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Putting QuickBooks in the Cloud - Why Businesses Do It

Guest post by: Scott Gregory

Article Overview: The results of a recent survey about using a hosted solution for QuickBooks may surprise you. They surprised me...

Putting QuickBooks in the Cloud - Why Businesses Do It

I recently came across a very interesting article in the Practice Development News from InSynq. The article offered some valuable insight into why businesses have opted to access their QuickBooks and other applications via a hosted solution instead of handling it in-house. In the article, author Joanie Mann shares feedback received directly from their hosting customers. Here are the leading reasons why businesses opt for a hosted solution with InSynq:

* Ability to connect anytime, anywhere, with my applications and data (48.1%)

* Ability to collaborate with team members and/or clients (21.6%)

* Ability to focus on my business and not on my technology (10.8%)

* Benefit of knowing my data is secure (3.6%)

* Benefit of 24x7 technical support (2.4%)

* Benefit of predictability in IT cost (1.2%)

As you can see, businesses of all types really value the idea of anytime, anywhere access for their QuickBooks and other critical business software.

Based on my consulting work with small businesses using QuickBooks, I would have thought the "ability to focus on my business and not on my technology" would have scored higher in the survey. I see small businesses struggling on a regular basis with the technology piece of this (i.e. servers, networking, desktops, etc.). In fact, I've been in several businesses that were ready to toss their servers out the window.

If you find your business becoming more mobile and need "always on" access to QuickBooks, the use of a hosting service should be considered as a critical addition to your playbook.

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Article Tags: free quickbooks tips, hosted quickbooks solutions, quickbooks and cloud computing, quickbooks saas, using a hosting service for quickbooks



Related Forum Posts
Managing the Paperwork - Greetings All, As we all know, when an Entrepreneur starts his/her business, there is a ton of paperwork to deal with. Who wants that? All we want to do is do our work and make money while solving people's problems with our brilliance! The purpose of this thread is to find out what everyone has done to manage their paperwork/bills. I, for one, am horrible at managing such things. I still have quite a number of receipts that have to be inputted into QuickBooks Pro from last year! I'm a techie and can fix pretty much any PC issues or develop some awesome online marketing ideas for businesses....but please, dont' ask me to figure out how QBPro calculates taxes and why the GST has to be separated in the setup and inputting in the Enter Bills area. To me, this is confusing (and you too after re-reading that paragraph....) So, in the past I tried a high-school Co-Op student. This was a brilliant way to get someone who knows QuickBooks and did not cost me any money. The downside, rules stated that I could not leave him alone. So if I went out on a call, so did he. He brought paperwork to do stuff while we were out so it wasn't too bad. The other downside, he didn't truly want to be an accountant as he was late at _least_ once a week as well as absent at least one day a week (keeping in mind he was only with me 4 days a week). A pure example of someone being forced to follow a parent's footsteps. So, that little experiment went well. I did get some great work from him when he was there. I still used a regular accountant to do my taxes and they talked back and forth easily to make sure my stuff was inline. I would consider doing this again. Currently, I am looking at hiring someone for a couple of hours a week. My schedule is not at all static. I could be in Algonquin Park one day and Sarnia the next. So, having someone work once a week is a much better solution for my scenario. Has anyone done anything different? If so, what has and has not worked for you so far?
QuickBooks vs. Microsoft Money vs....? - I have always used Microsoft Money to run my business - accounting, invoicing, etc. It came with my computer when I got it and integrated well with my online banking system so everything is a breeze. It only takes 30-60 minutes every quarter to do the bookkeeping (keep in mind that I have a very simple business - no inventory, very little invoicing, I do all my payments by credit card, etc). Is QuickBooks or Money the best accounting tool for small business owners? Or is there something even better?
Re: What's Up With Word Clouds? - I would like to see Word Clouds used in conjunction with a Survey. I've been experimenting with Word Clouds within Google Docs forms using the advanced Word Cloud Widget.
Re: As an Entrepreneur, What has been your Biggest Success? - [quote="GT Bulmer":c52l5xxp]The difference between me and them is that I like and enjoy what I do, so I don't "live for the weekends" like they do. Putting in the long hours that I do is not work for me.[/quote:c52l5xxp] I call it passion, and love it
Re: What's Up With Word Clouds? - Hi GT, Interesting topic. I too have seen word clouds more and more. I often wondered the same thing as you. They look kinda cool, but I'm not sure what the point is exactly. I suppose they could be sort of a sitemap of different categories or keywords. Other than that, I don't know what benefit there might be to use one. Wordpress blogs have a "Tag Cloud" widget. Does anyone know if it's beneficial to use it? The only useful thing I see with this is displaying all of your used tags on every page with your readers having easy access to them. I suppose that could be beneficial to both them and you. I'd like to hear other thoughts on this.


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