
Is the Cloud term an asset or just marketing hype?
A few things came together for me this week around the Cloud term. I spent time with one of my best customers discussing online accounting, what we should do to improve the product we represent in the UK, and how we should position to beat the incumbent in the small business market, Sage. But the […]

SaaS Accounting Gains: Now What Say You, McKinsey?
According to Goldman Sachs Accounting is now at the #3 spot in SaaS implementations, reports Dennis Howlett. Not a real surprise, certainly not to Dennis’s readers, or those who follow our Accounting 2.0 series. Still, seeing the numbers makes me feel good, given that I debated a short-sighted report by McKinsey a few years ago, […]

The SaaS applications wiki – open for business
Over on AccountingWEB’s forums (you need an AWEB account to log in, but it’s free) there have been some heavy exchanges discussing the barriers to adoption of Cloud solutions by accountants in practice in the UK. I found it interesting, but sadly the dialogue has been too vendor driven, with plenty of verbiage from the […]

Can Cloud vendors move beyond the terminology debate?
I recently mentioned Richard Messik’s great post castigating Cloud vendors on their jargon overload in the panel discussions at Softworld back in October. Over on AccountingWEB there has been some vigorous debate around the Cloud issues in discussion threads on whether accountants should be talking to their clients about Cloud Computing, the business case for […]

Does AccountingWEB get SaaS?
Let me start this post by saying I’m a big fan of AccountingWEB (in the UK, I don’t particularly follow the US edition). For the accountants in business and in practice or anyone interested in the sector it’s one of the key resources to read – they cover everything from tax to technology, but it’s […]

Mileage Calculator a Life-Saver @ Tax Time
What tax-time, you may ask. It’s April 15th, at least in the US. Wrong: Anyone can get an automatic 6-month extension, which means the real tax deadline is October 15th… closing in on me … ahhhh. No, I am not a procrastinator, my tax forms are always almost done by April 15th and I pay […]

Breaking News: Intuit To Acquire Mint
Techcrunch is reporting that Intuit (Previous Cloud Ave coverage of Intuit can be found here, here, here and here), the company that offers financial and accounting SaaS solutions to Small Businesses, is acquiring the personal finance service Mint (Previous Cloud Ave coverage of Mint can be found here and here) for $170 Million. Launched in […]

The Challenge of Offline Saas Revisited
Paul Michaud wrote a post here a couple of days ago on the challenge of allowing offline usage in a Saas based system. In his comprehensive discussion, he used the example of a Saas based contact management system and the complexities involved in allowing users to take their data, manipulate it offline, and then synchronise […]

30 Days With Xero
Yes, we have finally done it! After approximately 2 years of to-ing and fro-ing, we have moved our business accounting system to a fully Cloud based service. In this instance, we have chosen to go with Xero Accounting after evaluating a few online options. Ben Kepes has already done a review of Xero on this […]
Crunch Gets It So Right, and at the Same Time So Wrong
I don’t want to enter into a debate about acronyms – Microsoft’s Software + Services moniker gets some die hard Software as as Service loyalists all fired up. For the purposes of this post I’m going to take it as read that we all accept the second “S” to be the most important one – […]

Coda 2go/Corefino Mash It Up
CODA and Corefino recently announced that they’re joining forces to produce what they’re calling a mid-market alternative to the traditional on-premise ERP offerings. Called Corefino 2go, the offering combines the Force.com-based CODA 2go accounting software with Corefino’s Triple-C Technology Platform. I’ve come across Coda 2go previously – they’re one of the few vendors that have […]

Netbooks Emerges from Hibernation as WorkingPoint: SaaS for SMB, with Nicer UI but Reduced Functionality.
(This post is now updated, see bottom)Netbooks, provider of an Integrated SaaS Business Suite for Very Small Businesses came out of hibernation with a new name: WorkingPoint. In the never-ending debate of all-in-one vs. best-of-breed I tend to represent the “old-school” which believes in the value of having one tightly integrated system for most business […]

Review – CannyBill
Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve In an ongoing series of reviews and analysis pieces, CloudAve will be taking a deep look into accounting software for the new world. See the other posts at this tag Introduction & Background From their site, CannyBill class themselves as a “complete web-based billing and invoicing system, perfectly suited to any […]

Bootstrap/Outright – Review
Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve In an ongoing series of reviews and analysis pieces, CloudAve will be taking a deep look into accounting software for the new world. See the other posts at this tag Introduction & Background Bootstrap was created in mid 2008 by Kevin Reeth and Ben Curren a couple of software guys with […]

accountsIQ – Review
Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve In an ongoing series of reviews and analysis pieces, CloudAve will be taking a deep look into accounting software for the new world. See the other posts at this tag Introduction & Background accountsIQ is a product from Irish software house Visor. It is marketed as a full featured multi-currency business […]