Veteran accounting software outfit Coda has made a jump into the cloud by pooling its online offering with Salesforce.com.

The companies become joint owners of Financialforce.com. This will have headquarters in Silicon Valley and Yorkshire, and will encompass the existing Coda 2go operation, running on Salesforce.com's force.com platform.

The FinancialForce product is being pitched as everything a bean counter could want, hitting all the magic words such as general ledger, user defined budgets and spreadsheet intergration, accounts payable and receivable and invoicing.

The platform will include "support for global accounting and reporting standards".

All the other benefits the firms are pitching - realtime updating, quick implementation, scalability, anywhere access and predictable fees - are exactly those that Salesforce has been pitching for its core CRM platform for years.

It will of course be integrated with Salesforce's own platform, suggesting that the sales and accounting functions of businesses who buy into both will be completely aware of what the others are doing. Which should make life a lot less fun for least one side of the business.

The key to its success seems in part how comfortable the beancounters will feel having their data sitting somewhere in the cloud instead of on premises.

At the same time, the prospect of paying a monthly fee of $125 a seat should appeal to accounting types who like predictable monthly outgoings. Alternatively, they're going to hate it for removing the need to calculate amortisation schedules, capex write-offs and the like - the sort of work you need accountants to do. ®

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• Coda green lights Agresso bid (1 February 2008)
• Coda in takeover talks with Agresso (14 January 2008)