Cloud Computing/SaaS

2012, the year the practice died?

November 21, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Late last week, Gary Tuner pointed to an article in AccountancyAge which implies 2012 could be a watershed year for firms in practice. It struck me the issues to which the article allude have long been known. It’s just that it is hard  to get accountants to pay attention to the right things. After all, [...]

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ClearBooks explains outage but raises more questions

November 4, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

After what must have been a horrific week for ClearBooks, the company has come clean about what went wrong. In a nutshell, they didn’t know what they were doing. If that sounds harsh then look at what they say: Year 2 Then we suffered a major hardware failure on our single database server. Having a [...]

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KashFlow rejigs business model, axes pricing for Orbit

November 3, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

A wee update from KashFlow caught my attention: We’ve just added a feature that lets you give access to your KashFlow account to your accountant without you having to give them your username or password. How do they do that? It turns out that KashFlow is modifying the linkage between the main solution and OrbitAccounts [...]

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FreeAgent and KashFlow compared for file storage

November 3, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

A number of years ago, I imagined the day would come when an online accounting system would allow for the inclusion of file attachments and storage. This makes a lot of sense from the accountants’ perspective. The prospect of freeing up expensive physical storage space is always welcome. It’s perhaps less obvious for the business [...]

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ClearBooks – 13 buyer lessons

November 1, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Unlike most other posts, I’m not providing a single link. There’s a reason which I’ll spell out at the end. A couple of correspondents have taken umbrage at my sharp position concerning ClearBooks. I have no issue with that as it is always an opportunity to educate and be educated. There are however greater lessons [...]

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Are ClearBooks any closer to solving their problems? No

November 1, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

October 28th, 30th and 31st will go down as three of the worst days in ClearBooks‘ history. Prolonged outages over those days combined with a lack of coherent communication make for a sorry tale. And now, they’re down again. The last Google snapshot was at 2.37am GMT. As I write this, it is now 5.37am [...]

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ClearBooks – how long before it sinks?

October 31, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Towards the end of last week, Clear Books had an extended outage. Again. Over the weekend it was compounded by yet another outage that lasted at least 6 hours. Outages happen but Clear Books is starting to look seriously accident prone. It is the poster child for anything that can go wrong combined with dick [...]

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billFLO to shutter 1st December

October 20, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Sad news – billFLO is to shut shop 1st December at which point all customer accounts will be deleted. Earlier in the year, the company agreed to be acquired by Taulia. At the time, Taulia said: Taulia, Inc., the leading cloud-based dynamic discounting solution provider for SAP®, today announced that it has acquired billFLO. billFLO [...]

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NetSuite takes the lid off new release, augments security

October 20, 2011 Cloud Computing/SaaS

NetSuite took the lid off its latest release yesterday. Many of the enhancements have a direct bearing on finance folks so it is worth listing what they’ve added: Expanded  tax reporting to over 40 countries Global consolidation and automated intercompany eliminations Revamped standard costing for manufacturing and wholesale distribution companies Slice and dice, pivot analytics [...]

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