Intacct Joins Forces with the AICPA and CPA2Biz

Today is an exciting day for the Intacct community.  

The AICPA, the largest professional association in North America, today announced that they have endorsed Intacct as their preferred provider of financial applications.  CPA2Biz, a subsidiary of the AICPA, will begin distributing Intacct to more than 45,000 AICPA member firms and to their millions of small business clients.  The AICPA, CPA2Biz and Intacct will spearhead a major program to drive the adoption of cloud computing and Intacct across more than 350,000 AICPA members, the companies they work for and their clients.

We started working on this new alliance with the AICPA and CPA2Biz teams more than a year ago.  Their motivation is in improving the financial performance of millions of small and midsized businesses and increasing the productivity of the accounting profession by moving financial processes onto the Internet.  They have done extensive research on the benefits of the adoption of cloud computing by the profession and tremendous diligence on Intacct.  You can imagine the AICPA does not make a move like this lightly.

We have also established a joint development relationship.  We’re working hard with the AICPA and CPA2Biz to make their intellectual property available within Intacct applications.  For one example, imagine 100 different micro-vertical financial templates in Intacct, blessed by the AICPA as the best way to run law firms, restaurants, construction businesses and more.  And built-in business guidance from the AICPA – like best practices for handling new transparency requirements, or benchmarks for key financial measures and how you compare to your peers.

The AICPA and CPA2Biz have a great track record of executing partnerships like this.  Five years ago, they endorsed PayChex as their preferred payroll system; today, PayChex has more than 500,000 customers with more than 25,000 AICPA member firms are recommending Paychex to their clients.  They don’t do things in a small way – it’s all about scale.

So what does it all mean?

First, the endorsement of cloud computing for core financial applications by the largest professional organization in North America is milestone in itself - the AICPA clearly sees tremendous benefits for their membership in moving financial processes into the cloud.

Second, over time, literally millions of small and midsized businesses across America will be touched by this new alliance.  It has a shot at improving transparency and productivity, particularly for small business, on a macroeconomic scale. 

It’s also a clear indication of the AICPA’s and CPA2Biz’s vision to transform accounting services – touching nearly every sector of the US economy.  As the economy recovers, I also expect our new alliance to create jobs – by making it easy for firms to hire in lower cost areas of the country and bringing stay at home and part time workers back into the profession.

More close to home, it’s a tremendous endorsement for Intacct.  We expect the new partnership to drive significant growth for Intacct across 350,000 AICPA members, 45,000 member firms and millions of their clients.  This means lots of new opportunities for Intacct and our channel and alliance partners.

Please join me in welcoming the AICPA, CPA2Biz and more than 350,000 AICPA members into the Intacct family.