The Santa Barbara Tax Products Group, which formed early this year, has gotten into the refund loan business as widely expected in the tax industry. While the company issued no formal statement, its Web site is offering 28- to 48-hour Refund Anticipation Loans. Enrollment for those who offered RALs through another program is open through December 19.

CCH Small Firm Services is rebranding the Client Write-up package that is sold primarily to its ATX and TaxWise customers and a beefed up edition of the product suite will replace CCH's ProSystem fx Write-up this fall. It will also replace the old CPA Accounting which customers have used for many years.

Five years ago, most accounting firm partners would probably have stared blankly if you asked them about server virtualization and virtual machines. But now many are adopting server virtualization as a way of reclaiming space and improving hardware performance, even if they don't always understand the technology "It's been everything we hoped for and more," says CPA David Cieslak, a principal with reselling firm Arxis Technology of Simi Valley, Calif.