Avalara has started the Avalara Marketing Center, which the sales tax software vendor says is designed to help its resellers generate leads. The center provides content that dealers can use in marketing communications and is designed for channel members who do not have time or resources to handle their own campaigns.

Epicor Software cut significantly into its loss for the third quarter ended June 30. The red ink dropped to $3.3 million for the most recently ended period from $9.7 million a year ago. But the top line budged upward by only 2.1 percent, rising to $246.2 million, up from $241.2 million a year earlier. Don’t blame ERP, which performed decently with revenue of $155.8 million, a rise of 4.3 percent from $149.4 million in last year’s corresponding period. Once again, the Retail Solutions division sucked the life out of the quarter, dropping 10.6 percent to just under $33 million from $36.9 million.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks but you can teach him to confuse onlookers into thinking you have. … You can lead a horse to water but it takes a lot of effort to hold them under. …Noted a map that reports the richest person in each of the 50 United States. Washington of course, has Bill Gates with $80 billion. But sadly, there are three sates, Alaska North Dakota, and Maine, that have richest people worth less that a billion each. How would you like to show up at the club and someone asks your net worth and you have to reply in muffled tones “$700 million”? Let’s help these poor rich people out and get them over the top. Let’s make the poor rich richer. Sponsored by the Billionaire Boys’ Club.

Epicor Software has won a motion to name four employees of Alternative Technology Solutions as defendants in a suit over copyright and intellectual property infringement. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California approved adding were Vivian Keena, CEO and Co-owner, and Donna Barnett, CTO and Co-owner, and employees, Ned Cleary and Mark Stuvetraa, as individual defendants. Epicor is seeking actual and punitive damages from Alternative. Based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., ATS is a consulting firm that specializes in serving Epicor customers and most of its management worked at Epicor.