Technology

Is your firm leveraging technology as a strategic asset or is it viewed as simply a cost of doing business? Successful firms view it as an asset and build an IT leadership and governance model that helps harness the power of technology as an accelerator toward improved performance, profitability and growth. There are five aspects of IT governance that are differentiating the best from rest.

Five years ago I embarked on an extraordinary journey by joining the editorial team of this magazine, known then as CPA Technology Advisor. Today, I share with you my final column as its executive editor.

We’re in the middle of a fundamental shift – from client-centric accounting, where clients do their own bookkeeping and then send the records (often full of errors) to the tax preparer once a year – to an accountant-centric model, where accountants use cloud-based tools to provide accounting services as well as higher level consulting services. This shift is forcing the profession to reexamine the whole model of the practice.

How often do you talk on the phone, look at email messages, check the news or weather, read or composts text messages while you're driving? We take pride in our ability to multi-task, but at what cost? Centuries of accountants managed to drive from point A to point B without phones in their hands. Today, it seems everyone is connected.

Tax preparation remains a major source of revenue for many accounting firms. Although seasonal income for many, a lot of consideration should still be given for the most appropriate tax software solution. Each firm has a different number of employees, client focus and a host of other differences to consider. Thankfully there are plenty of tax software solutions to choose from to fit individual firm needs.

Unlike traditional applications where it is very clear where one module begins and another ends, CCH Axcess users can perform many tasks from a wide range of menus throughout the solution. This flexibility may be confusing to new users, as the time capture functions are accessed from the user’s dashboard and not from within the Axcess Practice application.

ProSystem fx Tax is the traditional tax service offering provided by CCH. It is intended as an in-house solution, but is also offered as a hosted solution branded as Global fx.

GoSystem Tax RS is among the most sophisticated tax compliance systems currently serving the accounting profession. Solely offered as an Internet-based solution, GoSystem Tax RS is fully scalable to meet the needs of medium size firms and larger and offers a reliable platform to handle large data sets. New for the current release is a new Microsoft Excel mapping tool and the start of a multi-year project that aims to unify all data entry screens.