"There were a ton of firms that liked practice management and didn't have a desire to go to the cloud," says Samantha Deal, the technical product manager for the company. The software to enable the connection was made available for download a few weeks ago.

Deal notes that firms often stay on a practice management package for five to 10 years. This new approach means they can remain on the desktop product but go to the web with Axcess Tax or Document.

"They can enter clients through Practice Management and there is a utility that pushes client information into the Axcess core database," she says.

The software publisher wants its consultants to look at the data of firms that want to utilize this path. "We want a good clean database," Deal says. "We push the professional services, because we want to make sure you have the best starting point possible in creating your Axcess database."