Local tax-appeal software firm acquired by San Diego company

AppealTrack, a six-year-old Indianapolis-based firm that makes software to manage property-tax appeals, has been acquired by San Diego-based software developer Tax Compliance Inc., the companies announced Wednesday.

Terms of the deal were not announced.

AppealTrack founder Doug Collins said he'll continue to run the local office at the Developer Town techie warehouse in Broad Ripple as director of product development, real estate, he said.

The office will take on the TCI name, but the product it sells will retain the AppealTrack brand. Collins said more than 86,000 properties have been managed through the AppealTrack software platform with a total market value in excess of $100 billion.

AppealTrack got off to a fast start after its founding by landing major clients including financial advisory firm Grant Thornton in Chicago, the Los Angeles office of national CPA firm Moss Adams LLP and prominent Indianapolis law firm Ice Miller LLP.

In 2013, the firm received a commitment for $70,000 in incentives from the Indiana Economic Development Corp. if it hired seven full-time employees by the end of this year. Collins said the business never quite realized those hiring goals and it didn’t receive the incentives.

The company had four full-time employees when it was acquired. Two are remaining with company—Collins and software consultant Kristin Seed.

Collins said the firm had attracted outside capital but he thought he could grow the business faster by selling it to a much bigger company with established relationships with potential clients.

TCI, a subsidiary of business, legal, and financial services provider Corporation Service Co., has  customer base of more than 600 companies, including at least 50 in the Fortune 100.

“The acquisition of AppealTrack will benefit both our customers and organization," TCI CEO Scott Strauss said in written remarks. "AppealTrack enables us to service new clients in market segments that were previously difficult to access, affording us an opportunity to grow our business in the real property arena.”