reports.

Improved Inventory Management
Sage BusinessVision 7.2 provides tighter inventory control features that translate into more accurate inventories, and improved time and cost savings as significant user errors can now be avoided. Businesses can now set up multiple units of measure for each product. Inventory can be purchased and sold in different measures while continuing to maintain an accurate count of how many individual units are in stock. Inventory details can be viewed at any time in sales, purchase, or stock measure. Purchase cost and sales prices can also be configured differently for each measure. Businesses can also track multiple UPC codes per product, use non-physical inventory items, and specify whether backorders and returns are permitted on an item-by-item basis.

General Ledger Module Enhancements
Gaining quick and accurate insight into any business is critical to maintaining a competitive edge. Sage BusinessVision 7.2 allows easy access to multiple years of historical business and financial data from one place. The enhanced General Ledger history lookup can access up to 99 years of history in seconds, right from the inquiry screen. Access to more historical data offers the ability to more effectively analyze trends and avoid future potential issues. Users can now also quickly import a new chart of accounts when creating another set of company data, or import transaction information from outside sources, such as payroll, accountant-mandated adjustments, or from other companies, with just a few simple clicks of the mouse. Several new options allow even tighter control over the heart of the system, such as a new print option in Journal Entry, validation on account segments and a new system warning that identifies when General Ledger integration with other components of the system has been turned off.

Fixed Asset Management Integration
With version 7.2, users can now easily move fixed asset management data from the Sage FAS 50 Asset Accounting system (version 2008.1) into their Sage BusinessVision 50 Accounting General Ledger, giving consistency to the information entered and reducing the risk of data errors caused by manual entry.(2)

Sage FAS 50 Asset Accounting provides advanced fixed asset accounting and reporting features for businesses needing fixed asset management for up to 1,000 fixed assets. Offering effective decision-making tools for integrated accounting environments like Sage BusinessVision 50 Accounting, Sage FAS 50 Asset Accounting gives a thorough overview of a company’s fixed assets at every stage, and is one of the easiest to use, most affordable solutions of its kind in the industry.

Pricing and Availability
Sage BusinessVision 50 Accounting 7.2 Standard Edition, (U.S. and Canadian versions), which includes 18 accounting and business management modules, and supports either one, five or ten users, is now available through authorized Sage BusinessVision business partners across North America starting at an SRP of $3,595 (USD), $2,695 (CDN) for the one user system. For additional information, contact Sage Software at 800-945-8007 (option 5), your local Sage BusinessVision business partner, or visit www.sagebusinessvision.com.

Technorati Tags: Sage Accounting, Sage BusinessVision 50

1500 Qualifying Businesses Can Receive Assistance through New Program

Atlanta , GA – Jun 04, 2008 – Sage Software announced today the Peachtree Family-Owned Business Support Program, created to assist family-owned and operated small businesses in today’s uncertain economic environment. Through this initiative, Sage Software will provide a free copy of Peachtree by Sage Complete Accounting 2009, single user, with six months of free customer support to up to 1500 qualifying businesses.

“Sage Software and our Peachtree product line have been helping small businesses for more than thirty years, through good and bad times”, said Connie Certusi, general manager, small business accounting solutions, Sage Software. “The current economic environment can be challenging for small businesses, particularly those that are using Microsoft® Excel® or a manual system to manage their accounting. Small, family-operated companies are the backbone of the American economy, which is why we’ve launched the Peachtree Family-Owned Business Support Program to assist this key driver of the American economic machine. It is critical in times like these that small businesses manage their finances and cash flow carefully, and Peachtree gives them all the tools they need to do just that.”

“Family and closely held businesses represent the vast majority of employers throughout the US”, says Wayne Rivers, President of The Family Business Institute. “Family and closely held businesses represent 99% of all employers and provide jobs for almost two out of every three Americans. They account for 64% of our nation’s GDP”, said Rivers. “In other words, family business is big business.”

Rivers recommends that every small business concentrate on making smart decisions based on real numbers. “The economy is soft right now, and every closely held business owner should be doing three things: giving attention to how his/her time is spent to assure focus on highest payoff activities; right sizing in terms of people, equipment, and expenses; and making sure they have great numbers and data so they can make correct decisions relating to the two items above. This initiative by Sage Software could be a tremendous asset in getting business owners the kind of information they need to make smart decisions.”

The Peachtree Family-Owned Business Support Program runs through September 30th, 2008, or until 1500 qualified applications have been received and software distributed – at a total value of around $400,000. Sage Software will provide one free package per eligible company. For more details on the promotion and eligibility requirements, visit: http://www.peachtreecares.com.

Technorati Tags: Accounting Software, Peachtree, Sage, Sage Accounting

Coda Group introduced the newest version of its online accounting software. Coda’s new release allows companies to integrate their software with Salesforce.com. This should prove to be a very useful feature for companies who use Salesforce.com CRM and Coda 2 go.

This new SaaS Accounting solution will be announced in London as the first cloud accounting solution to run on Salesforce.com’s new cloud software. As Saas continues to grow, new innovations are being geared towards SaaS Software and cloud computing is one of them.

The new release of Coda’s Accounting Software provides new features such as accounts payable and accounts receivable functions as well as spreadsheet integration and invoicing. Also, Coda 2go provides companies with much more flexibility as it can handle multiple currencies and multiple companies.

For more information about this exciting release, you can read the full article found here.

Technorati Tags: Accounting Software, Cloud Accounting, Cloud Computing, SaaS Accounting, Web-Based Accounting

Accounting Software continues to become more advanced as software providers compete to provide the most comprehensive features that are more specialized and targeted towards specific companies. The growing complexity of new software increases the need for employees to undergo more training in order to effectively utilize the new accounting software to its maximum potential.

Educational institutions are now offering courses in order to meet this new need. Advanced training in business software courses are being offered at a number of locations in order to facilitate the growing demand for training in business software. Kettering University is one such institution who is offering advanced training in financial accounting software. This training in Quickbooks should provide employees with a much better understanding of the accounting software they use.

The need for training to use business software should continue to grow in the future as companies continue to utilize more advanced software platforms. For more information on this training session, you can read the full article here.

Technorati Tags: Accounting Software, Accounting Training

Accounting systems traditionally store an enormous amount confidential company information with detailed data on company finances and expenses. Transitioning to a newer, untested accounting software platform may make companies reluctant at first. However, with the proper preparation, companies can easily setup accounting software in order to maintain accuracy within their accounting operations and ensure the security of their critical financial data.

There are many precautions and preparations companies can take to ready themselves for this very important endeavor as implementing a new accounting software platform is a big step for any company.

There are many ways to make the transition to a new software platform easy and a lot smoother. Some simple tips include playing around with the software before entering critical data in. This can allow you and your employees to familiarize yourselves with the system in order to be completely confident in what you are doing.

Other tips include setting your company preferences in order to try to have the software adapt to your needs. Also, many software platforms have customizations tools which allow you to further tailor software platforms to your company’s needs, making it much easier to use and conduct business using the new accounting software platform.

Another tip is to ensure all accurate data is entered into the accounting software platform. Make sure critical information such as banking information and company data information is accurate in order to eliminate any discrepancies. Also, synchronize the data to ensure that all employees are accessing any updated information that may be recently input into the software to lower the chance of errors.

Finally, it’s important to realize that nobody will know everything about a new software tool. Ask for help when needed and don’t feel guilty about contacting the provider for support. A lot of time and resources can be saved by going this route.

For more tips on how to smoothly implement your new accounting software, you can read the full article here.

Technorati Tags: Accounting Software, Accounting Tips, Implementation