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June 1, 2013 |  BY Jeff Drew |  Article

On the surface, the results of the 2013 North America Top Technology Initiatives survey show that “managing and retaining data” nudged past “securing the IT environment” to become the top technology priority cited by the nearly 2,000 accounting professionals polled. Dig a little deeper, and the evidence indicates that the emphasis on data stems at least in part from concerns about the increased security risks caused by the proliferation of mobile devices and the mass movement of confidential information to the cloud.

May 23, 2013 |  BY Neil Amato |  Article

When Mike Foster hears from CFOs about IT security issues, he gets the sense they’re focusing on a single hacking event here or there, instead of viewing IT security as a project that needs constant management and attention. What Foster tells the CFOs is this: “We don’t want to fight alligators.

May 1, 2013 |  BY Jeff Drew |  Article

On the surface, the results of the 2013 North America Top Technology Initiatives survey, released Wednesday by the AICPA and CPA Canada, show that “managing and retaining data” nudged past “securing the IT environment” to become the top technology priority cited by the nearly 2,000 accounting professionals polled.

April 1, 2013 |  BY Chris Baysden |  Article

Technology mistakes can cause higher expenses and lost revenue opportunities. During a session at the AICPA Advanced Personal Financial Planning Conference in January, Advisor Products President and CEO Andrew Gluck shared tips on how to avoid the biggest technology mistakes. The tips could prove useful for accounting firms and small businesses in general.

April 1, 2013 |  BY Jeff Drew |  Article

CPA firms for decades saw little upside to providing basic accounting services to business clients. Bookkeeping and other “write-up” activities required extensive data entry and document transfer that chewed up man-hours but did not require much specialized knowledge. Client accounting services (CAS) were seen as commodities that brought with them depressed hourly rates and a risk of costly errors.

April 1, 2013 |  BY Jeff Drew |  Article

Tax Code modifications and new FASB rules aren’t the only changes that CPAs have to concern themselves with these days. Whether it’s the security of clients’ data, the implications of migrating to the cloud, or the uncertain future of the once-venerable desktop, rapid technological transformation continues to generate new challenges and opportunities for accounting professionals.

February 5, 2013 |  BY Jeff Drew |  Article

Companies moving IT systems to the cloud are encountering higher costs and more implementation problems than they expected, KPMG International reports in a new survey scheduled to be released on Tuesday. About one-third of the more than 650 business and IT leaders in the global survey experienced higher-than-anticipated expenses adopting cloud-computing services, while a similar number reported significant implementation challenges.

February 1, 2013 |  BY Jeff Drew |  Article

When Susan Bruno set out to launch a mobile application to help women gain control of their finances, and Leonard Wright decided to develop an app to enhance his client interactions, neither wealth manager could foresee the dizzying array of detours and dead-ends they would encounter on the road to the app marketplace.

January 1, 2013 |  BY Jay Starkman, CPA |  Article

Since 2012, e-filing generally has been mandatory for tax preparers or firms that anticipate filing 11 or more federal individual or trust returns in a calendar year. However, e-filing presents a variety of dangers and unintended consequences not present with paper filing. Here are tips to make e-filing as safe and painless as possible: Tax returns should be transmitted to clients only via secure fax, encrypted email, or secure portals.

December 17, 2012 |  BY Jeff Drew |  Article

Google, Apple, and Samsung are leading a sales surge in the worldwide smart connected device market—a category consisting of personal computers, tablets, and smartphones—that should continue for at least the next five years, according to new research from International Data Corp. (IDC). The IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Smart Connected Device Tracker found that global shipments of smartphones, tablets, portable computers, and desktops reached a record 303.6 million, valued at $140.4 billion, in the third quarter of 2012, a 27% increase from the same quarter in 2011.