"This is a significant shift in our business model. You don’t chose the product," said Jack LaRue, SVP of the company's MyPay operations. "We look at focusing on the end user rather than on our product line."

As explained by product manager Matt Jagst, pricing for the Internet-based suite was built around the roles that workers play in their organizations. Not only do prices vary depending on the role profile purchased, but the appearance of screens change with the employee's role. If a worker moved from one job within a company to another position with a different role, "the next time he logs on, his desktop will look different," Jagst said.

Businesses pay $424 per month for a full-service profile, which gives them access to all the modules in the CS suite that are now sold separately, ranging from UltraTax CS and WriteUp CS, through Practice CS and FileCabinet CS. The tax profile, priced at $350 per month, offers access to most modules, but not WriteUp CS, Payroll CS or Financial Analysis CS, and also lacks access to the Client Bookkeeping Solution master license. The accounting or bookkeeper profile costs $250 a month and omits UltraTax CS and Planner CS, but gives access to all other modules. The most limited profile, the administration role, is priced at $165 per month. It provides the users with only ToolBox CS, Practice CS and FileCabinet CS, along with access to the online version of Microsoft Office with Exchange.

Those are the starting prices for single profile subscriptions. There's an 8 percent discount for two to four profiles; 18 percent off for five to eight profiles; 25 percent off for nine to 12 and a 35 percent discount for more than 13 profiles.

Jagbst said the pricing model gives firms a great deal of flexibility when employees join their organization or when they leave. "Firms can add part-time staff and can assign a tax profile for them to work in January, February, March and April and when they leave, they can shut that off," he said. That's opposed to the current pricing scheme under which firms pay for the user for the entire year.

The goal has been to attract smaller firms and provide applications without requiring them to make "a huge upfront investment," Jagst said.

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