Financial services

Progressive Practices: Nicholsons delivering benefit via Xero

October 7, 2010 Innovation
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Earlier today I had a conversation with Richard Hallsworth, IT partner with Nicholsons, a 5 partner practice based in Lincoln. Despite it has a significant agricultural client base, the firm is finding that online systems like Xero are helping change the relationship between the firm and its clients. This echoes what Phill Robinson said at [...]

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XBRL – asking the wrong question

August 18, 2010 Innovation
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Mark Lee has a post about XBRL where he says: Clients will only agree to paying additional fees if they perceive that additional work is being done and that this benefits them in some way. Tagging company accounts for the taxman, using iXBRL tags, is going to be obligatory from 2011. It seems that plenty [...]

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Has Sage 50 quietly gone into maintenance mode?

August 3, 2010 General

Sage 50 recently announced its 2011 edition. Running through the videos and checking out the new features I could not help but think: has it gone into maintenance mode? Here’s what Sage is majoring upon as new features: Bank reconciliation All the details you need are now on one printable screen. Complete customer and supplier [...]

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Vantis in administration, 52 more firms at risk

July 1, 2010 Tax and Ethics

The writing has been on the wall for some time. It now seems that Vantis’ weight of debt has killed off the one time darling of the accounting firm aggregator market. Richard Murphy says: ‘I told you so.’ While I don’t fully agree with his reasoning, which he links to greed, the entitlement attitudes that [...]

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Kashflow, Xero, Zappos, Zoho : nuances and ethics

June 8, 2010 Tax and Ethics

Earlier today I read an extract from Tony Hsieh, co-founder Zappos upcoming book on why they built something before taking venture funding, what happened when they did take money and what forced them into the arms of Amazon. It’s instructive for the different perspectives you see on why entrepreneurs do what they do and what [...]

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Xero starts showcasing practitioners

March 29, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Gary Turner, Xero‘s UK MD has been out and about pointing his camera at Xero practice users. His first two video shoots highlight some of the benefits that practitioners are seeing from using a saas solution e.g. 10-20% reduction in time spent on routine client work Day-to-day data entry element is significantly eased Avoiding conversion [...]

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Traveling man

October 26, 2009 Innovation

This week sees the start of a marathon traveling session. First stop Vienna where SAP is holding the second leg of its annual TechEd roadshow. If you’d asked me four years ago if I’d like to attend such an event, the answer would have been a polite ‘no thanks.’ As someone who prefers the business [...]

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Where to for oversight?

March 19, 2009 General

As I scan the various world media, the lines from Hamlet Act V keep ringing in my head: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge [...]

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A razzie for obfuscating PwC

February 18, 2009 General

MayorWatch has a piece that looks suspiciously like a retrodden press release. I make no apology for ripping the entire piece because there are bags of nuggets worthy of comment: Figures produced for the City of London show the UK’s financial services sector contributed an estimated £67.8bn to UK government taxes – 13.9% of the [...]

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