Somerset CPAs, a firm based in Indianapolis, Ind., has started an Acumatica business. The new affiliated organization, Somerset Technology Solutions was formed through the acquisition of the Acumatica practice of Dataquest Solutions. 

The new organization’s leaders are David Gelula and Debbie Mazzullo from Dataquest and Jason Leveson from Somerset. An owner of  STS, Gelula, was principal consultant and general manager of Dataquest from January 2018 until taking the last month. Mazzullo served as principal at Dataquest there from April 2016. Leveson, now managing director of the new group, rejoined Somerset 2018. Gelula was a manager at Azamba Consulting Group from June 2007 through June 2016. Mazzullo founded Mazzullo Inc., a technology consulting group, in 1987. Leveson was a director of professional services with Deltek from 2014 through 2018. He worked at Somerset from 1999 through 2010 and  was a manger in the information solutions team for more than eight years

Expensify has raised about $65.5 million in proceeds an initial public offering this week. The total offering was for 11,190,392 at $27 per share but only 2,608,696 shares were offered by the company with the rest sold by shareholders.

Expensify, offers an expense management software through accountants and banks. It hs features such a corporate cards, expense tracking, next-day reimbursements, invoicing and bill pay. Expensify operates with a bit of an attitude with a presentation that featured the slogan “Get Sh** Done”.  It also conducts what it calls Long Ass Table Talks.  The company’s prospectus said it will use some of the proceeds to expand it channel.  Meanwhile, Expensify says revenue will range from $36.6 million to $37.6 million for the third quarter ended September 30, more than double last year’s revenue. Expensify estimated its loss will range from $8.1 million to $12.1 million. The company lost $1.7 million for the year ended December 31, compared to net income of $1.2 million for 2019. Revenue last year was $55.7 million, an increase of 148 percent from $48.5 million the prior year.

Fueled by its series of acquisitions, Quisitive Technology Solutions more than doubled its revenue for the third quarter ended September 30. Moreover, that does not include revenue from Catapult Systems, which was acquired this month.

The Dynamics and payments businesses both showed strong growth as the Toronto, Ont.-based companyy reported revenue of $27.8 million for the most recently ended period, an increase of 119 percent from $12.7 million a year ago. The loss for the quarter was slightly more than $3 million, up 64.3 percent from a loss of $1.8 million for last year’s corresponding period. Dynamics falls under the company’s Cloud Solutions segment, which reported $17.3 million in revenue, an increase of 50.4 percent from $11.5 million a year ago. The jump reflects the purchase of Dynamics healthcare reseller Mazik Global. CEO Mike Rinehart said during this week’s earnings webcast there was a “minor bump in the road”, a delay in achieving Visa and MasterCard certification for its LedgerPay payments business. He attributed that to supply chain issues. Once those clear, the "networks will be able to fulfill the installation of their hardware in our data centers, creating the dedicated circuit needed for LedgerPay to securely operate as an end-to-end Payment processor.” However, it did achieve Level 1 PCI certification during the quarter. Quisitive paid about $51.5 million for Catapult, which had trailing revenue of about $25.2 million. Rinehart noted six weeks of Catapult revenue will be reported by Quisitive for 2021.

Unit4 has hired Adam Bastin as EVP and global head of strategy and corporate development. One of his major charges is growing the software company through acquisition.

The announcement of his arrival said the company and its equity backer, TA Associates, want to use significant acquisitive growth to supplement organic growth to accelerate the transformation of Unit4.” He served as VP of corporate development for Cambridge, U.K.- based Arm Ltd. from June 2013 until taking the new job. Before then, he was VP of corporate development for BT from April 2011 through June 2013. He spent nearly five years as VP of Industrials Investment Banking for Merrill Lynch and five years seven months as Manager of M&A for HBSC from August 200 through February 2006.

The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas has a lot of features that are designed to recall the watery Italian city. That includes two sets of canals with Gondola rides—one outside and one inside on the second floor.

There’s one dead given away about the lack of authenticity of the hotel boat rides—the canal water isn’t green and it doesn’t smell like sewage. … I must say there’s a real high going to Vegas and it’s not just the oxygen being pumped into the casinos or the thrill of gambling. It’s the small of pot smoke, everywhere, in the casinos, on the streets. I had a drug sniffing dog come up to me while I was kneeling in the hallway at the Venetian changing camera lenses. It came up to my bag, and well that’s another story. ... I think the mini-bars at Vegas hotels must have motion detectors that can sense your presence at up to 10 feet so they can put a charge on your bill to dispute. … There’s a new take on the classic game show “To Tell the Truth”. Among the first guests will be Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Maybe he didn’t get caught in grade school and have to write “I will not tell lies” 100 times. I guess the team probably won’t be changing its name to the Green Bay Vaxers.…. … We had a record number of trick or treaters this year at our house. But they weren’t impressed with everything we were handing out—we had a lot of left over wipes and Purell. . I told one friend, who believed that an antimalarial drug being promoted by some politicians was a cure for the coronavirus, that he could get the same effect by swallowing half a cup of Purell but he didn't go for itl

Stayed in the “Nobu Hotel” in Las Vegas recently. It’s a hotel within a hotel, essentially off a Caesar’s corridor.

The rooms were fine but I would describe lighting in the lobby and lounge as early modern mushroom farm. …. There are some misleading place in names in some of the hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, including Caesars Bacchanal Buffet and the Linq’s Hash House a Go Go. I expected people in the former to be covered in Thousand Island dressing and croutons. And the latter promised something it didn’t deliver. … I don’t know if it meant anything, but the signs at Linq had the directions for the Dog Relief Area and Uber on the same placard. … You may have noticed the TV ads, advertising the Caesars Sports Book which says, “We are all Caesars”. I commented, “You mean you are going to be stabbed by 23 times by people you thought were friends?”Actually, the application of the name to gambling is appropriate as the Roman emperor was known for playing a mean game of Texas Hold 'em. … I am not going to comment on the use of Ivermectin by people opposed to the Covid-19 vaccination. But it is comforting to know a significant portion of the anti-vaxers are thoroughly dewormed.

 This Halloween, the scariest people will be the ones that come to the door without and masks.

… It is well known that the first telephone call by Alexander Graham Bell was to his assistant, Watson. The message was “Watson, come here, I need you.” What is not so widely known was the first call Bell received was “We have been trying to reach you about your car’s warranty. … TV actor William Shatner who played Star Trek’s James Kirk has just finished a flight into space on Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket.  Kirk was confused during the flight and kept saying, “Warp speed, Mr. Sulu” and asking Scotty to beam up the landing party. Later, was heard mentioning something about tribbles. ... The recent outage of Facebook was so bad people who remember it were searching for My Space. ,,, I understand Gartner has created a fifth quadrant for companies it can’t place in the other four. It’s called, “The Quadrant of Shame” and places people on the x and y axes based on criteria such as “Still hanging around”, “Leader in outdated technology” and “No apparent strategy”.  … On a game show I watched recently a contestant told the host she had five beautiful children. “You have five children?” he asked. “No, five beautiful ones,” she replied. “The other two are ugly as sin.”

My friend Jerry, a retired consultant, recently gave me insight into one of the secrets to successful consulting: “My plan for this year is to learn from the mistakes made by the people I give advice to.”

The TV show “La Brea”, in which a giant sinkhole reveals a hidden world under Los Angeles, debuted last month. They had to junk the original concept in which the sinkhole led to horrible area with terrible air, never-ending fires and pervasive smoke and then it was pointed out that’s a good deal of California. … Intuit recently had a QuickBooks Roundtable which included an appearance by rapper, PitBull. It turns out that QuickBooks support personnel will now be required to answer calls with rap … The book “Angels and Demons” by author Dan Brown included the story of a secret society, the Illuminati, which plotted against the Catholic church. In a new book called “The DaVince Roll”, the author of “The DaVinci Code” writes about warring secret societies, the Unde-rrati and Over-rati which fight a centuries long battle over the right way to hang toilet paper.  … Former “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno is back on TV with a reboot of “You Bet Your Life” the classic show of the 1950s hosted by comic, Groucho Marx. Then new version features contestants who refuse to take the COVID-19 Vaccine who say “I’d rather die” than take the shot. The audience then places bets on their longevity. Leno is probably took the job to help pay the insurance on all his cars.

This is it--final call for submissions for the 2021 Bob Scott’s VAR Stars. So take a minute to request a form or fill out and return a form.

The selection will be accompanied by a special report discussing just what mid-market financial software resellers have. been experiencing and where they think lthe market is heading. The selection is based on quality—not revenue. Past honorees have ranged from one-person operations to the largest ERP dealers. Factors that are considered in the selection are growth, development of significant products and services and contributions to the industry. If you are interested in having  your firm considered, please email bob.scott@pmg360.com

Just what kind of year has it been for the mid-market reselling community? It depends.

For some, it was very tough, but for others, it was the best year in their history as demand for cloud products drove business. If you were in segments such as hospitality and restaurants, it was very hard, if you were in ecommerce, things have never been better. Overall, it was a year of great change with the accelerated shift to the cloud from on-premise applications and the forced move to remote work which is producnglasting changes.

So click the button below to find out who made Bob Scott’s Top 100 VARs for 2021 and many of their thoughts about the last year and the future

It has been a year like no other for ERP mid-market software VARs. But one thing has stayed the same–it is time to ready your submission for Bob Scott’s Top 100 VARs for 2021--and this week is your last chance to do sol.

The IRS just gave you extra time to submit your individual tax returns, so use the opportunity to be considered. Each year, we rank the biggest financial software VARs in the mid-market and  use the occasion to learn more about how the market has worked in the last year and talk about directions it is likely to take in the near future. To be a player, please ask for a submission form  and return your information as soon as possibleto bob.scott@pmg360.com

 The year 2020 has been Dickensian—the worst of times and best of times. For most of the population, the coronavirus has made this year probably the most awful in memory. But for many mid-market software resellers, the move of companies to the cloud as their workforces went to remote operations, meant 2020 has been a good to great year. The results are not uniform. For VARs in markets such as entertainment and hospitality, it was not great. However, if clients were able to conduct business remote, resellers could service them remotely and despite the difficulties, 2020 was fine. Bob Scott’s VAR Stars for 2020 faced the pandemic and many not only survived, they prospered.