Zoho announced this morning that it is the first on-demand application to support VB macros and pivot tables. While I, like Zoli, use about 5% of the functionality that MS excel offers, it’s obvious that this development means more than what it appears.

AccountingMan Dennis Howlett said that;

Zoho could – and I emphasize could – become the bones of a reporting and analysis engine for the many finance applications that are starting to emerge… Accounting data serves many purposes and right now, the emphasis is on user specific requirements. That’s fine except we should never forget that regulatory purposes need attention. If Zoho can become a reporting engine then it means someone, somewhere can make a very nice living by providing that service.

The translation is that Zoh provides all the analytics and reporting tols that are jurisdiction non-specific, it’s then easy for individual vendors in discrete jurisdictions to mash that up with their own individual regualtions to create a localised accouting solution.

So my take is that two major things have come from this release;

• Zoho has shown itself to be a SaaS player than can deliver what the other big boys are unable or unwilling to
• Once again we see debunked another claimed impediment to the delivery of high level accounting functionality

Exciting times in the SaaS world for sure.