Bob Scott reporting in his Insights column.
Not much detail is available but Reckon One, the low-cost cloud product from Australia-based Reckon has been introduced into the United States. The PDF of the investor presentation for results for the company’s first half ended June 30 has a simple bullet point “Reckon One launched into USA /Canada next target.” No other details were shown. In a prepared statement, Reckon CEO Clive Rabie said the company has “made significant inroads into making Reckon One a contender in the online accounting software space.” The company has introduced the online application into the United Kingdom, which it notes is a larger market than Australia and New Zealand has operated. Reckon was the QuickBooks distributor in Australia until severing that relationship a couple of years ago to launch its own product in the competitive small business market. In the U.K., Reckon One is competing with hometown application Sage One. And in this country, it will going up against a cast of thousands. Or so it seems. There are so many low-cost products I expect the Girl Scouts will be handing them out with cookies next year. Reckon was already in the U.S. with n-Queue, which markets a cost recovery line called Bill Back, and a document product, Virtual Cabinet, that is has shown at conferences in this country, for example the Scaling New Heights conference. The financial report says no American revenue has yet been booked for Virtual Cabinet. In terms of results, Reckon reported net profit after tax of $9.3 million for the most recently ended half, down 8 percent from $9.5 million a year ago. Recent revenue of $54 million, up $6 percent from $51.1 million the first half of 2014. Reckon also reported it spent $9 million to buy the 30 percent of Virtual Cabinet it did not own. All figures are in Australian dollars.