mergers, acquisitions roil cpas.
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by rick telberg
at large
of all the issues that cpas have with accounting software, the never-ending trail of vendor mergers and acquisitions stand out as one of the biggest pet peeves. from the low end to the high end, cpas have watched in horror as big fish gobble up the small fish and eliminate or at least reduce support for software products that accountants have come to know and with which they comfortably make money.
“as fast as we buy one [accounting software package] and get used to it, it gets bought out by someone else and is stuck on a back shelf,” laments sonny julian, head of a small cpa practice in independence, mo.
“with the merger of the big software players, your options get limited,” said a cpa staffer at an association that uses peoplesoft. “oracle just bought peoplesoft and, after making a substantial investment in peoplesoft, we wonder whether enough of its architecture will survive the long term to make our investment effective.”
a chief financial officer at a 100-plus employee business that uses peoplesoft says his company is already in the market for a new system “because of the possible demise of peoplesoft.” a senior staff cpa in business and industry noted that oracle’s acquisition of peoplesoft has his shop wondering whether peoplesoft and j.d. edwards will soon be integrated.
vendor consolidation is even more of a concern for middle market and lower-end accounting software users. that market, which had 20-plus vendors in the 1990s, is now down to just a handful of prominent names — mainly microsoft, sage and intuit.
one clearly peeved executive says, “there should be a law that when a software company is bought out, development and support for existing systems must continue for five years or you get a prorated portion of your purchase price/implementation costs returned. or, a company can only be bought once every five years.”
“where are the vendors for us one- or two-cpa offices?” asks one public practitioner. “why must we have expensive, multifunctional stuff that runs like a ferrari, when all we really need and want is a reliable little toyota?”
john m. dagnon, a sole practitioner from wexford, pa., adds, “software developers should not be allowed to work on accounting applications unless they are cpas. i want software that lets me, the accountant, do what i want. i am tired of software people who know nothing about accounting try to make me fit into their stupid mindset.”
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[first published by the aicpa]