"We have traditionally gotten about one third of our business from accounting firms, says Neil Rohrer, vice president of the Eastern sales region for the payroll company. With Explore, Paychex is offering a program that's more a consultative approach, designed to find out how accountants and their clients want to handle payroll.
But the big kid of the accountant program block is Intuit, which has about 55,000 QuickBooks ProAdvisors, with about 19,500 of those having become Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors or having Advanced Certification. And certification makes a difference with clients, according to Samir Khosla, group project manager responsible for Intuit's accountant segment.
"With our certification program, we offer training as well as a certification exam," says Khosla. That certification gives ProAdvisors greater credibility with potential clients. They also get listings on Intuit's "Find a ProAdvisor" site and "That is a pretty significant driver of new business for our members," he continues.
Among new program elements, all ProAdvisors now get automatic updates of Intuit software through SlipStream, instead of waiting for the new version QuickBooks each year. Members also get free subscriptions for the Accountants Copy File Service, which enables accountants and clients to exchange files via Intuit servers and to QuickBooks Connect, which provides QuickBooks access on mobile devices and on the Internet.
Accountants can become ProAdvisors for $499 per year or for $674 annually if they also want the payroll portion of the program.
Sage has also gotten into the certification game, starting in September. But that company has a lot more substantial changes looming, according to Jennifer Warawa, senior director of partner programs for Sage North America, who manages the Sage Accountant's Network."We are simplifying our portfolio as far as our accountant's program goes," she says. With a far broader range of financial software than Intuit offers, Sage found it needs to steer members to applications they are most interested in. While the bundles to be offered haven't been selected, one will most likely be for mid-market accounting packages, including Accpac, MAS and X3. That is also part of an effort to enlist larger accounting firms that would be interested for software that is higher powered than Peachtree.
Sage also plans to do more with the vertical markets. Warawa said there might be a construction/real estate software bundle, for example. She intends to look at ways the SAN program can work with Sage's employer solutions and healthcare offerings, something completely new for the program.
Warawa also wants to reinvigorate the Business Alliance Program that helps accounting firms work with VARs. The program has been available, but Sage hasn't had a person dedicated to helping those alliances develop.
SAN will move beyond providing information about software. The company had its first accountants' track at its Insights reseller conference this year and plans to increase the offering at the next year's combined Summit channel and user conference. Sage is studying how it could help accounting firms with retirement and succession planning.
To join, new members pay either $449 or $599, depending on the product they are interested in. They receive the software and also a variety of services, including marketing and training.
The certification program is very new, 25 members had achieved that status in the first month. Warawa says advisors who seek certification, "want to be able to validate their knowledge and expertise." And while Sage has had Certified Consultants for years, that program was geared towards selling software. The new certification effort gives members the opportunity "to be certified without having to sell," she says.
NetSuite, which introduced its NetSuite Accountant Program in August provides single-seat access for accountants to end-user companies that use NetSuite's SaaS applications. There are also training and tools, along with discounts on training classes. In addition, NetSuite offers firms the opportunity to receive a 10- percent commission on the first-year's license fees for referrals that become NetSuite customers.
For San Jose, Calif.-based Intacct, which markets Web-based accounting applications, the relationship with accountants is more complex since it is signing firms up to use its software to deliver outsourced accounting services to companies and also to sell the product."The majority of CPA firms using Intacct are using it to provide outsourced controllership services," says Taylor Macdonald, Intacct's VP of channels. Intacct believes that providing outsourced business services is a more natural fit for CPAs, who Macdonald says were outhustled in the reselling business by entrepreneurs. But understanding business workflow and processes is in their bailiwick.
Intacct has sought an edge with the accounting community through its relationship with CPA2Biz, the for-profit arm of the American Institute of CPAs, which is the exclusive distributor of the Intacct Accountant Edition. The parties pitch the major advantage of this edition as what they term a CPA-focused dashboard for seeing client data.
Accountants can pick from three elements: the Client Accounting Services, Accountant Referral or Business Solutions Provider program. Among these, the referrers can receive special pricing on Intacct products.
