Small and medium sized businesses need progress towards

• AUTOMATION of the accounting cycle, and
• COMMUNICATION of transactions thru the internet.

There's nothing in the pipeline from today's software vendors. They do not altogether lack vision but their programmers won't learn new tricks. Therefore, new names will replace the old names:

Small Business Web Ledgers:

Larry Ellison's NetLedger http://netledger.com/
SecuredBooks version 1.0:  http://www.securedbooks.com/
BizTone http://www.biztone.com/
ECompany Network http://www.eco.net/
AccountWizard interfaces a Web storefront with Quickbooks
Resource/Phoenix http://www.resourcephoenix.com/
Review of Resource/Phoenix http://www.oramag.com/profit/98-May/ph.html

Island of Cyprus: Netveil http://www.netveil.com/
Virtual Controller http://www.virtualgrowth.com/
Zoo Net ZAS (online billing) http://www.omnivore.org/greg/resume/zas.htm
OneCore is a cash-centerd system http://www.onecore.com/
Metagenix sells a reporting solution GenaMart

ERP Web Ledgers (usually Client/Server over Citrix/screen scraping)

Oracle Business Online http://www.oracle.com/businessonline/
SAP home page says nothing http://www.sap.com/
But they rent thru ASPs:
  EDS http://www.eds.com/
  AppTone http://www.aptone.com/
  Pandesic http://www.pandesic.com/
  IBM http://www.ibm.com/Services/
Peoplesoft doesn't say much either http://www.peoplesoft.com/
But they also rent thru
  Corio http://www.corio.com/
  Ciber Global http://www.cibergo.com/
  ReSource http://www.resourcepartner.com/
  US Internetworking http://www.usi.net/
Great Plains also rents: thru
  IBM http://www.ibm.com/services/e-business/hba-index.html
Siebel Enterprise Applications http://www.siebel.com/products-solutions/
 
(...nuffa that. I mention these only in case there is an outbreak of price competition some day.)

Developers who do custom, private Web GL's:

Ric Foxall's custom cgi: http://www.foxall.com/util_bks.htm
Charles Liu's online G/Ls http://www.bigmall.com/124.html

Vapor Systems to watch:

The mysterious WebGL http://www.webgl.com/

Open Source Web Ledger projects

GPL is the General Public License. Here are 6 active, GPL open software organizations:

• http://www.gnucash.org
• http://www.linux-kontor.de/en/
• http://members.iweb.net.au/~steveoc/ERP/
• http://www.webaccountant.org/
• http://www.freepm.org/
• http://www.simtax.ca/acc/
• http://www.netremit.com/trinidad/
• http://www.fecs.org/index.html
•  

GPL does not bar selling services. You can implement GPL software for free, and sell subscriptions to the service for hundreds of dollars per month. Here are some more info.

E-commerce hosts that facilitate transactions between their members

NetGateway ICC

(yeah I know, there are lots more)

Online purchasing dashboards (multivendor malls with P.O. tracking)

Works provides direct access to office supply vendors, integrated reports and tracking purchase/shipping

The incomparable ASP News website
Bob Lewis has it figured out in Infoworld July 19 and July 26

Todd Boyle CPA and smart alec, Kirkland WA, tboyle@rosehill.net