As Accounting Today's Top 100 Products was in its preparatory stages in terms of gathering information, procuring product shots and planning the requisite page layouts, we searched for something that would make this - the 13th edition - stand out from its worthy predecessors. The good news for us is that we didn't have to look very far.
The software folks who bring you the extensive roster of products found on the ensuing pages did much of the legwork in that respect for us.
Many of the Top 100 entries that you are familiar with have been rebranded by their owners for myriad reasons, whether for marketing strategies or for easier identification and linking to their sister products.
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Hence this year's theme of "The Name Game." Many of this year's entries are or will be doing business under slightly different nomenclature.
But the title changes don't alter the basic mission statement of this annual project: to present the best and most proven technology applications currently available to the CPA profession.
Each year without fail, we get reader inquiries immediately following the publication of Top 100 Products regarding specific criteria for inclusion.
As we have explained in previous introductions, the process is not an exact science - we evaluate all submissions on the basis of practitioner usage and acceptance, degree of visibility in the market, performance and innovation, the degree of user support from the vendor and, ultimately, the demand for it in the marketplace.
As we did last year, we've consolidated the tax planning and preparation categories, and due to the positive feedback from our readers, will again feature the burgeoning "Categories to Watch" of document management and Internet suites - which promise only to get larger in future Top 100 listings. We'll also showcase some individual products under the familiar banner of "Ones to Watch," and due to the rapid proliferation of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance tools in the current climate of heightened regulatory oversight, we've added an entire sidebar on that category for our readers with publicly traded clients, or those who simply want to adopt best practices.
Of course, whenever there is a listing of Top 100 anything, there are bound to be differing opinions and we, as always, encourage reader feedback either on the products that we've listed or those that you feel we've missed.
As with the previous two years of Top 100 Products, our 2006 listing will also be available on our Web site at WebCPA.com.
So with that said, we present our 2006 Top 100 Products.
Above all, remember that we've supplied you with a listing of the products that we felt would ease the path to efficiency and profitability for any company or CPA practice.
Only the names have changed.
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