AccountantsWorld is a U.S. cloud-software business built around professional accountants and CPA firms. IRIS Software Group acquired AccountantsWorld in December 2021. The AccountantsWorld website remains active today, but IRIS increasingly incorporates the company into its North American payroll and accounting portfolio and currently describes AccountantsWorld as “Now IRIS Payroll” on its corporate company directory.
That creates an unusual but important branding situation.
A current user can legitimately encounter AccountantsWorld, Payroll Relief and IRIS during one workflow. The Payroll Relief marketing pages still use AccountantsWorld branding, IRIS’s login directory still identifies “AccountantsWorld Payroll Relief,” and the newer help center is hosted by IRIS.
Understanding that relationship is more useful than assuming one of the brands must be an outdated or unrelated service.
AccountantsWorld Was Built Around Professional Accountants
AccountantsWorld’s current product strategy is explicitly accountant-centric.
Its website positions Accounting Power and Payroll Relief as tools designed to help accounting firms maintain control over client accounting and payroll services rather than forcing clients into software sold primarily to small businesses themselves.
This affects how the products work.
The accounting firm is often the main administrator. The underlying business becomes the firm’s client, and that client’s employees may interact with only a small portion of the system.
Payroll Relief makes this model especially visible.
Payroll Relief
Payroll Relief is AccountantsWorld’s live payroll-processing platform.
It is designed for accounting firms and payroll providers running payroll for employer clients and includes payroll calculation, direct deposit, compliance, electronic tax payments and filing, reporting, employee portals and year-end processing. AccountantsWorld says Payroll Relief can support federal requirements, all 50 states and local jurisdictions and can process payroll for an employer with up to 1,000 employees.
The platform also emphasizes batch operations and exception-based entry, features that become especially valuable when a firm is processing many employer payrolls rather than only its own staff.
Our Payroll Relief overview covers the product separately.
Accounting Power
Accounting Power is the accounting and Client Accounting Services side of AccountantsWorld.
Its current feature set includes write-up, bank feeds, customizable trial balance, financial statements, banking, accounts receivable, accounts payable, job costing and inventory. AccountantsWorld also positions the product around outsourced accounting, advisory and virtual-CFO services.
Accounting Power and Payroll Relief can work together because payroll ultimately produces accounting information.
A payroll system determines wage, tax and liability amounts. The accounting system needs those amounts represented in the client’s books.
AccountantsWorld documents direct integration between Payroll Relief and Accounting Power for this purpose.
Power Practice Suite
AccountantsWorld also maintains the Power Practice Suite, an integrated group of professional accounting applications.
The current suite includes:
- Accounting Power CAS;
- Cloud Cabinet;
- After-the-Fact Payroll;
- Practice Relief;
- Website Relief.
AccountantsWorld specifically says the suite supports data exchange among Accounting Power, Payroll Relief, After-the-Fact Payroll and Practice Relief, even though Payroll Relief itself is marketed separately as the live payroll-processing product.
This architecture is easier to understand if each product is given a distinct role rather than treated as another AccountantsWorld login.
Payroll Relief vs. After-the-Fact Payroll
The presence of two payroll products can be confusing.
Payroll Relief handles ongoing payroll processing.
After-the-Fact Payroll is focused more heavily on payroll-compliance work from payroll data that has already been processed elsewhere.
The Power Practice Suite currently lists After-the-Fact Payroll as one of its five components and describes the suite as supporting W-2, W-3, 1099 and related payroll-compliance work.
An accounting firm can therefore use different AccountantsWorld payroll tools depending on whether it is actually running the payroll or performing compliance work after payroll has already occurred.
Cloud Cabinet
Cloud Cabinet is the document-management and client-document side of the ecosystem.
Payroll Relief’s current integration documentation says payroll report sets can be automatically archived to Cloud Cabinet.
That solves a different problem from Payroll Relief Employee Self Service.
Cloud Cabinet is oriented toward accounting-firm document management and client collaboration. Employee self-service is oriented toward workers retrieving their own payroll information.
The fact that both involve portals does not make them interchangeable.
Practice Relief
Practice Relief handles accounting-firm practice management.
Payroll Relief integration can create tasks and expenses and track staff time in Practice Relief when payroll work is approved, allowing the accounting firm to connect client payroll processing with its own internal billing workflow.
That relationship shows how accountant-centric the overall architecture is.
A payroll approval is not only an employer transaction. It is also work the accounting firm performed for a client and may need to bill.
QuickBooks Can Remain in the Environment
Using Payroll Relief does not require every employer client to move its accounting into Accounting Power.
AccountantsWorld currently documents integration with QuickBooks, CS Accounting, Peachtree and other general-ledger environments.
IRIS’s current PayrollLink documentation also explains how Payroll Relief can transfer aggregate payroll journal entries into the desktop version of QuickBooks and allocate departmental expenses when configured.
This makes Payroll Relief useful as a specialized payroll engine even when the firm’s clients use several different bookkeeping systems.
Why IRIS Appears More Often Now
The IRIS acquisition took place in December 2021, but its practical effect is especially visible in the current support environment.
Payroll Relief’s current help center is hosted on IRIS Global, and the June 2026 release introduced IRIS Agent, an AI-powered support assistant inside Payroll Relief. The product’s Help link was also updated to point to the newer IRIS Global documentation site.
This means IRIS branding is no longer simply corporate ownership in the background.
It appears directly in the product experience.
The Current Branding Model
As of August 2026, the most accurate interpretation is:
AccountantsWorld remains a live product/site identity.
Payroll Relief remains the name of the payroll platform.
IRIS Software Group owns AccountantsWorld.
IRIS increasingly supplies the login, documentation, support and wider portfolio context.
IRIS’s corporate company page now labels AccountantsWorld as “Now IRIS Payroll,” while its separate login directory still uses the “AccountantsWorld Payroll Relief” name.
That coexistence is more useful to explain than pretending the branding has already been completely replaced everywhere.
Who Should Read Which Guide?
If you are researching the company and product family, remain on this page.
If you want the live payroll product, see our Payroll Relief guide.
If your question is about account access, use Payroll Relief login and access roles.
If you are an employee looking for a pay statement or W-2, see Payroll Relief Employee Self Service.
Those are different intents inside the same technology ecosystem.