Tag: information technology

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Retaining Productivity while Empowering the Remote and Mobile Workforce

Retaining Productivity while Empowering the Remote and Mobile Workforce

anywhere-anydevicehttp://wp.me/p2hGOJ-J7

A lot of the marketing and discussion around why businesses should use the cloud for IT service is focusing on creating anytime, anywhere access to business data and improving overall IT performance.  By deploying applications to remote desktops and hosted systems, business owners are recognizing the benefits of outsourcing IT service management to professionals who can spend their time actually managing IT.  Focus is able to remain on the business operation and not the technology supporting it; the main office and remote locations are able to work with the same systems and information, and users are able to access information while at home or on the road. Bringing workers together with the same applications and data means new levels of productivity can be achieved regardless of where the work gets done.

Yet the perceived value of “working in the cloud” and the reality remain somewhat disconnected for many mobile business users. The confusion and frustration many users experience with connected, online working models has quite a lot to do with the realization that they don’t simply need remote access or virtual office solutions to bring them together.  Users want solutions that help them get their work done even when they aren’t working on a traditional computer.  When a computer is available, that’s great.  But users want to be able to work from their tablets and smartphones, too.  Have you ever tried to login to a remote desktop from your phone, or to see a full screen of data when the keyboard takes up more than half of the view?  It may technically function, but there’s no way to get anything useful done with that little teeny weeny screen, and that’s a problem.

It is this new multi-mode working environment which is testing the boundaries of usability for software developers and service providers alike.  No longer may the assumption be that users will perform their job functions using a desktop or laptop computer, just as it is no longer assumed that a mobile phone will be used just for phone calls.  Users want (and sometimes need) to be able to get their work done using their smartphones, iPads, Kindles, or other types of tablet, pad or surface computers.  Applications designed to run on full size screens and desktop computers often don’t work well for users accessing them with other types of devices, even when the device is connecting to a remote desktop service.

Mobile device users are starting to face these usability barriers somewhat less frequently when visiting various websites.  If you look at many reasonably modern business websites, you’ll find there is a “mobile” counterpart.  The mobile website is often somewhat less functional than the full website, providing only essential information for the mobile viewer rather than the expanded content and functionality available on the full site.  Yet the mobile site delivers a more pleasant and usable resource for the mobile device user, encouraging the user to visit the site more often.

Application software development can be approached in a similar manner, where essential functionality is presented for mobile users in a format usable by mobile devices, and where the full functionality and rich feature set might be available only in the full application interface.  Even where legacy applications are concerned – those firmly tied to the desktop and network – there are likely options for extending some manner of functionality and access to remote and mobile devices, perhaps by using 3rd party integrated or connected solutions.

Many commercial software developers are successfully viewing this “web and mobile enabled” approach as a means to capture Software-as-a-Service buyers by providing some web-based and mobile functionality with attachments back to the data and applications residing on the LAN or hosting platform.  This hybrid approach may actually present better and more options for businesses, as it embraces the concepts of mobility and device independence while at the same time retaining the features, functionality and productivity-enhancing working mode that only desktop applications have to-date fully proven… and the businesses can keep their own data to take with them and not be relegated to list-only extractions if they wish to change solutions.

This idea is not really new – the idea of providing users with the specific functionality they need (and not more) to accomplish their tasks and get their jobs done.  The concept of Service Oriented Architecture has always spoken to this philosophy, advocating that the right approach to software is the one which orients the application, functionality and view specifically and directly towards the user and their role.

The new twist on SOA is that the orientation of the application should be based not only on roles and functionality.  Modern business applications must also address device and modality, not assuming a particular form factor or platform of access, and having an understanding of the particular mode in which the solution exists or is experienced by the user.  Mobile users want a useful experience on their  mobile devices, and remote and  local desktop users want the features, functionality and performance of desktop applications.

Website designers have figured out that visitors may access the website using any variety of computing devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops.  Understanding that each device has a different capability in terms of displaying and interacting with content, site developers have begun to include mobile site designs as a standard offering with business website services.  Users accessing the site with smartphones and tablets are able to effectively navigate and view information on the site because it’s been formatted to fit the screen, and navigation and other action options are accessible from smart menus that are sized and placed for touch screen access.  This approach is now finding its way in many business applications now that the applications are also “living” on the web.

The growing number of web and SaaS products on the market clearly demonstrate that mobility is a big consideration in modern application design.  Unfortunately, productivity losses due to sluggish interfaces or complicated operating processes often offset the benefits of the solution, even though it may be both desktop and mobile “friendly”. Software companies rolling out new SaaS models to their existing desktop product user bases are finding that the desirability of the subscription model web-based solution may be somewhat less than expected.  This may be attributed to the fact that users have become not simply accustomed to how they can make the desktop software work for them – they’ve become reliant upon that ability.  Initial experiences with transitioning from desktop applications to SaaS has left many businesses with frustrations founded in overall productivity loss.  I’ve even heard the term “productivity-sucking”, which I don’t think describes either a feature or a benefit.

There must be a balance found, where productivity is enhanced for both desktop and mobile users and where critical functionality is not sacrificed in order to facilitate a mobile capability.  The goal is to empower the remote and mobile user to be as productive as the non-mobile user, and to do it without forcing changes which may impede rather than improve productivity of the overall organization.

Make Sense?

J

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

Bringing Order to Inefficient Business Processes: Give people easy to use tools that make sense, and they’ll use them.

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Revenue Recognition and closing the reporting GAAP

Revenue Recognition and closing the reporting GAAP

chartOne company earns what the other company spends.  This is business, and it seems like it would be pretty straightforward, accounting for the money coming in and the money going out.  But it is really not that simple when it comes to business finances and accounting for revenue.  With investor pressure to improve share prices and market pressures forcing greater competition, businesses have always sought out ways to make the performance look as good as possible – on paper even if not in reality.  It is this requirement to make the business look better than it may actually be that drives “innovation” in financial reporting, and encourages some companies to use whatever rules are available to mislead investors or paint a rosy picture for stakeholders.  When the balance is lost and financial reporting standards become so oblique as to allow regular and gross misrepresentation, it is time to change the standards.

There are numerous instances of fraud and scandal reported from the finance departments of big businesses, but instances of improper or misleading revenue recognition can happen in even the smallest of companies, and not necessarily on purpose.  It is important to understand that properly and accurately reporting business revenue and earnings isn’t done just for investor satisfaction, it is an essential part of describing business performance that any owner or manager must be able to rely on.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) provide investors and business owners with some consistency in the financial statements they use to analyze company performance, but only minimally.  This is partly due to the fact that GAAP is based not only on some standards established by policy boards (the authoritative standards) but also on “generally accepted” standards, which are often not really standards at all but simply past practice that was found to be accepted.  Especially in the global economy where fewer businesses operate solely within traditional territorial boundaries – and where accepted reporting methods vary widely – having a single financial reporting standard has become more important than ever.

Make it so, Number One.

Now there are new rules from FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) and IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) which provide clear and detailed guidance for how businesses recognize revenues.  These rules are based on a consistently applied set of principles, no matter what sort of business is involved and regardless of where the business is located.

A focus of the new rules of revenue recognition centers on customer contracts, delving into the details of how earnings from those agreements should be recorded. Consider that many businesses combine multiple products and services into a single agreement, even though there may be several deliverables or milestones included.  This method of booking customer contracts allowed companies to report revenues they were not yet due as part of a total agreement, often resulting with inflated earnings reports.   Stakeholders would perceive that the company had reached one earning threshold, but the reality was something quite different and performance expectations were unmet.

“FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued converged guidance on recognizing revenue in contracts with customers. The new guidance is a major achievement in the Boards’ joint efforts to improve this important area of financial reporting.”  http://www.fasb.org/jsp/FASB/Page/BridgePage&cid=1351027207987

The new rules force an additional level of discussion, including a full set of disclosure requirements that will provide more information about contracts with customers.  Businesses must identify each promised deliverable and attached revenue or earning component, which helps to better understand how the revenue may be earned (and recognized) as the business performs on the various obligations to the customer.

Just take a look at some big ERP companies and the lawsuits generated from problems and failures in delivery – problems that might have been more clearly identified to investors and stakeholders if the tie between product sales and services to be performed were more clearly described.  In many cases, these situations exemplify the revenue recognition reporting problem, where large customer contracts and license sales were fully booked and recognized even though implementation services milestones attached to those license sales remained undelivered.

“2010 – JDA Software (i2) – Dillard’s, Inc.:  Dillard’s had alleged i2 failed to meet obligations regarding two software-license agreements for which the department-store operator had paid $8 million.” http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/erp-train-wrecks-failures-and-lawsuits/12055

For private companies, reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2017 must follow the new guidance.  It may seem like a long period of time – from the decision to apply the new rules to the effective date – but the number of businesses the new rules will impact is large.  The FASB made a decision to delay the effective date because of the broad scope of organizations affected and “the potentially significant effect that a change in revenue recognition has on other financial statement line items.”

Business owners and their accounting professionals need to make sure that financial systems and processes are up to the task and can track and produce the detailed reporting these new rules require. For investors and analysts, the new reporting rules and detailed information they generate will go a long way towards minimizing the impact of innovative revenue reporting practices, and will hopefully bring a new level of believability and usefulness to business financial reports.

Make Sense?

J

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Small Business IT Governance: You really need it now

it-balancing-actBig changes are going on in the world of information technology and business.  Where social computing and  mobility are no longer purely consumer concerns, enterprise IT departments face a growing requirement to embrace user devices and access in environments which were once strictly and closely controlled.  Enterprise IT may be challenged when presented with user personal devices and demands for remote access to enterprise data, yet the governance of systems is generally well-defined and strictly performed.  In small business, however, the people, policy and process issues (collectively incorporated into “governance”) tend to be more organic, and the use of personal devices and open access is more frequently considered to be a normal part of the overall business IT profile.

It is a focus on defining controls and processes, and influencing the activities and attitudes of the people involved, which has become an essential requirement in small business.  Where management of information technology resources was not of great concern to the small business owner before, increased device and information mobility (removal of physical boundaries) and erosion of logical boundaries around personal and business computing have become a really big deal for everyone in business. Small businesses just don’t often have departments of people working on the problem.

Technology use in business has always come at a price, and as various influences continue to change how users interact with devices, applications and systems, business owners and IT managers will continue to face difficult choices between balancing security of information resources and providing a productivity-enhancing user experience.   Too many security barriers result in avoidance of security protocols, slow or immobile company computers result in users working on their own machines and portables, and restricting access for mobile users results in “shadow IT” implementations of mobile sync and other data access approaches.

Yet “shadow IT” tends to be the norm with many small businesses, where there are often fewer barriers to implementing solutions which address individual user issues or problems.  Lacking the resources or understanding to develop a strong plan for managing information systems and technology within the business, small business owners often consider the computer systems and computerized data to be tools to get jobs done rather than strategically valuable assets to be strictly controlled and protected.  These business owners are not recognizing the ever-increasing need to not simply secure business information, but to establish processes and rules which will govern how users and devices access and interact with the information and systems.

Enterprise IT departments have often viewed their small business counterparts (customers, suppliers, etc.) as potential points of vulnerability, an attitude which was once considered to be centered not on real assessments of the risk but more in terms of ego, level of sophistication, and hierarchy in the food chain.  In today’s world of real risk introduced by myriad technological and human elements in every link in the supply chain, enterprise IT conclusions regarding the risk potential of doing business with anyone – including small businesses – may not be entirely unfounded.  Whether it be commentary and information distributed by individuals via social media or malware or corruption introduced inadvertently (or not) via computerized interaction, there is the possibility of risk introduced with every system, person and process involved.  Enterprise to enterprise, these issues may be more often recognized and remediated; where the SMB is involved, not always so much.

This is a brave new world of computing, and there is truth in that even the smallest of businesses can “compete with the big guys” when the right mixture of technology and process is applied – for good or bad.  Technology enables businesses to be more productive, get more done with fewer resources and perform at higher levels. IT Governance in small business is no longer an optional area of focus, addressed only during infrequent discussions with the local contract IT guy when he comes in to defrag the hard drive on a slow computer.  Establishing the proper processes and controls to wrap around IT use in the business has become an imperative; a necessarily specific and considerate approach to how information technology is used within the business, who uses it, and what IT is composed of.

Just about every business, and most individuals, are connected in some manner via some type of network, representing a dramatic and dynamic change to the traditional composition of business IT and the landscape of vulnerabilities which threaten it.  The increased connectedness, capability and complexity of systems and networks requires a greater focus on overall IT governance – exercising authority and controls – as the impact (just like the information) can easily and unintentionally reach far beyond the boundaries of the individual business.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J

“People are nothing more than another operating system”, says Lance Spitzner, training director for the Securing The Human Program at SANS Institute.  “Computers store, process and transfer information, and people store, process and transfer information,”  How Hackers Fool Your Employees

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Accessing Small Business Leadership and Development Resources: More for the growing concern

Accessing Small Business Leadership and Development Resources: More for the growing concern

There are a lot of resources available for people who want to start a small business.  From business plans to funding websites to guides on entrepreneurship, the available pool of information on starting up and growing a business is huge.  So huge, in fact, that many small business owners fail to find the things they really need to help them grow the business, expand operations and hire more employees.  While entrepreneurship and starting a business is the first step, the economy grows and flourishes when small businesses grow and flourish.  This is why the site SmallBusinessLeadership.com was started in cooperation with the America’s SBDC.

Among the available resources for small business owners is the Association of Small Business Development Centers, or America’s SBDC.  These association offices are found throughout the country, and represent a wealth of support for small business which is, as we all know, the fuel powering the American economy.  A report authored by James Chrisman, PhD investigated the economic impact of the Small Business Development Center counseling activities in the US in 2010-2011, and found that the centers are indeed instrumental in supporting small business success.

Among the findings is an analysis of the contribution SBDC long-term clients made to the economy, finding that these businesses “added $6.8 billion in incremental sales and 75,166 new jobs to the nation”.  The investment in helping startups and entrepreneurs also demonstrates clear success, with “59.2% of all pre-venture clients” starting a business within one year of receiving counseling from the SBDC.

But the success with SBDC isn’t all about starting up and expanding business– it’s about retaining people (jobs) and sustaining revenue, too.  With economic challenges facing every business owner, the ability to simply maintain the operation at existing levels often becomes the biggest job of all.  In this area the SBDC also performs well for business clients, and estimates that “83,268 jobs were saved and $7.3 billion in sales revenues were maintained as a result of the [SBDC] counseling”.

And talk about fueling the small business economy!  Businesses need financing and capital to operate and grow, and as a direct result of the assistance they received from the SBDC “approximately $3.3 billion in capital” was raised by SBDC business clients, according to report estimates.  Not too shabby when you consider the difficulties many businesses are having with obtaining financing through commercial banks and other funding sources.

There is no argument with the value the SBDC brings to the small business community.  What may be a challenge, however, is finding those resources and getting involved with the information and people who can really make a difference for a business owner in a particular region or area.  While there may be SBDC counselors in the area, there is no guarantee that there’s an easily searchable website or method of gaining a little DIY education without making an appointment.  SmallBusinessLeadership.com addresses this challenge by providing location-specific access to SBDC and other resources for business owners who wish to find experts and insight relating to their particular locale or situation.  Additionally, visitors to the site can explore the varieties of content made available from SBDC offices and small business experts, ranging from success stories and case studies to tips for marketing the business, approaches to improving business process support, or even finding technologies or services to solve specific business problems.

Starting or growing a business isn’t something you do alone.  It takes a committed team from the development of the first idea through to the hiring of employees and expansion to new locations.  Working with America’s SBDC and leveraging the knowledge and resources available via SmallBusinessLeadership.com, business owners across the country will find new ways to build stronger foundations for the business, and to develop leaner and more sustainable operations than ever before.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J

smallbusinessleadership

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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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Accounting for Point of Sale

Accounting for Point of Sale

There are a lot of solutions available to help retail businesses get business done.  From touch screen technology to mobile credit card and payment processing, retailers have many choices when it comes to selecting the right technology for the establishment.  But even the best point of sale system can lack the critical element that makes it truly valuable for the business.  This critical element is integration to a trusted accounting and finance solution.  While the POS system may include a level of basic accounting functionality, the reality is that a dedicated financial application will perform better in the long run.

Just as specialized line of business applications are used to handle operational functions, the financial application should be considered to be the “line of business” solution for the accounting and finance department (even if it is a department of one). This system not only services essential processes like receivables management, bill payments and bank account reconciliation, it serves as the basis for payroll, financial, tax, performance and other reporting. Further, the financial systems are often the first and primary source of analytical data, illuminating KPIs and cash flows and ultimately the business value.

The point of sale application generally handles the selling of and payment processing for goods and services sold by the business.  Whether it is composed of registers and terminals connected to a host system, PCs running POS software, or mobile phones and tablets running mobile payment processing apps like Square or GoPayment, point of sale addresses the retailers need to capture and record sales and payment information, sometimes customer information, and often inventory information.

The data from the POS solution must make it to accounting in some manner, yet point of sale applications are too-often approached as a standalone business requirement, somehow disconnected from other aspects of the business including the back-office.  Sales and items may be recorded in the POS system, yet only summary sales data ends up being re-keyed into the accounting system.  Centralized inventory management is all but nonexistent in these cases, and gross sales total are often recorded rather than individual transactions and receipts being transmitted to the accounting system.  The process of re-keying information from the POS to accounting systems is not only an efficiency-killer, it is also introduces a great potential for errors.  When the business elects to conserve on data entry and post only summary information to the accounting system, valuable detailed sales and transaction data may be lost.

The right approach to bringing point of sale together with accounting is to automate the process of integrating POS data with accounting on a regular basis – with AUTOMATION being the key.  Rather than establishing a process that requires manual entry of information from either system, a data integration solution is the best approach, with an import/export solution running second. The point is the elimination of manual re-entry of information.

There are numerous tools available that can take formatted POS data and import it into products like QuickBooks, for example, where it can be properly accounted for.  While QuickBooks Point of Sale integrates with QuickBooks desktop products, other POS solutions can also connect with QuickBooks if the right integration tool is selected, and there are quite a few available.  Check with the POS vendor and ask about a direct integration with QuickBooks desktop or whatever financial system you use. If there isn’t a packaged integration solution available, then check out products like Transaction Pro Importer, which can automate a variety of data import processes and ease the burdens moving external data into QuickBooks.pointofsale

The other factor in getting point of sale data to accounting is actually getting it there… transporting the data from the POS location to where the accounting system lives.  In many situations it is not desirable to keep the accounting system on the same computers as the point of sale systems, and in some cases it isn’t even possible.  But there is generally a way to get the information in a form that makes it possible to transmit it in some manner.  Among the most popular approaches to solving the “getting the POS data from here to there” problem is to use a data sync solution like Dropbox.

If the point of sale data can be exported or output to a file on a PC hard drive, then it may be able to be stored in a Dropbox folder on that PC.  At the home office where the accounting system resides, the operator would access the sync’d files from the local PC Dropbox folder and import the data to QuickBooks.   For QuickBooks Point of Sale there is an option to create a “mailbag” of sorts from the POS data of a remote store, which QuickBooks POS at the home office would pick up from the Dropbox folder and push to the QuickBooks financial application.

For businesses using POS systems like Micros or POSitouch and others, there is likely a service or application that will produce the POS data for import to QuickBooks or other financial system, pulling POS data files placed in the Dropbox folders by the POS app or performing the function as a web service or SaaS integration.

While I am a big fan of application hosting services and running QuickBooks desktop editions in the cloud, I’m also a realist and recognize that many POS solutions either can’t or shouldn’t be hosted.  There are situations where a hosted point-of-sale makes a lot of sense, and then there are cases where no bandwidth or proprietary hardware-based solutions make hosting not even an option. That doesn’t mean that the financial systems shouldn’t be hosted, though, and there are numerous ways to get the sync’d POS exports to the hosted QuickBooks environment, for example.

The key for retailers is to make sure there is a solid process for getting detailed and accurate POS information into the accounting system on a regular basis.  Manual entry is never the best answer.  With all of the technology and tools available, manually re-entering sales information is a waste of time and is likely to produce errors.  The better answer is to use an approach that automates the regular collection of point-of-sale data from all sources, delivering the data in a regular and consistent manner to accounting, and providing the basis for end-to-end automation supporting the integration of the point of sale system data with the rest of the business accounting.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J