Thomson Reuters is making its Checkpoint Learning Tax Research Certificate Program available to the academic market, the company said this week. The program, deviled by the CPEasy platform, is designed to helps students develop their tax research knowledge.

Nonprofit software vendor Abila has simplified the channel program it inherited. Late last month, the Austin, Texas, based company said it had reduced seven partner categories to three as part of what it is formally calling the Partner Ecosystem. The program has three elements, Business Partners, Product Partners and Implementation Partners.

Xero has hired Douglas Jeffries as CFO as the prior occupant of that job, Ross Jenkins, is moving to the newly created position of COO. Jeffries will be based in San Francisco. Meanwhile, the New Zealand-based marketer of cloud accounting software this week announced the hiring of a sales VP for the United States and of a sales director in the United Kingdom.