Christmas and New Year's Day are both on Fridays this year. Figuring that readers don't want to read that day and I don't want to work that day, there will be one issue of the Bob Scott's Insights newsletter published on Wednesday, December 30. Items will continued to be posted to the website as warranted by events. So here's hoping that Santa includes M&A activity for the year-end to help keeping that issue from being too dreary. Happy Holidays from me and the gang at Progressive Media Group.

"Do you think the reindeer games Rudolph couldn't play were anything like the hunger games?" a friend asked. "Yeah, the reindeer battle it out and the last one left alive gets to pull Santa's sleigh," I responded ... There must have been a millennial putting together one of those pictures features to scroll through on the web. It was promoted as "Rarely Seen Historical Footage" and photograph of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's casket.

SimPro, which owns Gem Accounts, is recruiting a reseller channel in the United States. It has hired Ken Del Gobbo, who has been president of Gem Accounts since October 2013, as VP of partnerships for North America to enlist VARs for simPro's job management software. That leaves the question of what is going on with Gem Accounts, which launched small business and mid-market versions of its accounting software two years ago?