Tag: quickbooks hosting

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The Holistic Approach to Cloud-Enabling Your Firm

The Holistic Approach to Cloud-Enabling Your Firm

Today’s professional accounting or law practice has a number of issues to contend with, not the least of which is technology.  While IT has been serving the firm for years, shifting paradigms in computing are leading professionals to wonder exactly which direction they should turn for advice.  It’s easy, at a high level, to see the value and benefit of outsourced IT services and being able to focus on your core offerings, but it’s a little harder to find exactly which path your firm should follow.  One thing has proven true over the past few years: taking a holistic approach to cloud-enabling your firm is far better than any uncoordinated exchange of applications and services.

There are four areas the firm should explore when looking to more fully leverage technology to its benefit, which is what “cloud-enabling” the practice really means:

  1. Transitioning to a paperless (or less paper) office
  2. Exploring alternative billing methods (value versus time?)
  3. Outsourcing non-core and non-strategic tasks and processes
  4. Streamlining procedures to create consistency in service levels

The challenge is that firms have numerous options and approaches being thrown about, none of which represent obvious solutions to the entire problem.  In pieces, cloud services and online applications can deliver new capability and functionality, but a professional practice has the requirement for systems to work together to be effective.  Re-entry or redundant storage of data is inefficient, so it is difficult to streamline procedures when the systems run on different platforms or don’t integrate well.

One approach is the “hybrid” approach, where you take the best of the tried and true, and deploy it in new ways to create new capabilities.  Also introducing cloud-based and SaaS solutions where they can truly help the firm innovate makes sense, as long as those solutions can connect back to the core systems. The key is to not lose what efficiency and business intelligence the firm already has while attempting to transform and improve upon those models (digital transformation).

The new thinking by some firms is to adopt web-based practice management solutions that make it easier to collaborate with team  members and clients.  Many of these solutions get great reviews and indeed do make it easier for users to access information from anywhere and on mobile devices.  Lots of neat features for the forward-thinking practice are available, yet the problem is that these solutions usually don’t have general accounting functionality required by the business, nor do they address some of the fundamental capabilities that apps on the desktop can.

For the online applications serving line-of-business functionality, the easy answer to finance department questions is to connect to an online accounting solution, like QuickBooks Online.  While this may serve the needs of the developer, the needs of the business finance department often outpace the functionality available in the smb online accounting products.  To address this reality, many developers have created the means to export data to the QuickBooks software running on the local desktop.

The desktop editions of QuickBooks remain extremely popular with professional service firms and the businesses they serve. In a cloud and mobile world, the firm and their client doesn’t have to be tied to the local desktop in order to keep their desktop software or collaboratively work in the data.  When the QuickBooks desktop software is setup within a secure remote access environment (whether on-premises or with a hosting provider), users benefit from the same mobility and realtime collaboration advantages as with a SaaS solution, like anytime/anywhere access.

Virtual desktops and remote application models allow users to access what seems like a workstation in the cloud, with business applications such as QuickBooks and Microsoft Office and whatever else the firm uses. The desktop is a true Windows platform, so the features and functionality are just as they are when working directly on a local PC.

Most remote or virtual desktop setups also let the user access the Internet and use a browser on the remote desktop, allowing users to run the SaaS solutions they’ve subscribed to alongside their desktop applications yet still remain in a totally virtual and mobile working environment. This approach allows the firm to centralize management and administration of internal servers and networking resources, or eliminate much of the maintenance and management by outsourcing to a hosting provider. Outsourcing the hosting and management of systems further establishes predictability in cost and increases IT agility.

The thing to remember is that one size does not fit all, and every firm will need to work within their own requirements and motivations to come up with the proper approach.  What works for a solo practitioner or small firm won’t necessarily work for a larger firm… or maybe it will, depending on the company culture and structure. There are a lot of options with the cloud when it comes to outsourced information technology models, online practice management and other business solutions, and mobile services which reduce the impacts of time and distance.  It’s time to start implementing on-demand access and mobile-friendly service options before the competition leaves you behind.  Interestingly enough… the competition that looks like a huge and successful firm could be just one person using some really smart IT.

 

Make sense?

J

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Using QuickBooks to service a niche or specialty practice

Using QuickBooks to service a niche or specialty practice

Intuit QuickBooks is the most widely recognized and accepted accounting and finance solution for small businesses, making it clear why so many accounting and bookkeeping professionals rely on QuickBooks to serve their small business clients.  The features and functionality of the QuickBooks desktop editions have become cornerstones of small business bookkeeping.

While the QuickBooks financial products address a wide variety of general accounting needs, providing functionality required by most businesses, there are many ways to use QuickBooks and other Intuit partner extensions to orient your services to the needs of specific industries.  In short, it’s easy to use QuickBooks to service a niche or specialty practice.

One thing that’s really important to remember when considering the QuickBooks desktop editions for businesses is that they are not tied to the PC desktop and local network any longer.  Cloud computing for these essential desktop financial and business applications isn’t out of the question because they can be hosted, providing the same anytime/anywhere access benefits that SaaS solutions offer.  So, now that we know that QuickBooks desktop editions can also be considered a type of “cloud” solution (when delivered by a hosting provider), let’s talk about how to apply the product line to a variety of business needs.

The most obvious example of this is the Premier Industry offering of QuickBooks desktop editions.  With the Premier Industry editions, additional functionality and reporting for specific industries is addressed directly within the application.  Industry editions exist for non-profit, manufacturing, and contractors, among others.  A lot of practitioners have met the additional needs of their business clients by using those industry-specific editions

With QuickBooks Premier Non Profit edition, for example, you can go beyond general accounting and provide information specific to not-for-profit organizations, such as:

  • classes to report by location or program
  • donation statements for donors and contributors and reports on their activity
  • form 990 – Statement of functional expenses – for the IRS
  • budgets and finances tracked and managed by program

One of the other things to remember when servicing a niche clientele is that sometimes less is more… meaning you want to give people the functionality and information they need, but not so much that it becomes confusing to them.

In retail, for example, it doesn’t make sense to have the store workers operate in the QuickBooks financial software because it doesn’t do what they need, and it has a lot more functionality and information than they require.  In most cases, the financial system has information you don’t want the store operators to access.  In this type of situation, it makes sense to look at what the user needs, and give them the solution which meets that need, while at the same time recognizing that the information from that system needs to integrate with the accounting solution at some point.

Using the QuickBooks point of sale solution is great for this.  It allows an accounting professional to work with a retail business owner, providing the back-office and accounting support required, but the front-office uses the solution that gives them the functionality they need to accomplish their daily tasks.  POS runs at the store or retail locations, and the data integrates back to the QuickBooks financial system for the accounting department to work with.  I’ve worked with a lot of practitioners who specialize in some form of retail, and the thing they all have in common is that they handle the back-office work for their clients while the client operates the POS and sales functionality directly.

With the huge number of tools in the market which help automate and integrate data into QuickBooks financial, it often doesn’t matter what POS solution is being used, as the data can likely be exported from the POS and imported into QBFS.  Using the QuickBooks POS solution certainly makes this process more straightforward, as the integration functionality is designed into the product.

Another way to use QuickBooks to service a niche customer base or market is to find the extensions which offer functionality the client needs, but which also limit access to the core financial application.  For example, you may work with a business user who needs to manage customer information and produce invoices for work performed, but this user may not need access to the full QuickBooks product.  In this case, it might make sense to use the QuickBooks Connect service to provide the information access and invoicing capability the client needs.  QuickBooks Connect extends the information in the QuickBooks desktop financial product to the web, and provides users with the ability to manage customer information, manage invoices and payments, and other functions.  The information syncs with the QuickBooks information using the Intuit Sync Manager service, so the data is always up to date.

There are lots of different solutions in the market which extend QuickBooks functionality or access to data, and which address unique needs of various types of businesses.  It used to be a fairly complicated process, extending business applications to incorporate new functionality or to address changing business needs.  While the landscape of software development has not settled on a single method, toolset or approach (and is likely never going to), Intuit attempts to address the problem by offering standardized API sets (application programming interface) and SDK (software development kits) to allow developers to create “standards-based” integrations and extensions for the product.  Using Intuit or partner-developed extensions and applications, just about any type of business can be served – including addressing unique industry requirements or specific industry functionality – and still use QuickBooks desktop solution as the foundation for accounting and financial reporting.

Make Sense?

J

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Helping Businesses Last With Better IT

  • Are you experiencing challenges in understanding or implementing the right business information technology strategy?
  • Are you having trouble bridging the gaps between business requirements, business processes and available technology?
  • Are organizational or productivity issues preventing your business from being as profitable as it can be?
  • Do you know that you should be running more efficiently, but for some reason are not?

Perhaps the right outside perspective can lead to simple changes that can take your business to its best level.

Cooper Mann Consulting’s team can help you address those challenges and create winning strategies that can positively impact your business. In depth knowledge of business processes, years of experience in multiple industries combined with thorough understanding of accounting and finance markets, software development, and hosting technologies enable us to provide timely and strategic advice to our clients.

We focus on providing professional solutions that can help businesses to grow, reduce operating costs, optimize business process and maximize output. We help to create innovative solutions that increase productivity and efficiency through higher levels of collaboration and integration. We provide professional, cost effective and timely advice for our clients, helping them concentrate on their core area of business and enabling the discovery of strategic differentiation.

We help businesses build stronger foundations and create process sustainability to support growth.