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Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 8 seconds

Thomson Pushes Ahead on CSA Transition

Louie Calvin, Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters executives were talking effusively about their plans for the cloud at the company's recent Synergy user conference. But many users were far more concerned with some older technology—moving from the soon-to-be retired Creative Solutions Accounting, which hit the market in 1998, to the newer Accounting CS, which launched on May 1, 2010.

Thomson's focus was on Onvio, the new cloud suite, which the company admits will take years to roll out. But around meal tables, far more discussion centered on CSA.

There are still 3,000 firms using CSA, down from a peak of about 15,000, according to product manager Louie Calvin. Thomson is making a lot of noise to remind the users that it will retire CSA on June 1, 2017. Currently, the company is moving about 350 firms a month to Accounting CS and the number still using the older product has come down dramatically from the number of users on January 1.

CSA "has grown dated. It is built on the Access database," says Calvin, and he notes that when there is data corruption, it bogs down. CSA was built to move the company into Windows. It was not designed for an era of email and the Internet. It is also less efficient. "CSA was a client-by-client approach," Calvin says. Accounting CS utilizes more global processing, including the ability to print more jobs simultaneously.

Users, of course, are concerned with the process of converting client files from one system to another. "We are assisting them with the transition," says Calvin. "We are doing one-off communications, giving them goals and training."

Accounting CS has had a major impact in one area—payroll. With CSA, few firms were providing payroll services of any size. With Accounting CS, that has changed. Calvin estimates there are at least 200 firms running more than 200 payrolls. That simply did happen with the older product.

Bob Scott
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
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