Intacct Adds Professional Services Accounting To Cloud Computing Apps

software

The move -- particularly the deal with Clarizen -- will bring Intacct into more frequent competition with Software-as-a-Service application vendor NetSuite, which took its own steps into the professional services arena with its OpenAir acquisition in 2008.

The new Intacct offerings are part of the company’s Summer 2010 release of its cloud computing-based Intacct Financial Management and Accounting System. The new release also sports a streamlined user interface and more than 100 new features and enhancements.

The addition of Intacct Project Accounting will help Intacct expand sales to service and project-based businesses that bill for the time of its consultants and employees who work on projects for their clients. The new application is targeted toward small businesses with 25 or fewer consultants.

Running as a module on top of Intacct Financials, Intacct Project Accounting tracks employee and subcontractor time and expenses, automates billing and invoicing, helps companies manage projects and budgets, and provides visibility into a project’s financial and operational information, said Laurie Wood, senior product marketing manager at Intacct.

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Under the alliance with Clarizen, Intacct’s financial and project accounting applications have been integrated with Clarizen’s cloud-based professional services work management software. That will allow a company’s service employees to manage their projects while the company’s finance organization uses Intacct to manage the financial aspects of the work.

Dan Druker, Intacct senior vice president, said the partnership with Clarizen would provide Intacct with a sales route into larger companies -- those that require more sophisticated project management capabilities than Intacct Project Accounting alone can handle. He said Intacct has about 50 beta customers for the project accounting application and about half of those involve Clarizen.

Intacct launched its channel program in March 2008 and sales through solutions providers now account for more than half of the company’s new business. Last month the company hired channel veteran Taylor Macdonald to assume its channel chief post and take the program to the next level.