** This article was originally sent to our Bennett/Porter clients via email on 4/17/2020 **

It's Friday, and the end of another fast-changing week for businesses and their employees. To help you keep up with and respond to events that impact your business, we've put together some helpful notes and notifications.

CAT Tax Webinar

Figuring out how much you owe to the State of Oregon for the new Corporate Activity Tax is not straightforward. And every company who has revenue of more than $1,000,000 per year is required to make estimated tax payments for the new tax that Governor Brown mandated last summer. 

Well, actually we’re working remotely for the safety of our employees and families. But we’re also concerned about you, our customer, and we want you to know that we are here and ready to support you. So how are things going? How can we help? Let us know what you need.

Our team is ready to assist with your company’s accounting software, information technology systems, and human resources software needs. If you require assistance setting up your employees to work from home with as little interruption to business as possible, give us a call at (503) 620-3484, or send us your support requests at support@benpor.com.

Given the continuing concern and uncertainty around COVID-19, we at Bennett/Porter have decided to postpone our Connections 2020 Conference. We believe that this is the right and responsible course of action to protect the health and well-being of our employees, vendors, event personnel, and, of course, our attendees. The conference will now be held on Thursday, October 22. All the current session tracks will still be available, and registration for the event will remain open at Early Bird pricing until Thursday, October 1. We will resume regular email updates with information about the conference as we get closer to that date.

On December 19^th, Sage is scheduled to release an Interim Release Download (IRD) with year-end program updates for Accounts Payable and eFiling – as well as a Tax Table Update for 2020.

If you are filing your quarterly tax returns through Aatrix, the State of Oregon has a new requirement that a company’s BIN number has to be verified by a previous quarter’s taxes. The requirement can be fulfilled by doing the following:

You may have recently received a phone call from a Sage Software representative – or you will probably receive one in the very near future. They are calling regarding moving from your current Sage Business Care Plan to a Sage 100cloud Subscription. The urgency around this latest push has to do with a price hike coming as of April 1, 2019, and we want you to have all the information you need before that deadline arrives.

82% of surveyed businesses have experienced a noticeable improvement by implementing an automated Accounts Payable process. If your AP department is thinking about adding AP automation to increase efficiency and reduce cost, but isn't sure how to get started, we can help.

Since the release of Sage 100cloud in 2016, Sage has been pushing hard for customers to migrate away from the perpetual license software model and to the subscription-based version of their software. The efforts encouraging customers to move to the subscription model have included some “carrot and stick” tactics:

Acumatica has released 2018 R2, which is the latest version of Acumatica Cloud ERP, our preferred enterprise management software. We've spent some time over the past few months implementing and being delighted by the new features and functions of this new version, and we are excited to show you the many benefits in this latest Acumatica release. Version 2018 R2 is an important release with significant improvements that you won’t want to miss.

On December 19, year-end updates will be posted to the Sage Customer Portal for customers to download. These updates will include the 2018 Interim Release Download (IRD) for Sage 100 Versions 2016, 2017, and 2018 as well as the 2019 Payroll Tax Table Update for Sage 100 versions 2017 and 2016. These updates will be available for Sage 100 clients who have a current Business Care Plan or Sage 100cloud Subscription.

Below is new and additional information about these updates so that you can be prepared in advance to either download them yourself or schedule an appointment for Bennett/Porter to install the updates for you.