Reckon continues to aim for the cloud

Financial management software company Reckon, known for its QuickBooks and Quicken accounting products, released its six-monthly results this week, closing the half with the promise to continue its strategy to push its software to the cloud through a relationship with MelbourneIT.

(Calculating Taxes Up And Down image by
Ken Teegardin, CC2.0)

The company racked up $46.7 million in revenues for the half year to 30 June, just marginally higher than the corresponding period last year, for which the company racked up $46.5 million.

The company invested $7.3 million this half on the purchase of just under 5 per cent of MelbourneIT. Reckon hasn't seen any revenue from its investment as yet, but it is still evaluating what commercial opportunities may exist in the future.

One of these opportunities is a distribution arrangement that will promote MelbourneIT products to Reckon customers and allow them to integrate e-commerce or e-marketing websites with the company's QuickBooks product.

Reckon also said it expects its relationship with MelbourneIT to evolve into a plan to deploy Quicken products into the cloud.

Group CEO Clive Rabie said that Reckon is well positioned to pursue cloud computing in each of its Business, Professional and nQueue Billback divisions, which account for 63, 28 and 9 per cent of total revenue respectively.

In its Business division, its online QuickBooks Hosted product, which has been in the market for just over a year, has seen an increase in customer growth, and Reckon has further plans to add automatic feeds of bank transactions in the future.

This will be complemented by another online CashBook product that Reckon has just launched, which targets micro-businesses and personal users.

The move follows the company's strategy, outlined in its 2010 annual report, to take advantage of the demand for online and mobile products in its Business and Professional divisions.