Website of the month: Accountants World

Accountants World is a recent but well developed member of the ranks of accounting-related portals, billing itself as “the community of accountants who think ahead” (www.accountantsworld.com).

Broad listings of accounting organizations’ websites are organized within eight general categories. Within those categories, the website listings are conveniently alphabetized (an obvious structure not always remembered by website designers).

Although the home page appears crowded, clicking on almost any piece of hypertext will take the user to a calmer page, while retaining the navigation bar, listing Home, Links, Resources, Products, Services, Community, Tax Center, and News. Within each section, users can navigate smoothly toward the information or resource they need. The Links pages include an extensive listing of other portals and allow users to post their own website reviews and read the reviews of others (still few in number at press time).

Users can join the website community to receive a daily e-mail newsletter with headlines of top accounting and business-related stories, culled from wire services, daily newspapers, and financial and trade publications and complete with links to the full text of the story. Accountants World membership is free and includes an optional “cyber-suite” service that provides web-hosting and guided webpage design (free for the first year). The site’s standardized privacy policy is accessible from every webpage.

Overall, the website is well designed and maintained, with current links and many same-day news items. The high level of user-friendliness throughout makes it easy to forgive the busy look of the home page. The site has undergone gradual upgrades and expansions during the past several months, but the content continues to be tightly focused. Accountantsworld.com is a prime example of a generally noncommercial portal that does an excellent job of serving its community.

The CPA Journal is broadly recognized as an outstanding, technical-refereed publication aimed at public practitioners, management, educators, and other accounting professionals. It is edited by CPAs for CPAs. Our goal is to provide CPAs and other accounting professionals with the information and news to enable them to be successful accountants, managers, and executives in today's practice environments.