make sure your tax personnel have additional ram.
by roman h. kepczyk
quantum of paperless
okay, we all know that the windows operating system is preferred to run computers by the primary vendors to the accounting profession.
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all decisions about operating systems have to be done carefully as they impact software and hardware decisions for the next three to five years.
while we don’t place too much emphasis on the workstation operating system, one significant issue you can’t overlook is increasing computer memory to function optimally with today’s multi-monitor requirements and the multitude of concurrent applications your staff will be running. the key to operating systems is stability and the major accounting vendors (cch, thomson reuters and intuit) preferred windows xp through the end of 2009, at which time windows 7 32-bit became the predominant product for purposes of optimal stability, which is acceptable for most audit and administrative personnel.
however, for tax personnel with three or more monitors and the propensity to run many more applications concurrently, additional ram is highly recommended. for this reason, many firms transitioned to the 64-bit version of windows 7 with all new computer purchases as the optimal heavy production workstation standard through the end of 2014.
with microsoft discontinuing support of windows xp in april 2014, windows 7 became the most prevalent operating system utilized within cpa firms, particularly as the initial release of windows 8 received very poor reviews from cpas (causing it personnel to buy new computers and “downgrade” them to windows 7). in 2015, microsoft released windows 10 (the windows 9 name was skipped) with the intention of having the same operating system running on accountants’ workstations, tablets and smartphones. this is expected to reduce firm training and support requirements and make applications available across all devices.
according to the cpafma 2016 it survey, 75 percent of firms were still standardized on windows 7 but one-third planned to transition to windows 10 in 2016. it is expected that another third would do so this year as they replace existing workstations.
we recommend today that all new workstations be purchased with windows 10, i5/i7 processors, solid state disk drives and a minimum of 8gb ram for audit/administrative personnel and 16gb ram for tax personnel. it is anticipated that all software vendors will eventually transition to annual subscription pricing for all applications, including microsoft windows, office, adobe, etc.
recommended actions:
- standardize purchases of new computers on windows 10 for firm stability.
- verify all workstations have adequate ram to handle multiple monitors and applications.