Small business

ICAEW Cloud Computing for Accountants: dead book keepers

September 26, 2010 Innovation
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Apologies for those who are done to death by my ICAEW videos. I felt it was appropriate for readers to see and hear from users who talk candidly about their experiences, the issues they come across and the benefits they are getting. Chunking them into small pieces gives everyone an opportunity to decide what they [...]

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Sage evasive about SaaS offering

September 8, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS
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The other day, the Twitterverse started humming about Sage allegedly touting a SaaS accounting solution priced at £9.99/month to sit alongside SagePay. It had to be Duane Jackson, CEO KashFlow and self appointed Sage baiter. Sage’s move sort of makes sense given the potential value in payment processing solutions for small business. I’d not heard [...]

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inDinero – one to watch

September 2, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS
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I stumbled across this report at TechCrunch about inDinero in a C round where it hopes to raise $1 million. That’s pretty good for a new vendor in the apps space but reflects the interest in SaaS/cloud apps that are aimed at the very small business (VSB.) Founder Jessica Mah traces here entrepreneurship back 7 years [...]

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Progressive Practices: Mazuma puts the fun into accounting

August 18, 2010 Progressive practices
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Formed in 2005 by a couple of childhood friends who trained in accounting, Mazuma (a Yiddish word for ‘money’) is one of a new breed of ‘accounting factories’ that is taking the commoditization of compliance services to an entirely new level. Earlier today I spoke with co-founder Lucy Cohen, the marketing brains behind Mazuma who [...]

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Will complexity suck the life out of the SaaS advantage?

August 16, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS
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Earlier today I received an update from Xero. It said: New Ledger Edition We’ve created a new edition of Xero called Ledger for clients who really only need end-of year reporting. Even if you try it and decide you’d like to be be able to do more, such as invoicing or bank feeds, you can [...]

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Kashflow cuts Barclaycard deal: where was Sage?

July 29, 2010 Innovation

TechCrunch Europe is reporting a deal between KashFlow and Barclaycard that sees Barclays developing a pilot e-billing scheme for its customers. According to TCE: As for KashFlow itself, the email makes mention that the company usually charges £15.99 + VAT a month for its service but that Barclaycard is “waiving” the charge for pilot merchants. [...]

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Change the world or go home

July 24, 2010 Innovation

Mark Lee recently launched a scathing attack on generic emails sent out by professionals. Why am I not surprised? I’ve been saying much the same about template driven websites. Firms feel they must have something but rarely go to the trouble of making their efforts unique or interesting. Here’s one crappy example. Here’s one that’s [...]

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AICPA and ICAEW face common issues

July 5, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Paul Stahlin, incoming AICPA chair: You ignore globalization at your peril from Rick Telberg on Vimeo. Any practitioner that is serving clients who trade on the Internet cannot be blind to the globalization of trade. I bitch on about systems that don’t handle multi-currency well for good reason. I have to juggle three currencies and [...]

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A Xero day update

June 21, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Last Friday I met with Gary Turner, UK CEO of Xero for a breakfast catch up on the company, its progress, initiatives and the like. The meeting was opportune because it was almost a year ago to the week when Gary was announced as Hamish Edwards successor. At the time I remember Gary grinning from [...]

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