In the holiday issue of the newsletter, I mused on comments by Taylor Macdonald, VP of channels for Intacct that he wanted to make reselling fun again. My view is that the fun came when companies didn’t have accounting software and needed it and that while the switch to the cloud would come, it’s not going to be such a booming market. Here’s Macdonald’s comments (which don’t change my opinion): “ First, mid-market firms are switching financial software once every eight years – so that means 12 percent of businesses are looking every year.

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No one would confuse 2010 with the year that SaaS-based applications became the norm for the use and purchase of mid-market accounting software. But the year did represent the first year that quality resellers started hopping onto the cloud. NetSuite, Intacct, SAP and Acumatica all made their mark in signing up resellers. My vote is that SAP and Acumatica did the best in attracting high-quality VARs and SAP is starting to look the most impressive. Read more...

Sales-and-use tax vendor Avalara has filed SEC documents showing it is raising funds.  The document, filed on November 22, shows that the Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based company filed for a $5 million equity offering, but had sold only $600,000 of the total to two investors at that point. Among the limited amount of information provided by forms for such offerings, Avalara said it did not plan to use proceeds for M&A activity. Read more...

AccountMate has launched AccountMate SaaS, an application that the Petaluma Calif.-based vendor says enables customers to have modifications made to software on the AccountMate SaaS remote server. VARs make develop and install modifications via the hosted server. AccountMate modules, including CRM and BI, can be purchased and hosted as part of the subscription. Read more...