The CPA Journal

An Assessment of Accounting Portals

By Paul D. Warner

IN BRIEF

Sites for CPAs Follow Different Strategies

The CPA Journal asked Paul Warner, who has edited "The CPA and the Computer" department for many years, to review and make a personal assessment of as many web portals designed for CPAs as he could find. Our purpose was to provide CPAs with an overview of the features of the prominent portals and his assessment of their appropriateness for CPAs and their ease of use. Many CPAs will find the result to be an invaluable aid in determining the accounting portals they wish to bookmark and visit routinely.

Although web portals designed specifically for CPAs have been available for several years, it is still too early to draw conclusions about how much CPAs use them or how effective a tool they are. The web portals assessed in this survey are identified in Exhibit 1, along with a tabulation of their principal features and information.

The typical website portal is designed to attract Internet users to sites and products offered by advertisers and portal sponsors. The portal host often receives a commission from advertisers for sales generated from the host's portal, or it may use the portal to offer its own products and services. AOL is a familiar example. In contrast to general-interest portals (AOL, Yahoo, AT&T Worldnet), more specialized portals, such as accounting portals, emphasize the information and knowledge available through them in order to generate visits from users with shared interests. The typical accounting portal business plan relies on attracting advertisers that want to sell products and services to CPAs in order to support the website. Unfortunately, the recent dot-com collapse has resulted in a significant decrease in online advertisers and advertising revenues, which may adversely affect the financial viability of these portals.

Defining Portals

Many of the websites reviewed are true portals, offering information and links to other websites. Rather than providing a clickthrough link to advertisers' sites, true portals hotlink to sites containing information that the portal's developers believe will be needed by the targeted user group. If a true portal carries advertising at all, it would typically appear as banners on the portal's website.

Many portals designed for CPAs, as well as other professionals, function primarily as reseller hubs. For example, CPA2Biz (www.cpa2biz.com) provides links to services and products that a CPA firm can resell to its clients. CPA2Biz states that it was developed to provide "technical resources, application solutions, tools, value-added information and other professional development resources to the CPA profession. This is done through multiple distribution channels including direct mail, an inbound/outbound call center and through the Internet." The description later states that the "current marketing and distribution activities are focused on reselling the products of third parties-at this time, principally those of the AICPA." CPA2Biz is the only CPA portal reviewed in this article that operates primarily as a reseller of products and services. Most of the products currently sold at CPA2Biz come from the AICPA, but it also carries FASB products. CPA2Biz plans to expand to other third parties and to develop its own web services.

Portals appeal to businesses because they collect important databases and applications in a central location where they can be more completely managed and more easily accessed by a range of users. Companies such as General Motors and KPMG have created company-centric portals that provide their employees with easy access to information, applications, and databases that are routinely used in conducting business. CPAs are usually keenly interested in knowledge- and document-based portals that provide centralized access to information needed to manage their practices and serve their clients. Some portals also provide access to applications (i.e., ASPs) or offer the ability to sell products and services to clients. Many of these portals provide a convenient way to access other relevant websites because of the way they are grouped or visually presented. Information portals can be more convenient than bookmarking favorite sites because the portals keep track centrally of changes in web addresses and new items on the linked sites. Although linked sites may be available individually by typing the URL in the browser, some (especially sites with breaking news or updated information) are not always easy to find unless one follows a link from another website such as a portal.

Portal fundamentals. Accounting portals provide two major types of services. One type of portal provides up-to-the minute information needed by CPAs and their clients to comply with accounting, tax, or other regulatory requirements. These sites may also provide general business news and other types of information of interest to CPAs. The other type of portal provides collateral services for resale to clients. Some portals try to provide both.

It is essential that a portal website be easy to access and navigate. The reliability of an application service provider (ASP) portal is crucial; the software and hardware must be dependable and a variety of off-site data backup options should provide additional security.

Most accounting portals provide information as well as links for items to be purchased. Many of the services offered are from other service providers. For example, WorthMark links to investment advisory, financial planning, and educational seminars provided by an affiliate, while services are provided by independently owned affiliates.

CPA2Biz is a new but major portal contender because it is backed by the AICPA. Nevertheless, the author's recent experiences with it have been anything but satisfactory, which is reflected in Exhibit 2. Although the author was able to set up an account and password the first time he entered CPA2Biz, he has been unable to regularly gain access to it since then. He attempted to pay his AICPA dues at CPA2Biz but the system continually stalled at the payment screen. CPA2Biz does not recognize the author's password, nor does it allow him to set up a new account. The author did not have any difficulties setting up accounts and accessing them at the other portals reviewed.

[Editor's note: The CPA Journal editors have not experienced the same level of frustration at CPA2Biz as the author. Although CPA2Biz was difficult to access during its inaugural month, the editors were able to set up accounts and access them. They subscribe to several AICPA electronic services through CPA2Biz and were eventually able to pay for them online. The CPA2Biz website continued to be slow responding during October and early November. At times, it was not possible to access this website, a vexing inconvenience if relying upon it for professional literature, such as the AICPA professional standards and industry guides.]

Non-portal sites. CPAs may also find some websites that are not technically portals very interesting and useful. For example, AccountingCommunity .com and BusinessAtWeb.com link to numerous websites with content of interest to CPAs. The Electronic Accountant has a separate web links service in addition to its accounting news service.

Portal Reviews

AccountantsWorld. Accountants World.com is a research-oriented site with a vast number of links to other useful websites. It can be best described as an accountant's Yahoo. Users can set up an account to gain access to certain site features but are not required to do so. This website offers a number of benefits to users that do set up accounts, however. AccountantsWorld asks users to review each linked website that they visit. The descriptions and reviews tend to be brief, to the point, and useful. This website is easy to navigate and has many interesting links. This portal does not resell third-party products or services.

AccountingWeb. AccountingWeb .com is a practice-oriented site. Access to the website was fast and its response time was short. Setting up an account took less than five minutes. This portal contains a strong selection of current information, along with extensive research resources, especially in the tax area. The site is not currently involved in reselling third-party products or services.

CPA2Biz. Of all the portals reviewed for this article, CPA2Biz.com has the largest number of items for resale. On the other hand, its comprehensiveness does not compare favorably with that of the other portals: It does not provide the breadth of information nor the hotlinks to other websites that the other portals do. The only reference link accessible from CPA2Biz is to the Journal of Accountancy, the monthly AICPA publication. Unlike the other portals, which link with numerous external websites, CPA2Biz links only to its own material, to some free material developed by the AICPA, and to products for sale.

Electronic Accountant. This is an information portal with daily postings of news about the accounting industry, accounting firms, and accounting issues. Among ElectronicAccountant .com's most interesting features is an extensive listing of and links to other accounting websites. The publisher of Accounting Today, which covers the AICPA and the large firms extensively, operates this information portal. My Accounting Portal. MyAccountingPortal.com is a research-oriented website that operates similarly to AccountantsWorld and is filled with similar content. In contrast with AccountantsWorld, however, this portal does not offer user-submitted reviews of other websites.

MyCPAportal. MyCPAportal.com, also known as CPADirect.net, is primarily sales-oriented, offering users a variety of products and services. Currently, full membership in myCPAportal costs $24.95 monthly. It is planning to offer mortgages, insurance, brokerage services, and advisory services for members and their clients. It currently links to the IRS, office supply websites, and other websites where members can purchase items. It does not contain much in the way of research assistance, but its audit information page provided some information. Likewise, the GASB section provided some short snippets on GASB Statement 34 resources and a link to GASB.

SmartPros. Formerly Pro2Net.com, SmartPros.com contains numerous short articles on topics of interest to accountants. SmartPros draws its articles from numerous sources and identifies them fully, allowing a user to determine the quality of the advice. This website provides an extensive directory of vendor-provided services, especially in the online CPE area. Online CPE courses are offered for a fee. This site, which is still under development, could become a source of CPE for those CPAs that want to take courses online.

WorthMark. WorthMark.com advertises the financial support services provided by its developer. Accounting firms that subscribe to WorthMark can offer these financial support services to their clients. WorthMark is quite different from the other portals reviewed, but it is perhaps an indication of future service provider-oriented websites directed toward CPAs. Financial services providers are looking into establishing CPAs, and possibly other financial services professionals, as intermediaries in offering their services to business users.

Website portals aimed at CPAs are still in their development stages. None of them currently provides the type of focused information that most CPAs would want readily available on their desktops. Some will probably evolve in such a way that CPAs could customize content and display information according to their own preferences. If the portal concept survives, some will have to become focused on a specific area of practice rather than covering every possible base. The current batch of website portals, though promising, does not currently provide any real practice advantages for most CPAs.