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Tech2Go Episode 6 – LIVE from the AICPA TECH+ Conference

Jun. 28, 2007

Tech2Go is a fast-paced roundtable discussion with Executive Editor Gregory L. LaFollette, CPA.CITP, and regular columnists Brent Goodfellow, Dave McClure and Randy Johnston. These thought leaders tackle current technology issues impacting the tax and accounting profession. This month, the panel discusses the AICPA TECH+ Conference, Tech2Go’s new sponsor – ADP, the CITP credential, the 2007 Tax & Accounting Technology Innovation Awards, and Virtualization. [Running time is 1:00:51]


Gregory L. LaFollette CPA.CITP

Brent Goodfellow CPA.CITP, MCSE, MST, MCT

James Bourke CPA.CITP
Special Guest

Randy Johnston

Tech2Go Show Notes
Episode 6 – July 2007
Recorded June 12, 2007
Duration: 1:00:51

  • First Impressions from TECH+
    • Attendance up about 20% over last year
    • Lots of attendees and activity
    • Randy’s Session
  • New Tech2Go Sponsor: ADP

  • CITP Credential
    • For CPAs with tech backgrounds or interests
    • Reach out to state societies
      • “Big 15† – Reached out to largest 15 state societies to promote the CITP credential
      • 11 states participates in the 6-month challenge
      • Added 101 New CITPs through the challenge
      • California: 21 people increase in new CITP credentials in 6 months
      • Indiana: 33% net increase in new CITP credentials in 6 months
      • Watch video of the CITP Introduction and award winners
    • New CITP challenge for 2008
  • 2007 Technology Innovation Awards
    • Microsoft: Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007
      • Free version, freely available and downloadable
      • Offered with the Office suite package
      • Looks and feels like other products in the Office suite
    • Intuit: Intuit Lacerte SmartMap Feature
      • Insight and design innovation
      • Making things easier for the practitioner
      • Drag & Drop accounts and numbers onto tax return to save time
    • SurePrep, LLC: 1040SCAN
      • OCR (Optical Character Recognition) with forms recognition
      • Automatically inserts information into software
      • Firms say they are saving about 25% of their entry time
    • Thomson Tax & Accounting: Practice CS
      • Dashboards
      • Customizable set of snippets of information and areas that can be customized
      • Has multiple views: Firm view, staff view and client view
    • BankServ: DepositNow A/R
      • Check scanning and automatic electronic bank deposit
      • Captures check data and automatically enters client payment into accounting software to keep balances up to date
  • Virtualization: What is it?
    • Servers
      • Could be THE big software improvement over the next 5 to 10 years
      • Take one or more physical servers – “Host Computer†
      • Add software to “talk† to all the hardware like printers, files and other devices
      • Virtually splitting one server into many different servers, dividing up server resources to be used more efficiently
      • Isolates and allows software requiring a server to run inside its own “container† where it will think it is the only software on the server.
      • Allows you to use one “virtually divided† server for everything instead of multiple servers dedicated to single tasks or software operations
    • Desktops
      • Parallels for Macintosh computers allows you to run both Macintosh and Windows operating systems simultaneously
      • Virtualize a desktop with VMWare
      • Allows one computer to run multiple operating systems simultaneously – You can run Windows Vista and Windows XP at the same time
      • Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 – Free download
      • Microsoft Virtual Server – Also free download
      • Solve specific system requirements and software conflicts with virtualization software