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CaseWare International, Inc.
800-267-1317
www.caseware.com
In a sense, CaseWare has long been the TB workpaper management software to benchmark against. Unlike most of the other vendors, electronic workpapers has been the foundation of its product line since the company's inception. CaseWare is designed to tackle the most comprehensive and sophisticated TB-based engagements that you are likely to encounter. That is why it is deployed at one level or another in the top 10 accounting firms. On the other hand, it may not be best suited for the sole practitioner or small firm that is focused primarily on simpler compilation and tax return TB engagements.
LEARNING CURVE
Due to the fact that CaseWare has the deepest and broadest scope of features and functions of all the products in this category, it is not as easy to learn. If you want to harness the power and efficiency of this system effectively, you must be prepared to invest the time and attention to really learn how it works. Having said that, the user interface is essentially as easy to work with as any of the packages reviewed here. It's more an issue of learning and understanding the scope of the entire system. ****
IMPORT/EXPORT/INTEGRATION
Since CaseWare does not have the scope of accountant practice applications that some, of the other leading vendors offer, the company has focused on integration both on the inbound and outbound information flow as a primary feature. This is to your benefit since it eliminates the pressure of having to stay within a product suite at the expense of foregoing the option to implement the TB workpaper engagement software best suited for your practice.
Some examples of the depth of functionality in this category include the ability to import TB account balances or full GL transaction detail. It offers import utilities for nearly every popular accounting software on the market,...