Soloists, Small Firms Must Take Software Seriously

Johnston, Garrett, Tankersley
Johnston, Garrett, Tankersley

Subscriptions and the cloud may not work for everyone. But proper licensing does.

By Randolph P. Johnston, Leslie Garrett, and Brian F. Tankersley
The Accounting Firm Operations and Technology Survey

Software is the reason that firms make investments in computer hardware, yet many firms seem to avoid upgrades until they are forced to make a change. For example, when asked to identify their preferred word processing application,

  • more than 50 percent of respondents in both groups are using a version of the software that is over five years old (e.g. Office 2010 or earlier), and
  • a significant number of solo practitioners are using Word 2007, which is eight years old as of June 2015.

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While we do not think that practitioners should jump the newest version of a product immediately, we also do not think they should be more than two releases behind the current version of their applications for an extended period of time.