Early May came the announcement of the availability of the Peachtree by Sage 2010 product line.  Peachtree provides small firms with the accuracy, control, and results they require for successful business management, and with 2010 is introducing a range of new features and improvements that brings greater visibility, enhanced analytics, and increased productivity to small businesses.

From the Sage press release:

Highlights in Peachtree 2010 include:

Customer Management Center: Particularly in the current economy, customers are small businesses’ most precious asset. The new Customer Management Center helps small businesses view customer details all in one place, with customizable dashboard views, enhanced lookups and easy export to Microsoft® Excel® or PDF to manage more effectively and provide excellent customer service.

Transaction History: Whether a customer needs to see the chain of events from a quote to a receipt or from a purchase order to a payment, all the information is easily made available to them in one click. Small businesses can then better serve their clients and vendors with easier access to the information they need to manage the relationship.

Business Analytics, powered by iLumen(1): Understanding a business’s performance relative to peers — where it stands and where opportunities exist — is more critical than ever. In the 2010 line, Peachtree features Business Analytics, powered by iLumen, that enables small businesses to benchmark their own performance compared with others in their industry, and other small businesses overall. This capability is ideal for companies that lack the resources to do their own research.

“When we first opened, I managed our finances with a bunch of Excel sheets linked together, but that took forever and never gave me the visibility I needed into our business. With Peachtree, I can easily drill down to analyze our activity — to see where we’ve been and where we’re going. I’m especially excited about the new benchmarking capabilities, which add a whole new level of analysis for our company. To be able to have that capability, for a company of our size, just makes things so much easier.”

Other new features include the ability to have multiple companies open at once(2), multiple contacts per company(3), automatic backup, improved employee management, password security, and inventory management.

Pricing and Availability

Peachtree Premium Accounting 2010, Peachtree Complete Accounting 2010, Peachtree Pro Accounting 2010 and Peachtree First Accounting 2010 are now available direct from Sage and will be available from most computer retailers and office supply stores in mid-June. The suggested retail price for Peachtree Premium Accounting 2010 is $499.99, Peachtree Complete Accounting 2010 is $299.99, Peachtree Pro Accounting 2010 is $199.99, and Peachtree First Accounting 2010 is $99.99. The Multi-User Value Pack (5 seat license) of Peachtree Complete Accounting retails for $699.99, while the Peachtree Premium Accounting 2010 Multi-User Value Pack (5 seat license) can be ordered direct from Sage for $1,199.99. High value competitive rebates are available from Sage for customers on other small business accounting packages. Call 800-228-0068 for more details.

About Sage North America

Sage North America is part of The Sage Group plc, a leading global supplier of business management software and services. At Sage, we live and breathe business every day. We are passionate about helping our customers achieve their ambitions. Our range of business software and services is continually evolving as we innovate to answer our customers’ needs. Our solutions support accounting, operations, customer relationship management, human resources, time tracking, merchant services and the specialized needs of the construction, distribution, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit and real estate industries. Sage North America employs approximately 4,100 people and supports 2.9 million small and medium-size business customers. The Sage Group plc, formed in 1981, was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and now employs more than 14,500 people and supports more than 5.8 million customers worldwide. For more information, please visit the web site at www.sagenorthamerica.com or call 866-308-2378.

(1) Internet access required. Service is embedded within Peachtree 2010, however is also available for Peachtree 2008 and 2009 products via a separate application download from www.peachtree.com.

(2) When opening more than one company performance is not impacted; however, you will experience reduced product functionality in those companies opened after the first one.

(3) There is a maximum of 20 ship to addresses and 1 billing address per customer. Only 2 contacts per customer can be synced with Outlook.

Sage Peachtree Premium Accounting 2010 tutorial videos on YouTube.

Pushing ahead in the decades-long effort to get computers to understand human speech, these three iPhone applications feature sophisticated voice recognition technology. The ability to recognize just about any phrase from any person has long been the supreme goal of artificial intelligence researchers looking for ways to make man-machine interactions more natural.  Systems that can do this have recently started making their way into the mainstream.  These three voice recognition iPhone apps are great…why?  Because they “rock like KISS” (via Lacy Razor) and they also happen to be free of charge!  Enjoy.

Melodis Dialer – one of my complaints for the iPhone in comparison to other smart phones was that it did not offer the ability for voice recognition dialing.  The Melodis Dialer application fixes that.  I’ve tested it out and although it didn’t connect with Paris Hilton for me it did recognize just about every other name.  The application works best when a first name and last name are spoken.

Google Mobile App – Driving or just don’t like to type?  This app is for you…functions just like Google’s search engine, however this app uses voice recognition to populate the search field.  Give it a try.

Voice Notes -  Have you seen the movie Dirty Work?  “Note to self…”  If you are like me and are always on the go you probably don’t like having to type notes into your iPhone.  Use VoiceNotes instead and record a short audio message for later reference. Why walk when you can stumble?  Why type when you can speak?

Cloud computing is a service based technology.  It is a savings oriented business model.  What this means is that the services and applications are hosted off line and the end users do not have to worry about the technical details or investment of money.  Essentially, cloud computing is web based software and storage solutions.

There are two main advantages to cloud computing.  The software is stored on the third party’s servers, thus providing users the ability to access systems regardless of their location or device.   It also enables the sharing of resources and costs among a large pool of users.

In a struggling economy movement to “the cloud” is expected as it is a way for businesses to trim operating costs.  I have argued in the past against cloud computing as I strongly believe in keeping things internal and not having to rely on outside third party vendors.  As this movement takes stride be cautious as to how dependent you become as a simple change in the services structure such as a price increase, change in service offering, etc. could greatly impact your business based upon your level of reliance.

The technology analyst and consulting firm, Gartner, lists seven security issues which one should discuss with a cloud-computing vendor:

1. Privileged user access—inquire about who has specialized access to data and about the hiring and management of such administrators
2. Regulatory compliance—make sure a vendor is willing to undergo external audits and/or security certifications
3. Data location—ask if a provider allows for any control over the location of data
4. Data segregation—make sure that encryption is available at all stages and that these “encryption schemes were designed and tested by experienced professionals”
5. Recovery—find out what will happen to data in the case of a disaster; do they offer complete restoration and, if so, how long that would take
6. Investigative Support—inquire as to whether a vendor has the ability to investigate any inappropriate or illegal activity
7. Long-term viability—ask what will happen to data if the company goes out of business; how will data be returned and in what format

Google Apps is a common example of cloud computing.  It provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on Google servers.  Applications like document sharing, calendars, email, live chat/instant messaging, and so much more.

Other honorable mentions:

Freshbooks – Online Invoicing, Time Tracking, and Expense Service.

Through research and reaching out to our friends within our ‘internet marketing network’ (one honorable mention, Brad Nix) we were directed to a plethora of quality solutions.  However, only the following  solutions made our Top 5 list.

SurveyMonkey.com – Need a robust and powerful tool for creating web surveys? SurveyMonkey.com is used by several Fortune 500 companies.

Wufoo – HTML form builder that provides an easy way to create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.

Zoho Polls – Want to decide on something? Create your own FREE online poll in 3 easy steps!

twtpoll – Create simple surveys and polls with this twitter application and then share them via twitter, Facebook, or email.

Text the Mob – Presenting information to an audience and want their feedback with real-time polling software?  Text the Mob allows for data to be collected by project polls or message boards on a large screen and allow audience members to text their responses via their cell phones and see results instantly.  For further explanation, watch the video below.