Category: Business Process Automation

Posted on

Scan to the Cloud – Point A to Point B with no stops

Scan to the Cloud – Point A to Point B with no stops

There is a lot of talk today about the benefits of running a “paperless office”, and the number and variety of solutions currently available prove that the concept is a popular one.  Paperless offices consume fewer resources in terms of consumables like paper and ink, and require less floor space for handling and storing paper files, saving on office costs and storage space.  Paperless offices also make it easier for people to share information, and to control that information so that multiple versions or editions of documents don’t get distributed in error.  Paperless office solutions make storing and sharing documents easier and, in many cases, more secure.

Online document management and electronic file storage approaches come in a wide variety of forms, but the consistent requirement for all of them is that the document – the paper file to be stored – first be turned into electronic data.  Users familiar with this process understand that it means taking the paper document and scanning it to an electronic image file.  You simply place the paper document in the scanner, direct the scanner to scan the document, and then save the file to your hard drive.  Then, once the file is saved as an image file on the hard drive, you upload it to your “paperless” storage solution.  It sounds like a simple process, but for people with limited PC resources or who are “technically challenged”, it is not at all a simple or straightforward requirement.

What isn’t straightforward is the need for the user to name, save, and then try to find the file on their PC before it can be uploaded to the cloud storage vault.  Paperless solutions are supposed to be intuitive, yet it isn’t very intuitive to require a user to store files on their PC before they can use their cloud solution.  PC hard drives get filled up, files get old and need to be deleted when no longer needed, and finding one particular file on a stuffed full hard drive can be time-consuming and frustrating.  Further, the entire concept of the paperless office and a central filing area is that documents don’t get reproduced and distributed, yet the requirement to save image files to the PC first essentially guarantees that extra copies of files will be left sitting around on PC hard drives even after they are copied to the storage vault.

CloudStorage_120x600The better answer is the SmartVault answer, which gives you the ability to scan directly to the cloud from your local scanner.  SmartVault is an online document storage and secure file sharing solution that gives users a way to go directly from point A to point B – from paper to stored image – with no stops in between.  SmartVault does this with the SmartVault Inbox, which you can think of as an electronic inbox with the same functionality as the old inboxes that used to sit on desks. The Inbox is part of the little SmartVault desktop client which installs on the user PC and delivers the ability to scan directly to the cloud.  The SmartVault Inbox makes it easier to get files into the document vault because users can simply drop the document in the scanner, and in one click, the file is scanned directly into SmartVault. The file is auto-named with information from the document for easy searchability – you can even rename the file if you need to, but not having to come up with file names just makes using the solution that much easier to use.

The file is not stored on the local PC, eliminating the requirement to perform regular file cleanups, and now that the file is in SmartVault, you have a secure offsite backup of that document.

So whether a document needs to be uploaded and attached to a QuickBooks financial transaction or just needs to be archived for future use, SmartVault handles the process with just one click.  When multiple files or documents need to be processed, that “one click” method saves a lot of time and user frustration.

Paperless office solutions should save steps in the process, not add more of them.  SmartVault’s unique approach of allowing users to scan directly to the cloud saves time and frustration, and helps even novice technology users function like seasoned IT savvy professionals.

Make Sense?

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetJ

Posted on

The True Cost of the Cloud

The True Cost of the Cloud

Excerpt from article on Intuit Accountants News Central: The True Cost of the Cloud

“Accounting professionals are strongly encouraged to adopt cloud computing models in their practices, and there can be little argument that mobility and access are driving the need. In concert with the messages supporting mobile access to business information – and the value of anytime, anywhere access – cloud service providers are strongly suggesting that the overall cost of purchasing and maintaining information technology (IT) in the business is much lower when a cloud computing approach is used.

Arguments over the total cost of IT and related services become somewhat subjective. Many business owners and managers fail to consider the value of their own time spent dealing with business technology issues, much less the time spent by in-house employees and remote workers. To further complicate the issue, dramatic changes in process support and delivery, connected service and cloud computing approaches are impacting business productivity and profitability in new and dramatic ways. As a result, every business should consider the costs and the benefits of this new connected and collaborative working model.

At the core, cloud computing is really just an outsourced IT service that addresses the various levels of application and computing infrastructure. From IaaS (infrastructure as a service) to SaaS (software as a service) and all things in between, a viable cloud computing approach for a business may encompass little more than co-location of physical server and network resources with a third-infrastructure provider to something much larger scale, such as offloading virtually every aspect of application management and delivery to a SaaS solution.

Because there is no single, correct definition of what makes up a “cloud” service model, attempting to compare costs directly to a more traditional IT approach is quite complicated.”

Read the entire article at Intuit Accountants News Central

http://blog.accountants.intuit.com/ways-to-grow-your-business/the-true-cost-of-the-cloud/

Posted on

Surprise! Consumer apps get IT approval in small businesses: GIGAOM.com

Surprise! Consumer apps get IT approval in small businesses: GIGAOM.com

In a recent article on GigaOm, author Barb Darrow discusses the findings of a survey of small businesses in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where it was found that the use of “consumer” information technology is being more widely accepted for use in small businesses, and that many of these selections are happening without the knowledge or participation of the IT department.

“Employees are driving business apps selection in many small and medium businesses, according to new research. A good percentage of productivity, social and collaborative apps now sanctioned by IT in SMBs were brought in by workers without IT knowledge.“

Reporting that small businesses are adopting “consumer” IT, and that it is OK with IT departments, isn’t a surprising finding.  Small businesses have begun leveraging mobility and cloud solutions to their benefit, being able to take advantage of powerful technologies that previously only enterprise IT departments could enjoy.

 “.. the line between personal and workplace technologies has become all but invisible. That poses real challenges to IT departments that have to deal with all sorts of technology coming in over the transom. But it also opens up opportunities for vendors that design easy-to-use consumer apps to enter the business realm as well.”

The cloud introduces new agility and capability for all businesses, not just small business. For IT departments in larger businesses, this is a big IT management issue. For smaller businesses, the IT manager is often the business owner or an occasionally contracted on-site technician.  When faced with IT needs in the business, many small business owners will at some level rely upon the solutions they also use in their personal lives – in many cases, there simply isn’t a budget for both.  The line between business and personal has always been “blurry” for the small business owner.

Make Sense?

J

Read more: Disruptive Trends = Emerging Opportunity: Adapting to a changing technology and business environment

What will my business be worth, when I need it to be worth a lot?

bodeguy

Business Enlightenment

Get on the path…

  • Read more about how accountants need business intelligence, too
  • Read more about how there’s no fear and loathing in accounting
  • Read more about the pressure on accountants to deliver more value and intelligence to their clients
  • Read more about Data Warriors: accounting in the cloud
Posted on

Not Everybody’s Accounting Online: Outsourced Bookkeeping and Accounting for “Offline” Clients

Not Everybody’s Accounting Online: Outsourced Bookkeeping and Accounting for “Offline” Clients

With all the focus on online technology, solutions that help you work smarter and not harder, and having mobile access to information at any time and from anywhere, you’d think that the entire world had adopted an entirely mobile and high-tech approach to life and business.   The popularity of software-as-a-service models and apps for just about everything are certainly a testament to the movement toward a more connected and mobile lifestyle and business environment.  However, not every business has adopted a comprehensive paperless, mobile-accessed, virtual working world – not by a long shot.  In fact, more folks than you may realize are still using actual paper, writing things by hand (things like checks and invoices), filing piles of paperwork in stand-up filing cabinets, and generally doing things the long, slow, painful way and then recording it on PC-based spreadsheets.  You know – the way we did things before the Internet showed up.

While paperless offices and technology-enabled approaches to collaborative business are gaining popularity and adopting users every day, there is a community of business users out there who are not as laser-focused on the high-tech approach to online accounting and working closer with their outsourced accountant or bookkeeper.  These business people are just getting the job done, and have found ways to handle their information and processes that work for them.  It is this business user that accounting professionals should not forget as they seek to adopt new and innovative cloud approaches to service delivery, and for a couple of reasons.  First, this type of client is likely to be in need of process support and additional service as the business grows, and the accounting professional is in a great position to help with those needs.  Second, this type of client exists in great number.

Consider the following scenario; a discussion I discovered when perusing a small business forum recently.  The interesting thing is that this is a discussion I see pretty frequently with small business owners and entrepreneurs – the discussion about the value of actual accounting or bookkeeping solutions versus a simple spreadsheet approach to record keeping.

I am the owner of a brand new small business. It has only been up and running for a short time. My accountant is pressuring me to use the online version of QuickBooks, but I am doubtful as to whether this is the right software for me.

I know that QuickBooks has a lot of different features, but I really only need it to track spending and customer payments, and since it’s still early on, I don’t have a lot of either. I would only need the very basics, and would probably only check it every two weeks at most.  The fees they want for the software would add up pretty quickly for something I’m not really going to use much.  My business is very small (just me) and service-based (tour guide), without much potential for repeat customers. I don’t need the payroll, invoicing, or other advanced features.

I honestly think that the easiest thing for me would be some sort of spreadsheet or really basic software that I could put directly on my computer instead of accessing online.

The truth of the matter is that spreadsheets often provide the common ground between small business owners and their accountants.  For a business owner, spreadsheets offer a simple and intuitive way to organize and record information because the column layout makes it easy to understand where to enter which data.  For the accountant, a spreadsheet can fairly quickly be sorted, filtered and prepared as accounting or tax return data.  While working with clients in a fully online, collaborative model may be the “best case scenario” in terms of delivering high levels of service in the most efficient manner, understanding how best to work with those clients in other scenarios is also necessary.  Getting the spreadsheet from this type of client is generally not terribly difficult – they are often more than willing to email it.  As long as the professional has a good document management solution to capture and manage these files, and introduce them into the firm workflow, then working with this type of offline client doesn’t have to be a huge impact to internal firm efficiency.

For accounting and bookkeeping professionals working with small business owners around the country, this type of client likely fits into the “normal” category more than those with a strong motivation to use cloud computing and having a great desire to use the Internet and connected services for everything they can (eventually the “new”normal?).  I believe the reality is that only a small fraction of smaller companies – solo, soho, and small/medium business – are actively managing the majority of their business process and information online.  In fact, Intuit (makers of QuickBooks) and other entry-level accounting and bookkeeping solution providers continue to heavily target small business users who are still tracking their finances using spreadsheets and other methods.  This simplified and after-the-fact approach to spreadsheet record keeping is being further facilitated by the banks and credit card companies providing customers with a greater ability to classify and categorize transaction information, and then quickly download it into said spreadsheet.

Yes, the dichotomy is clear: many small business owners resist (or are, at least, unimpressed with) cloud accounting approaches, yet these very same individuals are likely utilizing cloud services from banks and other financial institutions to support their spreadsheet and checkbook record keeping, as well as accessing email and other services via the web for various reasons.  It makes some sense, though, when you look at it from the business owner perspective.  Their way sounds easier, is less overwhelming, and meets the need – for now.

J

Learn more about Working Online With Clients: How to leverage the internet and cloud computing to work closer with your clients

Read more about Online Accountants and Their Clients: Working Smarter, or just Closer?

Read more about Data Warriors: Accountants in the Cloud

Read more about using the cloud to extend “connectedness” beyond traditional boundaries

Posted on

Simultaneous Syncing Sinks Solution: Extend Access but Control Integrations

Simultaneous Syncing Sinks Solution: Extend Access but Control Integrations

Accounts and ProAdvisors: Make sure you “enable” only those who need it

In this wonderfully interconnected world of hosted and online applications and the integrations which complement them, it is important to not let the excitement of connectivity and collaboration replace reasonable control.  While there is much conversation on this topic when it involves file sharing and similar services, the discussion of data synchronization and data integration doesn’t often come up.  However, it has been my experience that there is usually a misunderstanding in how, exactly, a particular sync or integration should be applied and who should have access to the functionality when it is deployed as an extension of the QuickBooks desktop financial software.

An example of the problem might be seen when QuickBooks desktop editions are set to integrate or sync data with a web-based solution such as Method Integration or Santrio Open for Business Order Bridge.  Solutions like these, which extend the functionality of QuickBooks through extending access and integrating data, rely upon QuickBooks integration functionality move data between their solutions and the QuickBooks database.  These solutions are quite beneficial for businesses because they can affordably deliver support for various business functions via a true web application and incorporate QuickBooks data in those application views.  Additionally, this type of solution is able to push information from the web application to QuickBooks, allowing for complete integration of financial and other relevant data.

While having this type of integrated service is beneficial, there are a lot of businesses who don’t fully understand how to appropriately implement the solution and end up creating a great deal of difficulty for themselves.  One of the most frequent failures I have seen when implementing this type of solution is where the customer doesn’t really understand who should or should not have the integration.

When a web-based solution exchanges data or syncs with QuickBooks, a path is created to communicate between the two systems – the web solution and the QuickBooks application and data file.  This path must be open, and both sides of the communication identified, in order for data to sync.  The most important thing to remember is that there should be only one controlling entity on each side handling the integration.   What this means for QuickBooks users is that only one installation – one PC accessing QuickBooks – should be configured to facilitate the primary integration with the QuickBooks company file.

To illustrate, consider an implementation of Method Integration and QuickBooks that was done for a business some time ago.  This business used Method-based applications for a variety of business functions, and those applications used data sync’d from QuickBooks desktop.  Just after implementation, it was discovered that system sync’s were not happening as they should, and sometimes when they went to sync data, it would take a huge amount of time (which was not supposed to be normal behavior).  In short, the system proved to be problematic and, at times, unusable.  But the problem didn’t have anything to do with the Method Integration system, nor the technology.

The problem was that all workstations in the office were set up to sync data between QuickBooks and Method.  QuickBooks was installed on all the PC’s, even though most of the users did not use QuickBooks (they used the Method Integration system to do their jobs), and each PC had the Method Integration sync engine installed and set up to run.  This caused the system to be frequently overloaded with sync requests and caused QuickBooks to behave erratically or crash.  In addition, users who did not need (and should not have had) access to QuickBooks financial information were starting up QuickBooks and opening the company file every day because they thought it was required to allow them to access or use QuickBooks data in the Method Integration system.

The benefits of using web applications which can connect to and integrate data with QuickBooks is that a business can give users functionality and data access required to get the job done, but not expose those users to more software or data than they need.  In most cases, if not all, QuickBooks is not necessary for users of the web application (saving you the cost of purchasing and installing QuickBooks for these users).  Further, to ensure proper functionality and to remove any possible conflict or confusion in the sync process, only one workstation with QuickBooks should be set up to sync data to/from the web solution.  While it makes sense to have a “backup” PC setup with the ability, syncing should remain inactive on this machine unless the primary “sync machine” is out of service.  The key element to remember here is that the data coming from the web application is being added to the QuickBooks company file.  Once the data is in QuickBooks, QuickBooks users may access the data from QuickBooks and do not need the connection to the web application.

When deploying this combination of solutions with a hosting service provider, the same rules will apply.  Only users who need the sync capability require service with both QuickBooks and the integration installed.  In some cases, this may make selection of host services more affordable, as only those who need the “additional application” (being the sync solution or integration tool) require customized service, and the rest of the QuickBooks-only users need standard QuickBooks service.  *It might also be worth noting that many hosting providers do not support “persistent” connections – sync connections which continue to run even when you are not logged in), so syncing of data would only be able to occur if the primary user was logged in to QuickBooks and had the sync integration active on the host solution.

Accounting professionals, QuickBooks ProAdvisors, and small business consultants can help their clients understand the value and potential of extending QuickBooks desktop editions with connected web-based solutions.  The additional value these professionals bring to the conversation is the understanding of the need for structure and control of the data flowing into and out of the financial systems, offering their expertise to ensure that the accountability and appropriate treatment of the information exists throughout the business.

Make Sense?

J

Read more …

There’s a lot of legacy ERP out there, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon

https://coopermann.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/theres-a-lot-of-legacy-erp-out-there-and-its-not-going-anywhere-any-time-soon/

Compliance in the Cloud – their system, your responsibility

https://coopermann.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/compliance-in-the-cloud-their-system-your-responsibility/

Beyond Bookkeeping to Total Business

https://coopermann.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/beyond-bookkeeping-to-total-business/

Posted on

Managing The Purchasing Process: More than just expenses

Managing The Purchasing Process: More than just expenses

When a business owner hears the term “expense management”, they immediately get a vision of traveling employees with piles of receipts and vouchers to be organized, accounted, and possibly reimbursed for.  The image is fleeting, gone out of mind with no lingering thought, because this business owner does not have personnel who travel frequently, and does not have to deal with volumes of expense reports from employees.  Expense management solutions aren’t anything this business owner is looking for.

Yet, what does happen every day is that equipment, materials, supplies, and services must be purchased to keep the business operation going.  Calls are made to vendors, price quotes are developed, and purchase requests are typed up in Excel spreadsheets and piled on the owner’s desk for approval.  The business owner rifles through the various requests, and brings in the bookkeeper to help work through the decision of which items to authorize based on current cash availability.  Because the availability of working capital changes frequently with billings being sent out and receipts being deposited daily, the owner and the bookkeeper spend much of their time together figuring out which purchases to make and when.  It is a continual and ongoing process, taking a lot of time and attention away from other important business matters.

Too often, thoughts of managing these efforts with more structure places the problem “in a box” and addresses only half of the issue – the purchase.  While managing materials requirements and predicting when parts or supplies will be needed is one side of the problem, factoring those purchasing plans in to the cash requirements of the business, and having a meaningful and effective way to monitor current cash, expected receipts and purchase requirements together is essential.  This ability requires that the payments management solution also address receivables in order to have the cash flow and availability information necessary.

Expense and purchase management processes generally involve three main steps: planning, tracking, and reporting.  As the process involves planning, it suggests a proactive rather than a reactive approach to cash management and purchasing activities.  By bringing together all of the critical data which describes “inflows and outflows”, the business owner has the information necessary to not only forecast (plan) cash requirements but to also understand the availability of working capital.  Knowing ahead of time that traditionally slow paying contracts aren’t factored into immediately available cash is important, and being able to make adjustments to purchase schedules based on availability of funds is essential.

Expense reporting may not be a big part of the business, but managing cash flow and purchasing goods and services is, even in the smallest of enterprises.  Make sure the business has the tools in place to help bring an additional level of intelligence to purchasing activities, and that those tools deliver the benefits of a structured (but not time-consuming) purchasing approvals and proactive cash flow management process.

For accounting and finance professionals, this is a highly valuable area of service you could be providing to your clients – helping to implement the tools and solutions which not only allow you to work in more depth with client businesses, but which deliver immediate visible and actionable benefit to the client.  This is just one of the ways accounting professionals can work closer with their clients, and the benefit is delivered each and every day (not just at tax time).

Make Sense?

J

  • Is your purchasing and expense approvals process holding up your business? Read more…
  • Read more about using the cloud to extend “connectedness” beyond traditional boundaries 
  • Read more about how there’s no fear and loathing in accounting
  • Read more about the pressure on accountants to deliver more value and intelligence to their clients
  • Read more about Data Warriors: accounting in the cloud