businessinbunnyslippers – Cooper Mann Consulting

August 6, 2014

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?

June 3, 2014September 25, 2018

Good Habits for Healthy QuickBooks

Using 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 3^rd 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?

May 27, 2014March 5, 2018

QuickBooks online, or QuickBooks Online? Use Software on the web without using Web-based software

There is a trend among software makers these days to more fully leverage the “power of the web”, and why wouldn’t they? The Internet has become the way businesses and users get and stay connected, and has become a foundation for how business gets done. Remote and mobile access to information and applications has become an expectation of users, as social computing models have encouraged them to remain connected on all of their devices and from any location. Online describes a working model that many businesses strive for, and software makers are seeking to capitalize on the trend.

The belief that software should no longer be installed and run from a local device has been adopted by some of the largest software vendors in the market, which would lead many users to expect that this is the important trend to follow. Being encouraged to ditch their desktop software products and transition to using the web-based or SaaS alternative, users who have grown to trust their software products are now facing new buying decisions. Any time a customer is forced to make a buying decision – like moving from a desktop product to a SaaS solution – there is a potential that the customer will go with a different vendor and leave the product line altogether. Yet this is exactly what is happening with small business applications, and specifically with the tried-and true QuickBooks products – the solutions which had become the cornerstone of small business finance.

Where QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise desktop editions were the favored and trusted small business accounting solutions, Intuit is now on a wholesale push to get users transitioned to the QuickBooks Online edition. In doing so, they’ve opened up the door for new competitors, because they’re forcing their QuickBooks users to make a new buying decision. Assuming that customers will adopt the QuickBooks Online solution simply because it’s “QuickBooks” was perhaps a poor assumption on the part of Intuit. Particularly by naming the product “QuickBooks”, Intuit invested the trust and long-standing recognition of the brand and product line into the online edition, and the user base and market has not been amused. “It may be called QuickBooks, but it’s not the QuickBooks I want” says one customer. Apparently, the QuickBooks Online edition is not what many experienced QuickBooks desktop users are looking for in a new version of the product.

Desktop QuickBooks users don’t have to move to the Online edition just to get the benefits of the cloud with their beloved QB. The hosting and cloud service providers I work with help businesses run the QuickBooks desktop products as online service. We deliver fully managed applications and data, allowing users to access their QuickBooks desktop products online and from a variety of devices just as if they were web-based. Gaining the benefits of anytime/anywhere access with the added advantage of not changing software is a direction many users are electing to go. While the price of a hosted solution may not be as low as a QuickBooks Online subscription, it is generally far less than a subscription to Salesforce.com, for example. Isn’t the business financial data at least as valuable as CRM? The price isn’t unreasonable, and the benefits of online/remote access, managed IT, protected data, and an ability to take your ball and go home if you like are huge. Grab your data file, install QuickBooks on your PC, and you’re back in action. Can’t do that with most SaaS solutions, can you? It’s only do-able with desktop software, which you can run in the cloud with a hosting provider or run on your own PC.

Assuming that all software will ultimately run online could be a big a mistake. As technology advances and new capabilities introduce new complexities, the “heavy lifting” shifts from the center to the end points and back again. While there may be a trend towards SaaS and leveraging the power of a remote system, the reality is that our devices – desktops and laptops, tablets and phablets and phones – are all getting more powerful. Many SaaS applications and remote access technologies rely upon (and find ways to push more resource utilization to) the local device. Video processes more quickly, input and output devices are more easily recognized, and the storage on the device is faster and easier to access. A lot of work happens on the local device, and it will continue to be this way as the devices continue to get smarter and more powerful. “There’s an app for that” for a reason: apps on the device work well and give users the functionality necessary to get things done efficiently.

SaaS is not all that’s out there – much of the software businesses know and love is still available the way they want it. QuickBooks users need to know they can get their QuickBooks online without having to use QuickBooks Online. The desktop is not dead, and it won’t be for a long time. Desktop software isn’t dead either; it’s just being pushed to the background as software companies attempt to wrap their arms firmly, with subscription based business models, around their respective customer bases.

Make sense?

January 30, 2014March 10, 2015

Client Experience and Perceived Value: It’s Looking Cloudy for Accountants Working with Small Business

Every day it seems there is another professional accounting or bookkeeping firm asking questions about how to get new clients for their new “online accounting” business. Most of these professionals are likely missing the point that their current clients are probably already looking at online accounting solutions and services. Just like in the days when QuickBooks was beginning to take the lead in the market; today’s increasingly popular online accounting solutions are gaining popularity with the direct users, and are bringing those solutions to the professional community (not the other way around). Professionals who wish to build their businesses on what the market demands would do well to recognize that the push to the cloud coming from their clients is a reflection of past activities, and firms riding the wave are much more likely to see success than those fighting it.

In reflection, remember that QuickBooks, unlike the other business accounting and financial products at the time, was a retail product marketed to and sold via retail and direct-to-customer outlets rather than via a channel or reseller approach. At that time, State of the Art Software (which became Peachtree and then Sage 50) was the solution preferred by most accounting professionals, yet more and more small business owners would come to the professionals with the QuickBooks product already in hand, so accountants threw up their hands and adopted (if not embraced) the software. Over the years, QuickBooks became the “go to” software for small business accounting, and many professional firms didn’t just gear up to work with it, but went as far as developing standards and practices based on the product.

With the introduction of high-speed broadband access, business Internet connectivity and affordable remote/mobile service, businesses are now finding that their options for shopping for, purchasing and implementing various solutions to business problems is possible at any time and from anywhere. Even more, social computing and the blurring of the lines between personal and business use has made it all but assured that new business owners will seek online solutions where they can access business information and perform business-related activities regardless of location or mode of access. This is what they have come to expect as consumers of information and services, and the expectation extends no less into their small businesses.

Professional firms must recognize that these evolving paradigms represent opportunity, taking advantage of cloud-based, real-time collaboration models to provide more timely value to their clients. Where the more traditional on-premises and paper-based models have flourished, the online working models representing lean process and sustainability become the focus.

The movement to the cloud for small business accounting started with the consumer, who ultimately became the small business, and who may eventually become the big business. The professionals who recognize the value of and wisely adopt cloud technologies and online application services in their businesses – specifically in terms of how they work with clients and deliver value – are the firms which recognize that the client experience and perception of value delivered are the most important elements of all.

Make Sense?