Tag: accounting solutions

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Accounting for Custom Manufacturing

Accounting for Custom Manufacturing

Accounting and bookkeeping is a part of every business large and small, yet there are myriad details to work with and a multitude of possible approaches to addressing the requirement.  From a summary perspective, there are standards which are fairly easily met, providing the basics of sales and expense tracking and income reporting sufficient for basic tax and compliance work to be performed.  Yet accounting may go much deeper into the operational processes of the business, delving into the details of productivity and profitability in order to find and expose areas where the business might improve both.

mfgManufacturing, particularly custom manufacturing or ETO (engineering to order) is among those industry types that could benefit tremendously from a more intimate and detailed approach to accounting.  Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find experienced professionals with not simply a competence in working with manufacturing industry sector clients, but specifically with ETO process.  Building to order is one thing, but finding the way to improve efficiency and profitability when every job is a custom encounter takes additional skills and a lot of data.  Accounting professionals with these skills are needed to help these custom manufacturers grow, transform their businesses and make the overall operations more efficient and sustainable.

It seems logical that manufacturing and ETO space businesses are ripe for the same bridging of technology and analysis that the accounting industry started broadly approaching some years back.  With bookkeeping processes being more frequently outsourced to non-accountants, the accounting professionals saw increased pressure to find more efficient ways of doing things and had to find new value to deliver to clients.  Technology, data collection and analysis became the foundations for delivering on that new requirement.  With the established model and philosophy, bringing more operational aspects of client systems into the mix and extending the model end-to-end just makes sense.

It takes a combination of systems – from the core accounting solution to the manufacturing control or other operational systems, through to the analytical tools.  Leveraging hosting technologies and cloud service, businesses are finally able to bring the multiple work locations – shops, warehouses and business offices – together in a single software and technology platform, and collect the level of detail necessary to provide a comprehensive and true picture of the business.  The analytical tools then provide the means to explore the details and identify where improvements might be made or where previously unrecognized risk exists.

QuickBooks desktop editions remain among the most popular financial systems used by manufacturing and job shop applications, largely due to the effectiveness of connecting the operational applications to an accounting solution which proves highly workable and which has strong industry support.  Even with the emergence of QuickBooks Online (and the push by Intuit to get customers to adopt this web-based alternative to desktop-based software) the QuickBooks desktop edition products continue to provide more functionality and application support for these working models, as the ability to fully manage the information in the solution exists more in the disk based products than it does in a multitenant web-based application.  Accounting “mechanics” are able to see, access and work with all the data rather than simply view reports where only half of the transaction is visible – making detailed accounting and data analysis more readily available.

 

The key is to leverage the accounting professional, the right software tools, and the platform and delivery environment that allows it all to work in concert for the entire organization.  Add the QuickBooks hosting service so the participants can work more closely together.  Enabling the accounting professional and bringing them closer to their clients (and client systems) allows the deeper move into operational issues, creating the basis for both to receive new and more value from the relationship.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J

 

 

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Everything Old is New Again: Big Fat Phones and Desktop QuickBooks in the Cloud

anywhere-anydeviceEvery year that passes leaves some reminder of the time – some person or occurrence which touches us and creates a lasting memory.  2014 delivered its share of memorable people and moments and proved again that social platforms such as Twitter and Instagram have become increasingly significant as people across the world organize, march or call for change.  Yet even as change is demanded from us and often forced upon us, it is wise to remember that the pendulum eventually swings both ways.  We want to have our cake and eat it, too, which is the ultimate no-win situation and causes us to constantly and consistently seek out the alternative.  Like the puppy chasing his tail, we end up going round in circles.  Harem pants and jeans torn from knee to thigh have come back in fashion, and even though they didn’t really work the first time, here they are again. It is inevitable.

Information technology trends follow similar patterns, and what was once in high fashion may now be considered as “legacy”.  Perhaps the better word is “classic”, as these legacy solutions often represent the standards by which new solutions will be measured.  Eventually, the properties of the classic or legacy solution wind up in the new breed, because this is what the market has come to expect and/or demand.  Even when entirely new standards are believed to be adopted, the truth is that years of learning and experience will often find the path previously traveled by others to be the right path.

It seems like so long ago when some said “the desktop is dead” and that all applications would be used by every device via the web, but not run on the device.  Well, there are quite a number of web-based applications and services delivered in just that manner, but there are also lots and lots of computers out there with software still installed on them, happily working away for their users (there’s an app for that, right?).  The desktop isn’t dead at all, it seems, and what’s more – there are trends to extend the capability and reach of the desktop to the web rather than replacing the desktop with the web.  Application integration, process integration, interoperability, functionality and modality – all these factors and more have become the underlying drivers for extension of and hosting for desktop applications, and are the areas where SaaS and web-based application service has not delivered as expected.

The idea of having no software on the computing device is kind of silly, when you think about it.  Computers continue to get more powerful and have more capability than ever.  Heck, even phones are getting fatter and bigger again.  The best phones these days are the ones that rival tablets and laptops in size and have lots of apps to run.

Microsoft Office, too, hasn’t gone anywhere, really.  It’s still firmly attached to most workstations whether they’re iPads or Macs or Windows systems.  Web-based productivity tools are certainly gaining in use, but not nearly as widely as some would believe.  Office productivity continues to live on the desktop, and ties many users to desktop computing for that very reason.  Use CRM in the cloud?  I’ll bet you still export data to Excel or Word on the PC.  Use accounting in the cloud?  A lot of reporting still goes through Excel, trial balance systems and the like.  The universe of web-based and SaaS apps is getting larger, but it hasn’t yet become the center of the universe for most established businesses.  Net-new customers and smaller businesses are adopting SaaS due largely to cost and to the success of the marketing message, but use and direct experience with the product applied in the business setting often demonstrates that adoption of a more flexible (malleable) or functionally rich solution is indicated. The business likes the mobility, remote access and managed service, but not the actual SaaS application.  So, hosting becomes the better alternative and the business is able to use the software that works for the business, and use it in a manner that allows the business to take advantage of remote and mobile capability, subscription service, and more.

I really have no gripes with web-based and SaaS solutions.  In fact, some of my best friends use SaaS  🙂  The message I’m trying to convey is simply that, regardless of what the media and marketing may tell you, things don’t always change as quickly as it seems.  Yes, there is a movement towards cloud solutions and online working models.  Yes, there is change in how information technology is obtained and used.  And equally true is the reality that only a portion of the market has adopted these changes and new philosophies.  By the time there is “complete” adoption, there will be a new standard or approach being marketed and we will be in this place once again.  Is there wide recognition of the benefit for mobility and remote capability? Sure there is, but it is also accompanied by the understanding that tried and true solutions will continue to deliver the functionality and capability businesses rely upon, even as new models for delivering them come about.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J

Here are some of the most popular articles from CooperMann.com in 2014.  Surprisingly enough, the most popular were articles about QuickBooks and the Cloud, a subject I’ve been writing about for many years.  In fact, some of the most popular of my QuickBooks/cloud articles are from 2013 and they remain among the most frequently viewed even today. Search and view metrics indicate that the topic’s popularity is not likely to diminish soon, so plan to hear more about how businesses are using QuickBooks (and other desktop and network applications) in the cloud, but aren’t using Online editions to make it work really well.

 The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. CooperMann.com blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

  1. The 2 Most Popular Models for Working with QuickBooks Desktop Editions and the Cloud
  2. Hosted QuickBooks and Office 365 a Complicated Technical and Licensing Model (until now)
  3. Intuit Introduces Changes to Authorized Commercial Host for QuickBooks Program, Introduces QuickBooks Enterprise Rental Licensing
  4. Managed Applications, Cloudpaging, and a New Flavor of Hosted QuickBooks
  5. QuickBooks and Dropbox? Yeah… no.
  6. Intuit Ends QuickBooks Remote Access Service: The Time to Host is Now

 

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Intuit Ended QuickBooks Remote Access Service: The Time to Host is Now

Intuit Ended QuickBooks Remote Access Service: The Time to Host is Now

accountingCloudAccountants, bookkeepers and small business consultants have recognized the benefits of accessing client information remotely, where all parties can work on the same data in real-time, creating the opportunity to maintain more timely and accurate financial data for the business client.  The Internet has become the network, facilitating a variety of different working models which allow users, regardless of location, to access business information and data to get their work done.

For accountants and their business clients, it is essential that there is some type of virtualized working model, else the client is relegated to accepting after-the-fact reporting and outdated information.  Especially in smaller businesses where many of the accounting and finance processes are handled by an outsourced professional, time and distance is the enemy.

Just about anything that helps remove those barriers to real-time efficiency is worth looking at – which made it particularly unfortunate when Intuit, the  makers of QuickBooks, discontinued the QuickBooks Remote Access Service which was a tool that had addressed the remote access requirement for many businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping providers.

There are a wide variety of options for accountants to work closer with their small business clients, and jumping into a SaaS or web-based application is just one of them; other proven options include secure remote PC access or hosted application services.  Hosting in particular is beneficial as it allow businesses to continue the use of the software and processes they have already invested in while enabling a remote access and mobile capability.

If the problem is access, the solution isn’t necessarily a complete change in software – the solution is to create access. With Intuit’s end of QuickBooks Remote Access services in sight, the time to explore QuickBooks hosting is now.

Make sense?

J

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Following the Rules: Users and Licensing for Hosted QuickBooks

Following the Rules: Users and Licensing for Hosted QuickBooks

I have said many times before that the licensing for QuickBooks desktop editions appears to be a bit complicated, and a lot of that may have to do with the fact that so many people use QuickBooks in so many different ways.  With a solution like QuickBooks (or Microsoft Office or other really popular and widely used software products) there is a tendency for folks to want the flexibility of accessing their software regardless of what computer they are using.  Also, especially in businesses, there is the habit of installing software on a computer and then allowing anyone sitting at the computer to use the software.  In some cases these approaches are okay with the software vendors, but in most cases they’re not.  Yet too often, the small business owner doesn’t find out what the actual rules of using the product are until they try to deploy the software with a hosting service provider (because nobody ever actually reads the EULA, do they?).  If the provider has any credibility at all, they will enforce the licensing rules of the software, but that doesn’t always sit well with the customer.

picture-hostedQBThis situation rears its ugly head quite frequently in the QuickBooks hosting world.  Perhaps it is because there are a lot of possible working models involving QuickBooks users, or maybe it’s simply a matter of people not seeing the value of paying for what they want to accomplish.  Either way, service providers find themselves being challenged every day in trying to explain to a customer why they need to have more than one license for QuickBooks and more than one service account if they want more than one person to access the hosted solution.

Different people at different times: The Concurrent User approach

One of the arguments people make for not having licenses for all of their users is that they don’t actually need everyone in the system at the same time.  The belief is that there should be licenses enough only for the number of concurrent, or simultaneous, users that will access the system, yet each individual human being/user should have a login to the system with the software available (for convenience, of course).  A QuickBooks 3-user license, they believe, should be able to be used by any number of business users as long as no more than 3 of them are in QuickBooks at any given time.

While the customer may be making a reasonable argument, it all falls down when you consider the license agreement for QuickBooks.  Each user of the product is supposed to have a specific license.  A business with a 3-user license (or 3 single-user licenses) for QuickBooks has the rights to allow 3 people (unique human beings) to use the software, not any combination of people as long as they number no more than 3 at a time.   There is to be no sharing of licenses, and there is no “concurrent” licensing model: each person/user/human being is supposed to have their own license for the product no matter how often they access it.

Look but don’t touch: The Read-Only User approach

Another of the arguments people make for not licensing all of their users is that there is somehow a belief that if you don’t actually enter information, then you aren’t really using the software.  This often comes up in situations where an accounting professional works with their client, or when business owners want to occasionally see what’s going on in the company.  The approach centers on the concept of what a “user” is and suggests that users are the people entering or changing the data, and people only viewing that information aren’t really “users” at all.  When the bookkeeper opens QuickBooks and enters an invoice, the bookkeeper is recognized to be a user.  But when the business owner opens QuickBooks to view the financial statement or see the bank account balance, isn’t the business owner also a user?  Yup, they sure are. Any person that actually opens the program on the computer is a user, regardless of what they do when the program is open.  Just looking around at the data still requires that the program be open, and opening the program requires a license.

Two Fer: But the other hosting company lets me…

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.  So, just because a different hosting provider might let you get away with things that aren’t right (but perhaps are convenient or cost saving in the short-term) doesn’t mean you should expect a different host to allow the same thing.  If your current host says things like “as long as you don’t tell us…”, you should be concerned.  This often comes up in a hosting scenario where there is an outside accounting or outsourced back-office professional working with a hosted client business.  The outsourcer will want to access the client books, so they will want to have a login and access to QuickBooks software on the host system.

The trouble starts when the outsource professional doesn’t want to have to pay for their own service or licensing, yet they want to be able to login to the system and run QB just like the client does.  Falling sometimes under that attempt to leverage a concurrent user approach (see above), these outsourcers just aren’t realizing that the benefits of accessing their client information and working in real-time with that data is often valuable enough to support the cost of a hosted account and license.  Instead, they want their access to be free of charge and not be bound by silly rules of licensing, often because their client won’t want to pay for the accountant service in addition to their own.

This is when the “if you don’t tell us” stuff comes in – where the service provider may suggest to the accountant or outsourcer that they can simply login as the client and nobody would be the wiser.  I’ll fess up and say I have even entertained this idea with clients a few times but always shy away from discussing it in-depth.  While it is basically true that the service provider doesn’t generally know which exact human being is sitting at the other end of that remote desktop connection, that doesn’t mean that it is okay to leverage it into an abuse of services or licensing.

Two or more people sharing a single login just isn’t good ju ju, and it’s usually against a whole bunch of licensing rules and rights of use.  The funny thing is that many customers who initially leverage their service in this manner end up finding it was a really bad idea.  I saw a scenario a few years ago where a business allowed their outside auditors to share the logins of regular employees in the finance department.  When an employee tried to login to their remote desktop, they opened the session the auditor had open – exposing the employee to a lot of data that was not theirs to see but which the auditor user in QB had access to.  The company called it a security breach and it was on their part – and it was allowed to happen because they shared their remote desktops with the auditors rather than giving the auditors their own accounts with their own security profiles.  What seemed like a good, cheap approach on one day rapidly turned into a big issue the next, and the service provider had no power to prevent it from happening.

The moral of this story is simply that following the rules is the right thing to do and most reputable hosting service providers will try, even if they don’t end up doing it really well.  There are always going to be those who figure that the risks don’t measure up to the potential rewards, so they will do what they choose to do.  I’m always left wondering about those guys; if they have no problems breaking these rules, I wonder what other rules (or confidences) they are willing to break.  Hmmm.

Make sense?

J

 

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Avoid the Aftertaste| QuickBooks Desktop Hosting Comes in Many Flavors

Avoid the Aftertaste| QuickBooks Desktop Hosting Comes in Many Flavors

There is a lot of activity and interest around the hosting of desktop applications in the cloud, and it is no wonder that a great deal of the effort centers on the use of Intuit QuickBooks desktop editions.  QuickBooks is among the most popular software products used by small businesses, so it makes sense that service providers and hosting companies are taking advantage of that market share to reach prospective hosting customers.  After all, a hosting platform may be kind of neat, but it is not all that valuable unless there are applications and data living on it.

For the average small business, the applications of choice include Microsoft Office and QuickBooks.  Yes, there is an online edition of the QuickBooks product (called QuickBooks Online, of course).  However, the market share Intuit earned for QuickBooks wasn’t accomplished with an online application, it was done with the desktop applications which still own market share today.  Hosting service providers recognize this truth, and are taking steps to bring those QuickBooks desktop solutions into the cloud.  Now we have the ability to get QuickBooks Desktop editions online – which is not the name of a service but a description of what it offers – available from a variety of authorized hosting providers (and from many unauthorized ones).

I’ve said before that there is a fine art to hosting QuickBooks desktop for lots of users.  There are a great many different considerations and possible use cases, and not all providers will be able to meet every requirement.  There are also lots of different technology models and methodologies which may be applied to the hosting model, and each has some benefit or barrier depending on the specific need of the client.  Hosting companies may throw around terms like “cloud server” or “published application” or “remote desktop”, but at the end of the day, the systems are still Windows computers running QuickBooks software.  How those systems are wrapped up, how you connect to them, and how you operate with them often becomes the real difference in the service experience.

The specific technology a hosting provider applies to the service does not necessarily describe exactly how the service works.  Just because a provider may use Citrix doesn’t mean they have more capability to provide quality service than a provider using other technologies, or a host using VMWare is not necessarily creating better cloud servers than a host using Hyper-V or Parallels or some other virtualization strategy.  The technology may impact how the infrastructure is operated and can impress upon the customer experience, but the real differences in delivery often come down to the provider’s understanding of the software product, the customer need, and their ability to meet the need directly.

Does the experience of connecting to and using the service work for the users, and are people able to get their jobs done quickly using the service without a lot of support or frustration?  (**Please note that hosting services aren’t a solution for bad software and poor working processes.  If the software or processes aren’t workable now, they’re likely not going to become magically more workable if hosted).  Does the hosting service address issues like making the right data available to only the users who need it, and giving access to applications only when a user is permitted to use them?  What about “external” users like contractors or client businesses… does the host offer a way for them to also participate in the solution?

It’s important to consider all of the aspects of how the service will be used, and by whom and under what circumstances, to ensure that the delivery offered is the solution needed. The point of all this is to encourage users to concern themselves a little less with exactly what technology the host is using to deliver QuickBooks applications, and to evaluate the actual solution.  It won’t typically matter to an end-user what specific technology is being used to provide them with service as long as the service works well for them.

While some people do adopt a fondness for a particular “flavor” of technology or approach, the reality is that a quality user experience coupled with a useful and reliable system means much more to the business.  And knowing that there are future options for growing, expanding or simply changing the service is essential.  It’s not so much the flavor of technology users should be concerned with when shopping for QuickBooks hosting services, it’s avoiding that icky aftertaste that comes with selecting a QuickBooks hosting approach that just doesn’t meet the business need.

Make sense?

J

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Good Habits for Healthy QuickBooks

Keeping_QuickBooks_HealthyUsing a QuickBooks desktop product is pretty simple – you install it and then you run it.  For many users, it’s just that easy and uncomplicated because they don’t need 3rd party integrated software, they don’t sync their files to other computers or services or try to share their QuickBooks data, and they remember to exit QuickBooks and back their files up each and every time they use them.  On the other hand, many QuickBooks users experience quite a lot of frustration with the product – frustration which may often be the result of a poor practice when using the software.  QuickBooks has been engineered over many years to be as simple to use as possible, but at the same time has grown to be a product with lots of features, add-ons and extensions.  Users have also found ways to make QuickBooks do things it wasn’t really designed to do, this truth being one of the good things and the bad things about the product.  When it works, it works great.  When it doesn’t work, it’s beyond frustrating.  It is a shame that a lot of the problems users have with solution may be rooted in the habits and behaviors of the QuickBooks users themselves.

Bad software use habits will cause problems whether the software is installed on the user PC or whether it’s being managed by a hosting service provider.  Certainly there are some issues that hosts may mitigate, but the following is a list of good habits for keeping the QuickBooks software and data healthy and working that should be standard operating procedure for any QuickBooks user, whether QuickBooks is being hosted or not.

Keep the company file in good condition.

I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping the file in good condition.  What’s the accounting and financial data worth, after all?  A little time spent taking care of the file can save on a lot of time and headaches trying to reinvent the information. A QuickBooks company file is really a database, and is a rather complicated framework for keeping track of all sorts of related information.  Anyone who has used QuickBooks desktop products for a while understands that the data file can get screwed up for a variety of reasons, and it is no fun.  Yet QuickBooks has utilities to verify and rebuild data files, so it makes sense to periodically use them to check for problems.  Like a check-up with the doctor, these utilities can help diagnose issues with the data file before they become really big issues.  Another good practice is to back up the company file to a “portable” once in a while, and to then restore it for use.  This process can not only validate the integrity of the file, it also helps condense and “condition” the file.  Particularly when using a hosting service, but also when just running local on the PC, conditioning the data file once in a while can help prevent data corruption and/or loss (of data, time, productivity, revenue).

Close the company file and exit QuickBooks once in a while, would ya?

Users who leave their computers on all the time are missing out on the fun of letting their machines reset and do a POST (power on self-test), which means the machine or operating system could have an issue and the user wouldn’t recognize it until the machine was powered off and then restarted.  For this same reason, programs and their data files should be closed when not being used – so they can run through their own startup and validation routines before you use them.  Also, leaving the program open means it is active on the computer, and leaving the data file open means that it’s available (read=vulnerable).  A random bypasser accessing the computer, a program crash, a machine crash… loss of power or a kitten running over the keyboard could all result in catastrophic damage to the application and/or data.  It’s just better for all involved if the files and programs are closed when not being used.  Maybe use a screensaver with a password, too.

Don’t try to use QuickBooks with a VPN (virtual private network) connection.

Just because a user can connect their remote PC to the office network doesn’t mean the PC will work like it’s in the office.  In the office, it’s a Local Area Network, and the speed is fine enough to allow multiple computers to share a QuickBooks company file in multi-user mode.  When there is a remote PC connected via a VPN, it’s usually a Wide Area Network connection, meaning that the network has been extended to include the remote computer, but that network connection IS NOT fast enough to allow the remote user to open QuickBooks along with others in the network.  QuickBooks multi-user access only works on a local network (where local means the machines are all “local” to each other – on the same LAN).  When QuickBooks is hosted by a service provider, the QuickBooks stations and the data files are all located inside the host’s network, making it all LAN stuff.  The only remote part of it is sending the input and output (display, printing, keyboard and mouse) information “over the wire”.  This is why a hosting model works when the app and data are hosted, but doesn’t work when only the data file is hosted.

Use Automatic Update, not Manual (but DO update).

Features change, new technologies must be supported, and user expectations adjust based on a wide variety of influences.  What this means is that software products will necessarily experience change over time and users will be expected to update them.  The first release of any new product is rarely flawless.  It’s during that first introduction to a volume of users where many issues are found, making the v1 release of a software product something many people try to avoid. Yet there are still lots of folks who just can’t wait to have the newest thing, even when it comes to something like software patches.  Regardless of how much they may put at risk, these folks want each and every patch and update as soon as it is available somewhere.  These are the users who end up debugging the software for the rest of us, so I guess we should thank them.

For most users, however, it makes sense to wait until the software has been out for a bit and those initial issues identified and corrected, perhaps bypassing v1 and going straight to v2.  If the product will allow, that is.  QuickBooks has this great (or annoying, depends on how you look at it) feature that can tell users when there is an update available.  This “automatic update” feature checks with Intuit to see if there are updates available for the product, and then tells the user they can download and install them.  Generally, Intuit pushes these updates out only when they’ve been debugged and are deemed ready for volumes of users.  If people want to get an update before Intuit pushes it out, they may be able to obtain it for manual installation.  This is not the recommended method of handling QuickBooks updates; for most users, waiting until the product tells them it’s time to update is best.

Make sense?

J