Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/825759
4 MAY 2017 ■ www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com RANDY JOHNSTON EVP & Partner K2 Enterprises & CEO of Network Management Group, Inc. randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com @RPJohnston FROM THE TRENCHES Are Portals Finally Coming of Age? Even more firms used products like Citrix ShareFile to transfer large files and set up inexpensive, easy-to-use portals to transfer files such as QuickBooks desktop files or scanned images of documents. Citrix has added eSignatures, a document gathering facility with its PBC list tool, and an approval workflow to make working with clients more automated. XCM's workflow prod- uct had a notable breakthrough in 2015-2016 with two-way collabora- tion from a public accounting firm directly to an industry business workflow and back to the accounting firm. Several vendors are bringing products to market that provide a document gathering and delivery system with SurePrep TaxCaddy , my favorite new portal product of 2016. Other practitioner products released last year included: CCH My1040Data for Axcess, cPaper- less SafeSend Returns, and Pascal Workflow "Payment Protection". Another category of client service that we helped start in 1997 is col- laborative accounting. Most of the SaaS products enable collaborative accounting, and clearly hosting desk- top products, such as QuickBooks in those days, was an innovative step. Hosting with companies like Cetrom, Right Networks and CloudNine Realtime make desktop QuickBooks available anywhere, anytime on any device and provide portals for your clients. As we see QuickBooks Online with two million users, Xero with PORTALS HAVE BEEN in existence in the accounting profession for around 20 years. Many public practice firms set up proprietary portals that had integration benefits to their practice management systems and were integrated into early web sites. Virtually every software publisher has implemented a new portal incorporating responsive design (that adjusts to various web browsers or mobile devices on the fly). All the portals reviewed this year have become easier to use, and serve more broad client needs.