New Tax Vendor for the Professional Market? No.
Jun. 10, 2009
A few weeks ago, I posted an article here about the possibility of a new professional tax prep vendor coming to the market (www.cpatechviews.com/2009/04/is-a-new-tax-vendor-coming-to-town).
That was after I discovered that CLI, Inc., a long-time vendor of practice management systems for accounting firms, had become the U.S. distributor of the APS suite of professional products.
The APS system includes practice management, business intelligence, CRM, document management and business process automation applications, and is one of the leading professional suites in England, and the leading vendor in Australia and New Zealand.
What piqued my interest is that the APS system also has one other very key component in those countries: Tax Compliance. So, that led me to wonder whether CLI was going to bring the APS tax system to the U.S.
The answer, according to CLI president Peter Coburn, is no. “At least not in the foreseeable future. While the federal system would not be that difficult to accomplish, the biggest challenge in developing tax compliance for the U.S. market lies in all of the state and municipal jurisdictions.”
CLI is having success with the APS suite, however. They are about to announce that Mohler, Nixon and Williams has bought into the program. The firm is a top 100 U.S. accountancy headquartered in the Silicon Valley area of California. CLI got the new client win over other large competing vendors, and is providing implementation, training and other support functions to MNW, including configuration and integration with the practice’s other financial and business management applications.