Intacct Launches Fall Release, Strikes Reseller Pact With Clarizen

Intacct also said Tuesday that the Fall 2011 release of its Intacct Financial Management and Accounting System is now live, offering new services resource planning applications, an overhauled user interface and more than 200 other new features.

Intacct integrated its cloud financial management and accounting applications with Clarizen's cloud-based project management software last year.

"Getting two best-in-class solutions together makes a big difference," said Intacct CTO Aaron Harris, in an interview.

Under the new master reseller deal Intacct and its channel partners can now sell the Clarizen service. Intacct has aggressively pursued sales through the channel and more than 50 percent of new sales are now made through channel partners, said Daniel Druker, Intacct senior vice president of marketing and business development, in an interview.

Altogether Intacct has some 300 channel partners, primarily VARs and CPA firms, of whom some 100 have been recruited just this year.

Intacct's software also is integrated with Salesforce.com's on-demand CRM applications, making it possible for customers to use Intacct, Salesforce and Clarizen applications together – particularly for end-to-end support for project- and service-based businesses. The master reseller relationship, however, doesn't extend to Salesforce.

With the three-way integration, for example, a business could collect financial data from projects managed with Clarizen, such as billable hours and re-imbursable expenses, manage the data with Intacct's applications and prepare customer invoices using Salesforce.

The major addition to Intacct's Fall 2011 release is the Intacct Services Resource Planning software, a set of ERP applications that combine elements of Intacct, Clarizen and Salesforce applications specifically for project and service-based businesses. Intacct's accounting and revenue management applications have been enhanced in the newest release to provide deeper project accounting capabilities.

The Intacct Fall 2011 release also offers a new, what Intacct calls "consumerized," user interface that incorporates ease-of-use elements typically found in consumer Web sites such as Amazon, Google and Facebook.

Also new is an online marketplace where channel partners can showcase applications they have written to run on Intacct's software. The company said there are already more than 80 such applications. The marketplace is available this month through Intacct and partner web sites and will be directly available from within the Intacct applications sometime in the first quarter of 2012.

And the Fall 2011 release provides support for a range of mobile devices, including Apple's iOS-based iPhones and iPad tablet, and devices that run on Google Android such as the Samsung Galaxy tablet.