By Mario deSantis, Janury 17, 1999

I am very partial to excellent and economic business software and routinely I check their web sites to keep abreast with their upgrades and new services. In particular, in the last two weeks I visited the sites of M-USA(1), publisher of Pacioli 2000, and Intuit(2), publisher of Quicken, Quickbooks Pro and QuickTax. I was enthralled in finding out that Pacioli 2000 has been upgraded to become one of the best Internet based accounting packages and that besides its United States version, it has additional versions to meet the specific taxation requirements of Canada, the United Kingdom, and the international market at large. The most important market feature which distinguishes Pacioli from Quickbooks Pro is its compliance with General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)(3). Intuit Canada has upgraded versions for each of the above mentioned packages and the good news is that Quickbooks Pro(4) is now networkable and will therefore address the needs of a larger market. In the United States, Intuit is providing payroll services through the Internet along with the electronic deposits(5) of the related employees' pays and other liabilities. In addition, in order to safeguard the accounting files of its customers, Intuit is providing external backup services through the Internet at nominal charges.

The pace of changes taking place in our Knowledge Economy(6) is relentless and as I was browsing and hyperlinking from the Intuit site, I came across web sites providing online and interactive training courses through the Internet(7). The beauty of these Internet based training courses is that they can be delivered at a fraction of conventional costs and they can be accessed by the participants anywhere and anytime in the world. Additional hyperlinking took me to the sites of businesses which publish the authoring software packages to create and administer these Internet based training courses(8). It was another discovery! I have been involved in the provision of courses through the Internet and e-mail, but now these courses are interactive and include video, sounds and pictures. It is fabulous, however, in this supposed Knowledge Economy we still have universities and colleges debating about cutbacks of traditional educational services(9) and complaining about declining educational standards(10). This situation is a paradox and will not last for ever as we continue to unconsciously change our traditional mind set(11) and learn how to tap into the educational opportunities brought by the ongoing new technologies.

1. Web site for M-USA, Publisher of Pacioli 2000 for Windows http://www.m-usa.com/home.html

2. Web sites for Intuit, and Intuit Canada: http://www.intuit.com/ http://www.intuit.com/canada/

3. Web site for the paper: "Pacioli 2000 for Windows: An Accounting Software Solution to Address the problems of Accountability of Saskatchewan District Health Boards", by Mario deSantis, June 1996 http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/desam/paper-pacioli.htm

4. Web site for Quickbooks Pro, Canadian version: http://www.intuit.com/canada/quickbooks/qbpro.html

5. Intuit's payroll direct bank deposits through the Internet: http://www.quickbooks.com/products/payroll/index.html

6. @Brint is one of the best research sites on Knowledge Management created by Dr. Yogesh Malhotra: http://www.brint.com/

7. Follow up sites for the Teach Learn 98 Convention and The Road to OnLine Learning http://www.techlearn98.com/pc98/default.htm http://www.masie.com/lab/

8. Sites of Software allowing the online management of educational/training courses: Macromedia Pathware http://www.macromedia.com/software/pathware/ Asymetrix Librarian http://www.asymetrix.com/products/librarian/ Manager's Edge http://www.allencomm.com/software/manager/

9. Previous last paragraph of the article Study reveals stressed U of S medical school, by Gerry Klein, The StarPhoenix, January 14, 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

10. Article "College tackles tough math problem," by Gerry Klein, The StarPhoenix, January 12, 1999, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

11. Paper: Coping with Changes. An Overview of the Learning Organization, Knowledge Economy, and Current Practices in Information Technology Applications, by Mario deSantis, July 1997 http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/desam/paper-coping_changes.htm