Canopy Insights, an analytical and reporting tool, has been introduced for accounting firm users. Insights enables users to directly type questions about individual reports with answers generate through the use of artificial intelligence.

Canopy has also added dashboards in Clients Tasks, and Time products to demonstrate the visuals and reports that can be created within the new module.

Answers generated by Insights can be added to a Canopy Live Board, which acts as a dashboard showing all questions and answers.In addition, users can create individual reports or aggregate several into a report dashboard and set alerts and schedule reports to be automatically delivere

 ADP has acquired Honu HR, DBA Sora, a low-code intelligent workflow automation and data integration tool. Terms were not disclosed. 

Sora is described as being able to unify disparate applications such as HR and IT systems. ADP expects to use the Sora platform with its HCM applications to give users the ability to “build and iterate on existing workflows, automating many key processes including communication, data collection and more.”

In addition, Sora can provide insights about employees in order to produce suggested personalized communications and experiences, “such as upcoming milestone or onboarding task reminders”.

ESG standards have been added to the TeamMate+ audit  portfolio from Wolters Kluwer Corporate Performance & ESG

ESG reporting standards and frameworks, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), EU Taxonomy, and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), are embedded in the TeamMate+ environment/.

The company said with the addition, “Auditors are now able to accelerate ESG audits to lead assurance efforts for corporate ESG reporting.”

 Intuit has introduced the QuickBooks Workforce mobile app, previously named the QuickBooks Time mobile app, in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

In the U.S. and Canada, employees who use the Workforce app and are also paid through QuickBooks Payroll can access pay stubs and tax documents in the app. The Workforce app including time-tracking, scheduling, and paid time off.

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To say the broad economic picture is confusing when applied to mid-market reselling would be an understatement.

Many observers expect a recession and some report sales cycles stretching out. Meanwhile, the immediate problem for many firms is a shortage of consultants to handle all the cloud implementations—a recession might send more businesses scrambling for SaaS financial software for more efficient operations. In a world reshaped by the Covid shutdown, remote work drove an accelerated interest in cloud computing. It's a new world in which how the forces interplay is yet to be fully understood.

This year's Special Report for Bob Scott's Top 100 VARs, "A Tougher Road Ahead?" looks at the thoughts of leaders in the channel and in the vendor community about these issues and the trends that have impacted ERP mid-market resellers over the last year. Of course, this report also features 100 reselling firms that have been chosen based on revenue. This year's list includes more than the usual number of newcomers and the expectation is, next year will reflect the continue rapid pace of change in technology and layers.

It was a good year for the 2022 Class of Bob Scott’s VAR Stars. It could have been better for many if they could have found more consultants. Finding qualified staff was the major problem facing all of the mid-market channel with both resellers and software publishers grappling with ways to get fresh bodies into the channel. The good news behind the problem is that many businesses have not made the move to the cloud and the future looks brigh for sales. Download our special report and view the list of 100 VAR Stars and read about the factors shaping the industry.

The issues surrounding payroll have changed dramatically over the last two years. With a significant percentage of the population working away from the office—and like to stay away, many businesses now have a work force in more than one state, meaning tax compliance is more complicated.

 The Great Resignation in which millions have changed or are changing jobs having clients asking accounting firms questions about hiring and employee retention. Fortunately, payroll software and service providers are responding with tools to answer these challenges. These include employee self-service that can improve the accuracy of employee records and payroll. Read about the trends that are reshaping payroll and drawing accounting and payroll firms into providing people services in the special report “Self-Service Reshapes Payroll”.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to most segments of business. That includes payroll where remote work, staff shortages and resignations have steered businesses to their advisors to increasingly ask questions about human resource issues. And there is the complexity of businesses that have unexpectedly found themselves with worker in many different jurisdictions. This special report examines the significant changes faced by accounting professionals who deal with the payroll and people issues faced by their clients.

Jeff Siegel is the owner of Siegel Solutions, an 11-person firm that provides outsourced bookkeeping solutions usingJeff Siegel is the owner of Siegel Solutions, an 11-person firm that provides outsourced bookkeeping solutions usingQuickBooks to over 300 clients. Jeff knows what it takes to grow a business: efficiency of scale, real-time insights thatbuild strong customer relationships, and a secure data environment. He gets all three from Right Networks.

In this ebook, we’ll examine:In this ebook, we’ll examine:

• Why DIY (Do-It-Yourself) accounting systems created forsmall businesses cause undue pain for both small businessowners and for accountants
• How the right cloud-based professional accounting systemcan not only eliminate that pain, but also open up newopportunities for accountants to better serve their clients

Steven Brewer, CPA is the President of Steven Brewer and Company, CPAs, located in Salem, IN. He talked to AccountantsWorld about how he’s grown his accounting practice without needing to increase his number of clients – and how those improvements have eased his tax season crunch.

BooXkeeping: How White Label Bookkeeping Services Provide Scalability to Your Firm When it comes to running a business the main thing that every business owner wants to do is sell their products or services, create brand awareness and generate profits that they can enjoy later in life. The last thing a business owner wants to do is to worry about bookkeeping, taxes, and the rest of time consuming accounting tasks needed to run a successful business, with limited resources and time, often the bookkeeping ends up being the last on the list of things that need to be completed.

The Internal Revenue Service will establish a new work unit to focus on large or complex pass-through entities. This is another part of the IRS effort to increase attention to high-income compliance issues.

Housed in the IRS Large Business and International, the new unit will include some of those that are part of 3,700 new revenue agent being hired by the IRS. These are to expand enforcement work focusing on complex partnerships, large corporations, and high-income and high-wealth individuals. 

Entities such as partnerships and S-corporations are the group’s focus

 A Chicago, Ill.-based tax preparer, who spent time in federal prison for tax preparation crimes, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for a new series of state offenses.

Oscar Garrett, 62, was convicted of the charges in May for defrauding Illinois out of $250,000. Garrett was convicted of filing false 1099-R and 1099-M forms on behalf of a client who did not have retirement income to report on the 1099-Rs. The clients were unaware of his activity.

The offenses occurred between January 2011 and December 2016.

Garrett previously spent more than two and half years in federal prison after being convicted of operating a similar scheme of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service.

In the state case, he was found guilty of theft of government property, identity theft, wire and mail fraud, forgery and income tax fraud. 

The Internal Revenue Service intends to hire more than 3,700 revenue agents to expand enforcement work involving complex partnerships and large corporations and high-income individuals. The focus is on those with annual incomes of more than $400,000 and partnerships with complex issues.

These positions will be open in more than 250 locations and are part of what the IRS says is "a larger effort to add fairness to the tax system and expand tax enforcement involving areas of concern with high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations, and promoters."

Funding for the positions is provided under the Inflation Reduction Act funding approved in August 2022.

In a prepared statement, Commissioner Danny Werfel said the IRS' first wave of hiring under the law was to improve telephone and in-person assistance. The next wave aims to reverse a decade-long decline of audits of the wealthy.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to intensify its work on accounts of high-income taxpayers, and will increase its use of artificial intelligence on large partnerships. The IRS said it will also ensure audit rates will not increase for those earning less than $400,000 a year.

The agency’s announcement stated that audit rates for those receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit remain high, "while rates dropped precipitously for those with higher income, partnerships, and others with more complex tax situations."

The IRS outlined its plans to initiate work in contacting 1,600 high-income taxpayers, 500 large partnerships believed to be underreporting, and to conduct open examinations of 75 large partnerships.

Furthermore, the IRS intends to introduce new fairness safeguards for those claiming the EITC. This includes efforts to ensure that unscrupulous tax preparers do not exploit individuals claiming these credits. As part of its High Wealth, High Balance Due Taxpayer Field Initiative, the IRS "will intensify its efforts on taxpayers with total positive income above $1 million who have more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt."

Highlighting that it has collected $38 million from more than 175 high-income earners, the IRS revealed its plan to assign dozens of Revenue Officers to focus on such cases. This year, the IRS will contact approximately 1,600 taxpayers who "owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes."

In 2021, the IRS initiated the first stage of its Large Partnership Compliance program, scrutinizing some of the largest and most complex partnership returns. This program is expanding, using AI to select returns for examination. By the end of this month, the agency will assess 75 large partnerships "representing a cross-section of industries, including hedge funds, real estate investment partnerships, publicly traded partnerships, large law firms, and other industries. On average, each of these partnerships holds more than $10 billion in assets."

Additionally, the IRS has identified ongoing discrepancies in the balances of partnerships with more than $10 million in assets, with disparities of millions of dollars between end-of-year and beginning-of-year balances for the following year. These discrepancies are on the rise. The IRS announced plans to investigate those who fail to file the required statements explaining these differences.

The IRS has allocated the necessary resources and has a plan in place to enhance this effort, commencing in early October when the IRS will begin mailing notices to around 500 partnerships. These partnerships may be added to the audit stream, depending on their responses.

The IRS will focus on areas favored by high-net-worth individuals, including the following:

Digital assets: An analysis of the IRS Virtual Currency Compliance Campaign revealed a potential 75-percent non-compliance rate among those identified through records of digital currency exchanges. The IRS expects to develop more digital asset cases for further compliance work early in Fiscal Year 2024.

FBAR Violations: IRS analysis of multi-year filing patterns for individuals required to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts has identified hundreds of possible non-filers with account balances averaging over $1.4 million. The IRS plans to audit the most egregious potential cases in the current fiscal year.

Labor Brokers: The IRS has uncovered instances in which construction contractors make Form 1099-MISC/1099-NEC payments to an apparent subcontractor, which is actually a shell company. These payments are eventually returned to the original contractor—an abuse seen in Texas and Florida. The IRS is expanding its efforts in this area with civil audits and criminal investigations. Depending on the responses received, the IRS will include these cases in the audit stream for further examination.

 Redpath and Co. has named Ryan Everhart as managing director effective October 1. He will succeed Mark Gibbs, who has led the St. Paul, Minn.-based CPA firm since 2014.

Everhart will be the fourth managing partner in the firm’s more than 50-year history

The firm noted Everhart’s planned focus on the advisory services area that was started in 2020. 

Everhart, who joined Redpath in June 2014, was a client manager who was named partner in 2014. He previously led the firm’s large industry area, the construction industry practice. Before he joined Redpath, Everhart was a manager at Wilkerson Guthmann from August 2011 through May 2014.

Previously, he worked at Baker Tilley Virchow Krause from January 2005 through August 2011 and starting as an accountant, becoming a CPA in December 2007.

 Xero has hired Ashley Grech to the newly created role of chief revenue officer. At the same time, the small business software company said chief customer officer Rachel Powell is leaving Xero after eight years.

Powell will remain with Xero through October 31.

Grech will be responsible for all go-to-market functions including global sales operations, regional managing directors and leadership, customer experience, ecosystem and partnerships and revenue operations. 

Based in the San Francisco, Calif., Bay area, she was previously chief operating officer of Recharge from July 2022 through March 2023. Immediately before that, she spent four-and-a-half years with Square where she was global head of sales from  July 18 through December 2021.

 Alex Chriss, who has led Intuit’s small business organization, has been named the next CEO of PayPal. Chriss succeeds longtime PayPal CEO Dan Schulman on September 27.

The departure of Chriss, after 19 years and two months, set in play some job movement at Intuit.

Intuit said chief technology officer Marianna Tessel  will succeed Chriss as the EVP who led the Small Business and Self-Employed Group when he leaves on September 5. Chriss has led that group, which includes Intuit’s QuickBooks operations, since January 2019.

Tessel, who joined Intuit in June 2017, has served as CTO since January 2019. Alex Balazs will follow her as the next CTO. Balazs, who has been with Intuit almost 24 years, has served in company’s chief architect position since May 2017

Accounting firm Sikich has named Richard Lynch and Antony Nettleton as managing partners of its CPA business. It also named market leaders to succeed the two.

Matthew Denton is moving into Nettleton’s position in the Chicago, Ill., area. Lynch will be replaced by Drew Long in central Illinois and St. Louis, Mo., and Jason Tuma in Northeast Ohio. Sikich also appointed industry vertical leaders, including Jill Boyleas for not-for-profit, Brian LeFevre for state and local government, and Melinda DeCorte for the new federal vertical.

The LinkedIn profiles for both Lynch and Nettleton show they moved into the managing partner positions in May.

Lynch, who has been with the firm for almost 12 years, was partner-in-charge for the non-profit business from September 2011. He joined Sikich after 13 years three months at McGladrey & Pullen. 

Nettleton has worked at Sikich since May 2020 and has been market leader for northern Illinois since May 2021 and partner-in-charge of assurance since May 2020. He was previously with Grant Thornton International from April 2013 and Grant Thornton from September 1991. At Grant Thornton International, Nettleton was global leader for quality and enterprise risk for the last two years of his tenure.

 Avalara says it is improving data import for Avalara Returns for Accountants and Avalara Managed Returns for Accountants. The indirect tax software company says this is being accomplished via five new API extractors.

"The goal of the extractors is to create a more streamlined and efficient way for firms to import data into the Returns console," the company said in a prepared statement.

These capabilities were announced simultaneously with additional integrations of its products with ERP systems.

Avalara is providing its ninth integration for the Salesforce Service Cloud, which will enable sales tax calculation on service- and product-related line items within the Service Cloud and gives customers the ability to easily map custom fields from Salesforce to Avalara AvaTax.

In addition, Avalara E-Invoicing and Live Reporting are now available for Oracle Cloud Fusion ERP. ELR was introduced this year to enable companies operating in other countries to simplify compliance in these areas.

Avalara is the latest in the flood of companies integrating ChatGPT with their software. The software company says it has a sales tax calculator plugin that accesses the generative AI tool.

Avalara says the connection to ChatGPT allow users to ask the platform  to calculate and research  sales tax rates based on their location. Users don’t have to be Avalara customers and the plug-in does not provide access to Avalara’s full suite of products.

Users with ChatGPT Plus accounts can install the Avalara plugin from the ChatGPT store. After that is installed, users can query ChatGPT for sales tax locations or calculate tax on a specific sale and ChatGPT will chose when to use the plugin based on the question and conversation.

Currently, the plugin is open to ChatGPT Plus subscribers in the Unites States and will be rolled out to other regions at some point.

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Avalara has introduced Avalara E-Invoicing and Live Reporting, a compliance API for multinational businesses.

E-Invoicing can be integrated into systems such as accounting, ecommerce, and ERP applications. It is designed to meet legislative requirements globally.

The sales-and-use tax software company says more than 60 companies have e-invoicing mandates or have announced plans to require e-invoicing and predicts the number may double by 2030. Avalara notes many countries have introduced other digital reporting requirements, including live reporting of invoice data and e-reporting of international sales and purchases.

With Avalara E-Invoicing and Live Reporting, users can accomplish the following:                                                                                                                                                     *Set up global e-invoicing capabilities in their ERP, ecommerce, or accounting systems store, set up their credentials, and configure the app based on their reporting need;                  *Access e-invoice exchange networks and government platforms;                                                                                                                                                                          *Support e-invoicing models by country or region;                                                                                                                                                                                                  *Monitor the status of e-invoices; and                                                                                                                                                                                                                               *Set up archiving. 

 QuickBooks Online can now recommended appropriate sales tax item categories for products and services.

Part of the November enhancements to QBO, the ability means when clients map a product or service to an item category, the rate will always be correct—even when the rate changes.

When items in Products and Services are setup, QBO will make category recommendations when sales tax machine-learning model has high confidence in the sales tax item category. It will prompt customers to edit categories for recommendations when the model has medium-high confidence in the selection.

In addition, Intuit said it has made it easier to migrate desktop QuickBooks data to BQO via the addition of a view-only mode feature. Clients can use this to view their data up to one year after their desktop subscriptions end.

The QuickBooks Online app for Windows QuickBooks Desktop uses who are using a QBO Essentials, Plus or Advanced subscription. The app must be downloaded by December 31 or before 25,000 app downloads have been reached whichever comes first.