Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/852835
4 JULY 2017 ■ www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com RANDY JOHNSTON EVP & Partner K2 Enterprises & CEO of Network Management Group, Inc. randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com @RPJohnston FROM THE TRENCHES Accounting Software is Making Progress While numerous jokes could illustrate this point, I'm thinking a food analogy can help you the most. Software publishers have been plan- ning the menu for a long time. They have shown pictures of the banquet to expect and you can even smell the food cooking. The meal has been elegantly plated, and put in front of you. You haven't eaten since some- time yesterday and are famished. However, the features of utensils, chairs, beverages and teeth are missing. A few of you have decided to just pick up the food with your hands because you are so hungry. Others of you are politely waiting for the finishing touches before sitting down to enjoy the new feast. How easy is it to eat soup with a fork or a knife? Do the features of utensils and teeth matter? I believe they do. WHY NOW? Several things are coming together for this perfect storm of change: ■ Cloud technologies are becoming more stable, faster and in general less expensive ■ Connections between systems are becoming more reliable whether products are in the cloud or premise based ■ Mobile enablement and/or mobile apps are increasingly planned and used ■ Reporting tools, Business Analytics and Intelligence tools and interfaces to systems are more intuitive ■ Large vendors like Microsoft are adding connections for PowerBI and the frequently used SQL databases interface more readily to common tools like Excel ■ Many legacy products have been getting modernization and almost 100% have a hosted version if you don't want to run them on premise ■ A nu mb er of publ i sher s have products that can run on-premise, in the cloud, both or some form of a hybrid offering ■ Older products are being discontin- ued or not upgraded Further, specific vendors have improved their products notably or introduced new ones. Examples from A to Z include: ■ AccountantsWorld Account ing Power ■ Acumatica ■ Biznet Software's BizInsight ■ Epicor ■ Intuit QuickBooks Online ■ M ic r o s o f t D y n a m ic s 3 6 5 f o r Financials ■ M ic r o s o f t D y n a m ic s 3 6 5 f o r Operations ■ Microsoft Dynamics 365 Enterprise ■ Open Systems TRAVERSE ■ Sage Live ■ Sage 50c ■ Sage 300c ■ Sage X3 ■ Xero ■ Zoho Books ■ And many more…. Further, if you are going to be a trusted advisor who provides col- laborative accounting services, you are better off choosing a tool that is hosted or that runs in a web browser. You'll likely need more than just the base accounting software product. In prior columns, we have discussed reporting tools, budgeting tools, payroll systems, time and expense tools, and many more. You need to provide a complete solution to your client that you have thought out and can consistently pro- vide as a service. To my knowledge, this year marks the 22 nd year of my recommendations to build collabora- tive accounting practices. This service offering has become more popular in the last ten years or so (is it OK to say it is finally "catching on"?). Over the last six months or so, I've been warning that we are entering a phase where the service will not be as profit- able for a variety of reasons. You can't expect this service to be the only offering that maintains profitability as assurance and compliance services become less profitable. As products in the pipeline are announced and become stable, we'll spend some time on "the next big thing" that you can use for improved client service and partner profitability. In the meantime, though, you can help clients modernize their systems and provide a productivity boost for their team. You can either help and learn, or you can sit on the sideline and be marginalized. Your clients will move ahead whether you are ready or not and with or without you. WHAT ELSE IS MAKING THIS HAPPEN? Revised and new products have addi- tional features and new capabilities. Common capabilities that were hard to come by in the past include: ■ Workflow ■ Mobile apps ■ Bank feeds ■ Paperless documentation support for payables, orders and ot her documents of record ■ Dashboards that allow drill down to the underlying transactions ■ Smartphone camera capture and location tracking for mileage, time and expenses ■ Connections to services like sales t a x, repor t i ng and ot her core transactional systems IF YOUR FIRM intends to be a trusted advisor in accounting, it is time to consider the myriad of changes made in the past year and announcements to be made in 2017. There are so many pending announcements from significant publishers and vendors, I can't wait for you to see what is in store. Why get excited about accounting software? Because new products created over the last 20 years are starting to mature. They have become easier to use and are more feature complete. Some pundits say that features don't matter, but features are what allow products to complete critical tasks.