Ottawa – Stop #7 on the Simply Accounting 2010 Listening Tour

Ottawa was fantastic! What a great day with loads of new ideas! Whether it was Paul asking a straightforward question about the font sizes in Simply Accounting (as well as where to get the magnifying glass tool!) to more strategic discussions about training resources for our customers, attendees were engaged, vocal, and very frank. We loved it!

In the morning, there was a ton of interest in reporting so we adjusted the schedule to dive deeper into Simply Accounting Intelligence—a business intelligence tool we will be launching very soon! Christina provided an excellent demo in the morning and then in the afternoon in front of a much larger audience. Phew! Second time was a charm! I spoke with several attendees during the breaks and they were incredibly excited about Simply Accounting Intelligence. One went as far as saying he believed we have built something that will change the face of Simply Accounting!

Another hot topic was the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) that is coming into effect on July 1, 2010 for Ontario and BC. We realized customers were concerned about the tax changes and staying compliant with these tax changes long ago and developed a wizard lessen the administrative burden for our customers. With the release B of Simply Accounting 2010, customers can change the default tax code on all customer and vendor records with a single click! Now that’s a time-saver! Florian, a Sage Accountant Network member and attendee from Montreal, asked a great question about how this affects other provinces. The release is available to all customers regardless of province, however, we are only going to message customers in BC and Ontario with to remind them to update their tax codes.

We also spent a lot of time talking about training. Sean made a guest appearance and presented the many things Sage is working on to improve training and education. While we do have a lot going on, it was clear that not many attendees knew about Sage University (www.sageu.com/simply) nor did they know about the Learning Centre that sits right inside Simply Accounting. The Learning Centre has free tutorials, anytime learning classes, and also the ability register for classroom training. We need to make customers more aware of this “Training” section of Simply Accounting and it was Alan who suggested we change the name of it to Training. Makes sense to me!

Thanks for a great day Ottawa! Merci Beaucoup!

PS - We’re contemplating adding the magnifying glass into Simply Accounting as a feature! Ha!

Jamie