Planitax's New Tax Provision Manager Software Automates the Financial Statement Tax Provisioning Process

Business Wire, June 10, 2008

New Module for Corporate Tax Horizons Suite Offers Balanced Book and Tax Approach and is First to Market Using Service-Based Delivery Approach

EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Planitax, Inc., the leading provider of tax information management solutions for corporate tax departments, today announced the general availability of its Tax Provision Manager[TM], a new FAS 109 module for its popular Corporate Tax Horizons[R] suite. Tax Provision Manager[TM], which will be the first of its kind to be delivered using a Software as a Service (SaaS) approach, takes a book-and-tax balanced approach to automate the tax provision process and create relevant reports and detailed analyses that satisfy both tax and financial needs.

Income tax accounting and tax provision have steadily risen to the top of the list of activities that consume corporate finance and tax resources, according to Greg Prow, president and CEO for Planitax. "However, nearly all corporate tax departments are still relying on spreadsheets and other manual processes to compute financial statement tax provisions without the benefit of automated Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 controls," said Prow. "CFOs and tax executives have consistently been caught between the inherent limitations and risks in this process and the reality that no product on the market could address their requirements of quick deployment, ease of use, data consistency and process control. Now, Planitax is providing a real answer to that conundrum."

The software manages and controls all relevant financial data needed for tax provision calculations. It also streamlines and automates the provision process for corporate tax and finance professionals while ensuring accuracy, consistency and transparency. Tax Provision Manager[TM] provides sophisticated import and account mapping functionality to streamline management of multiple financial data sources. The module's rich capability for creating user-defined rules allows organizations to readily simplify and automate the process of applying adjustments to financial data to create tax-sensitized books. Users also have the capabilities to make one-time or manual adjustments as needed. Meanwhile, a broad library of export formats and reports, as well as ready integration with all major compliance packages, further enhances the usability of Tax Provision Manager.

Planitax's Tax Provision Manager was designed to address the markets request for a system that is easy to use. "We are impressed by the user interface design of Tax Provision Manager. We can easily navigate through the provision process in a way that is logical to us," commented one of Planitax's customers who beta-tested the solution. "In a global company, the real time updates between the data collection, tax provision calculation and group currency reporting is a vast improvement over a spreadsheet based solution."

Tax Provision Manager features centralized document management, audit trails, and approval along with lock down periods to dramatically reduce the material control weaknesses inherent in manual and spreadsheet-based methods. The solution's automation greatly decreases problems associated with human error and the SaaS-based delivery allows organizations to quickly deploy and scale the solution to match their changing needs.

Tax Provision Manager imports book trial balance information at the lowest level available from the ERP systems of the company. As a result, back up information and calculations can be tied back to the original data, thus providing tax professionals a higher confidence in their provision calculations.

The software's extensive reporting and analytical capabilities serve the demands of the tax department and financial management. The software can display the provision results from either the management organizational perspective (such as operating or business units) or the tax perspective (i.e. legal entity and jurisdictions). The management data roll-up view allows the CFOs, business unit heads and subgroups to manage their business appropriately. Meanwhile, the legal entity roll-up structure allows tax professionals to compare legal entity and filing group provision results to tax return results. The solutions' detailed comparison analysis capabilities also allow users to compare provision data between any two periods. This ability facilitates tax planning and performance analysis and provides a simple way to spot potential problems.

Tax Provision Manager is an integral part of Planitax Corporate Tax Horizons Suite[TM]. This comprehensive suite provides users with data acquisition, organization, and security from the time information enters the tax department through audit and compliance. It enables companies to automate, integrate and establish internal controls around the broader tax lifecycle process. In addition to Tax Provision Manger, the suite comes with the Tax Operations and File Manager modules which form a comprehensive enterprise platform which supports all other modules, including Workflow Manager, Data Collector, Global Entity Manager, Tax Positions, R&D Tax Credit Manager, and Audit manager.