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Sage Software North America has just opened registration for their online Sage Summit Virtual Event to be held on November 18, 2010 from 10am to 1pm ET. This three hour session features an update from Sue Swenson, CEO Sage North America. In addition those customers attending are being asked to review up to 40 different pitches for sessions that they’d like to see presented at the official Summit 2011 conference in Washington DC July 10-15, 2011.

According to the Sage Summit Virtual Event registration page customers will view brief presentations made by product managers and then vote (How voting works) on whether they’d like to see those presentations made into full sessions to be delivered in July at the Summit Conference.

Sage Summit is the conference for the Sage community – bringing customers and partners together for the first time ever. The conference will take place July 10-15, 2011, in Washington, DC. This gives you an unprecedented opportunity to interact with customers more closely than ever before.

The agenda listed by Sage appears to be subject to change as at least one executive listed, Jodi Uecker-Rust, has departed Sage and is not likely to be making an appearance.

Gathering customers together to vote on sessions for an upcoming conference is a new idea for Sage. This is the first time we’ve seen it done and clearly this looks to be a way for Sage to continue to test the virtual conferencing waters. Sage previously hosted a Connecting The Dots virtual exhibit on September 28 which seemed to use similar online conference technology.

If you’re a Sage customer who is on the fence about attending Sage Summit 2011 in Washington DC – this is a good way for you to get a feel for and vote on some of the topics that would be covered at the full conference in July 2011.

More From The Sage Site:

To provide a robust education experience, Sage customers are invited to attend a complimentary virtual event on Thursday, November 18, where they can preview a sampling of the sessions, vote on the topics, and share their thoughts on how we can make Summit 2011 really work for them. Registration is now open, so be sure to spread the word about this one of a kind opportunity your customers won’t want to miss!

Sage Summit Virtual Event Registration – November 18, 2010

This morning I received a somewhat confusing email from my local Paychex representative. The subject line of “QuickBooks May Be Discontinued” caught my attention.

There was no message in the body of the email, however, attached was a graphic (see below) that stated QuickPayroll was being discontinued.

Sensing that something wasn’t right and that there’s no way that QuickBooks was going to be discontinued I contacted Intuit for their feedback.

As it turns out the notification, sent by my local Paychex representative, was only partially correct.

QuickBooks Payroll is not being phased out.

An older low-end version product called QuickPayroll is being discontinued in favor of any of Intuit’s other three payroll processing options.

With over 1.2 million payroll customers there’s a slim chance that Intuit’s going to turn their back on the payroll market. In July of 2009 Intuit actually increased their presence in the payroll market with a $170 million acquisition of Paycycle which also brought 85,000 additional small business payrolls under their arm.

Here is Intuit’s response:

Discontinuation of QuickPayroll

As of December 31, 2009, Intuit will discontinue its stand-alone QuickPayroll, a very basic payroll service that did not require the use of QuickBooks. We have notified the QuickPayroll customers (http://payroll.intuit.com/support/kb/kbitem/1012532.html) and have provided them with two offerings so that customers can continue their payroll services with Intuit. With its advertising,

QuickBooks Basic and Enhanced Payroll – payroll services that link to QuickBooks desktop
Intuit QuickBooks Assisted Payroll – payroll service in which Intuit handles the tax forms and payments; payroll integrates with QuickBooks desktop
Intuit Online Payroll – cloud-computing payroll service that runs stand-alone or integrates with QuickBooks desktop and QuickBooks Online.

So rest assured that QuickBooks and QuickBooks Payroll are both alive and well. While we don’t offer services on the Intuit product we wanted to provide this update for any users who might have received the same type of email with mis-information about the status of QuickBooks Payroll.

A full comparison of each option:

http://payroll.intuit.com/compare/compare-quickbooks-payroll.jsp

Sage Summit Customer Virtual Event Registration Now Live

QuickBooks Payroll Alive And Well

Here is Intuit’s response:

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