Small business

Going pear shaped: TAS style

March 23, 2010 Humour

I have fond memories of TAS Books before it was acquired by Sage in 2001. Great software, did what it said on the packet, excellent entry level accounting package that never realised its market potential – hence it was acquired. So you have to ask yourself – what did they do to deserve this entry [...]

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Customers speak, vendors no longer control

March 19, 2010 Cloud Computing/SaaS

Customers speaking out represent the most powerful voices. When they complain, the world knows. When they heap praise, the world knows. It’s something over which no-one has control and especially not the vendors. Professionals should take notice because we are starting to see a regular stream of customers saying both good and not so good [...]

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Define your success by understanding what clients REALLY want

March 9, 2010 Innovation

Rick Telberg’s CPA Trendlines has a survey that should get any professional thinking. Entitled: How Do Business Owners Define Success? It draws inspiration from a recent business owners’ survey. Rick says: Accountants often define success in terms of revenue, net income, or maybe client service. But the Enterprise Council on Small Business surprisingly found that [...]

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SaaS accounting: getting the right people on board

September 30, 2009 Cloud Computing/SaaS

FreeAgent has just announced that Emily Coltman has joined the business: Emily Coltman will be joining the company as our Support Accountant. It’s an exciting addition to the team as she has a wealth of experience as a small business accountant and really understands the needs of our accounting partners. Other than the fact it [...]

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31 months and how much change have we seen?

May 1, 2009 Tax and Ethics

I can’t recall who pinged me with this from the FT in 2006: From our perspective, the accounting profession has not worked hard enough at protecting small businesses and caved in to pressure from political elements. While many businesses have cut overhead and staff costs by the use of technology, the accounting profession, while stating [...]

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Indirect saas marketing that wins

February 25, 2009 Featured

Today’s marketer consensus is that nothing much beats word of mouth (WOM) and personal recommendation. That means connecting with the communities likely to be most relevant to your product. All standard stuff and any number of talking heads can give you the 1,2,3 on that one. Case studies though are few and far between with [...]

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SME's upbeat

January 20, 2009 General

Kashflow has put out the results of a survey it conducted in December. The PDF download is here. In summary, the respondents seem relatively optimistic: Are you expecting to find it more difficult to pay loans and suppliers: Yes 37% No 63% Will you be considering reducing your staff levels? : Yes 16% No 84% [...]

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Sage 50 2009 draws a razzie

September 6, 2008 Cloud Computing/SaaS

John Stokdyks’ review of Sage50 2009 is interesting for this one observation: For its share of the desktop accounting market and the features it packs, Sage 50 is a software behemoth and each annual release is a big event. But is anyone else beginning to get the feeling that the real thrills – and opportunities [...]

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