Winnipeg – Stop #2 on the Simply Accounting 2010 Listening Tour

Another great day on the Simply Accounting 2010 Listening Tour in Winnipeg. Thank you for attending and thank you Mabel (one of our long-standing Sage Accountant Network members) for scheduling the seasonably warm weather!

We arrived in Winnipeg on Sunday afternoon, checked out the venue, settled in for some comfort food at Dalton’s and had a relatively early night. I got a little caught up watching ManTracker actually. Great show, but it seems to me the cameramen would also leave tracks making this whole show a sham? Ha!

One of the greatest things about our stop in Winnipeg was the diverse group of attendees. New users, veterans with the product from the days of Bedford, CGAs, bookkeepers, IT consultants, coffee roasters, an asbestos removal company, print shops,…the list goes on. This made for a robust discussion and we received tons of great feedback for our company.

A few things stuck out in my mind:

1) Similar to our stop in Saskatoon, many of the small businesses weren’t aware of all the resources available to them, especially our Sage Accountant Network (SAN) members. At the end of the session Dave raised his hand and asked for business cards from our SAN members. How amazing is that?! Simply Accounting has been working hard to develop online tools (www.sagespark.com) to facilitate the connection of small businesses to our business partners but this just shows the power of good old-fashioned networking and face-to-face contact.

2) Crystal talked about converting customers to Simply Accounting Enterprise from Microsoft citing cost and the fact that Simply Accounting Enterprise is now capable of supporting 20 users as major reasons. We are consistently hearing that Simply Accounting Enterprise is meeting the mark for many larger companies. This is great news for us and is precisely where we are taking the product—up market.

3) Lastly, there was a comment from Debbie suggesting we provide evening training classes as it is just not that easy for a busy small business to get to them during the day time. Great observation and something we need to look into.

My favorite quote of the day was from Len. He said he loved Simply Accounting and would only consider using an alternative small business accounting software application if, and I quote, “you want to live on the edge with your financial data”.

Vancouver, you are next. See you on Thursday!

Jamie