Tag: quickbooks online

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QuickBooks Online is Pretty Cool

Doesn’t Simplify Overall IT Requirement for SMBs

dt-v-online-great-debateIntuit is doing some pretty cool things with the QuickBooks Online product.  I really like the fact that there are mobile apps available, the product can auto-send reports, form templates can be imported from Word, and there’s a desktop application available to replace pure browser-based access.  There are those who might believe that I’m a QBO hater, but I’m not.  I am evangelist for cloud computing, mobility and cloud service… I just don’t necessarily believe that only one flavor of “cloud” applies to everyone. QuickBooks Online is some good stuff – but is it really making things simpler?

What QuickBooks Online does better than QuickBooks desktop, really, is provide a cloud-based accounting solution for small businesses for an affordable price.  QuickBooks Online was built as a SaaS solution, so web-based access and a subscription service model are part of the package.  On the other hand, QuickBooks desktop editions were designed to not simply function for the user, but to deliver the user experience expected from software running on the given OS/platform (e.g., Windows or Mac).  When QuickBooks is running on Windows, it behaves like a Windows application and uses standard Windows conventions.  Same deal with QuickBooks on Mac.  It’s … Apple-y.  Whether on Windows or Mac, QB desktop editions are considered to be the workhorses that really help get things done.

What some folks don’t know is that QuickBooks desktop editions can be hosted in the cloud so that they also have the benefit of anytime, anywhere accessibility and managed service.  Businesses can have their QuickBooks desktop applications hosted and managed by a cloud service providers, and can access the applications and the data via the Internet just as QuickBooks Online users are able.  The oft’ forgotten additional aspect of cloud hosting is that the other business applications may also be hosted by the service provider, turning the entire business IT environment into a managed, anytime/anywhere resource.

When I look at outsourced IT and how businesses might benefit from subscription and SaaS solutions, I tend to view things more holistically rather than pursuing one application or functional area at a time.  The reason is that the business is an ecosystem of users, processes and capabilities.  Altering one part of the ecosystem will, without doubt, impact the others.  Note that, in many businesses, the accounting and finance systems are integrated with line of business applications and operational processes.  At minimum, there are likely to be connections or dependencies upon certain standard productivity tools for reporting and such, potentially generating lots of data.

Consider the QuickBooks Online capability of allowing form templates to be imported in .docx format.  Those templates had to be developed somewhere, and it was probably in MS Word on guess where? You got it… the desktop.  How is that local non-QBO data being managed, and how accessible is that part of the system?  Having accounting in the cloud is cool, but may also create separation in data silos and breaks in processes when it is removed so completely from the rest of the business information systems environment.  This introduces a layer of complexity for the business, where making sure all the information assets of the company are protected and recoverable isn’t as easy as doing a complete backup and archiving offsite, especially when the data is in a variety of formats and it doesn’t all exist on your PCs or servers.

Addressing the compartmentalization of business data becomes a potentially bigger issue when connecting two or more SaaS solutions via API.  Granted, this type of “extension” to the financial system helps businesses apply the right tool for the job, and ensures that workers are interacting with the information they need and not the entire financial system.  Yet small business owners generally lack the technical sophistication required to understand where and how to fully preserve and protect even a single business data silo much less multiple silos.   The ease of connecting systems to each other in the cloud often overshadows the complexity of creating a single data management strategy for the business.  And another item to remember is to disconnect those SaaS services which are no longer in use, as they represent an ongoing potential threat to the security of your data as long as they are accessing it without the data owner’s watchful monitoring.

The moral of this story is that I believe businesses that approach their information technology needs with a holistic view will have greater success than those who focus only on particular processes or functional requirements. I think QuickBooks Online is pretty cool (especially now that there’s a desktop app!), and I (and a few million others) think QuickBooks desktop editions are pretty good, too…. They’re just different pieces of software that do things differently – each carrying different risks and rewards.   The point is that neither solution stands alone in the business operation, so each should be viewed in the context of the overall business information management strategy in order to see whether they’re properly selected, placed, and managed. Trying to make things simpler doesn’t always actually make things simpler.  Welcome to the cloud.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J

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Confused about QuickBooks and the Cloud? Join the club

cloud-computingIn most regions around the country high-speed broadband is readily available, and using the Internet for working and playing online is a part of everyday life.  Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are household names and just about every conversation starts or ends with a reference to a meme.  It seems that everyone is connected and app-savvy, using high technology while doing business, doing homework, or doing just about anything.  Yet this move to online and cloud technologies has come with a high price tag for some businesses, especially small businesses trying to keep up with the pace of change and who are being encouraged to adopt just about every new thing that comes their way.  It’ll make them more efficient, more profitable, more attractive to customers, more interesting to prospects, and will allow them to do more in less time.  All of the “apps” for this and that have created a great deal of confusion for the average small business owner who may need a few tools to help get business done, and who is now facing the daunting task of figuring out which ones to use as the type and number of tools grows exponentially every day.  It used to be so simple, but now even the simple things are becoming difficult to understand – like QuickBooks, for example.

QuickBooks desktop editions, born from Quicken personal finance management software, continues to be the most popular small business bookkeeping solution available.  Yet QuickBooks is now offered as either desktop application (software you install on your PC), as a hosted solution (software installed and run on service provider systems and which you access via the Internet), or as an online application (QuickBooks online edition).  Initially, the lines were fairly clearly drawn – the desktop software gets installed on the local machine and the online edition runs from Intuit’s servers.  Then things got a bit more complicated as hosted services rolled out, and users were able to have their desktop QuickBooks managed with a service provider and accessible via an Internet connection.  Now, just to add to the confusion, Intuit delivers a new desktop app to access the online version of QuickBooks.   What?!  Yeah, you heard me.  There’s a desktop app to install to the PC (97MB!) that accesses the QuickBooks online system.

When Intuit, like to many other software companies, began pushing the online-only version of their solution, the messaging was all about making life easier with “no software” to install or manage.  Customers could simply sign up and have all the features and capability they need using only the browser on an Internet-connected machine.  Failing to consider that computing devices (PCs, tablets, phones, et al) continue to get smarter and more powerful each day, the software companies firmly believed that everything would eventually be on the Web, and the “access device” wouldn’t matter any more.  However, things haven’t turned out quite as planned, and users continue to not only demand desktop and device-based apps, they will often forgo the browser-only approach until a better app and interface comes along.  The truth is that the market wants apps and software running on their devices because the user experience and performance is almost always better than with a purely browser-based approach.  Browsers are great for visiting websites, but not so much when it comes to running business applications.  Sure, there are a lot of browser-based solutions out there, but not too many of them are as trusted or as heavily used as their desktop-based counterparts or competitors.

There is little argument to be made regarding the fact that many software developers are working towards entirely online application models, where little or no software would exist on the device and all data is managed and stored online.  What is arguable is whether or not the “fully online” model will ultimately win, or whether software will continue to be installed and maintained on the device.  Performance, functionality, integration with other applications, and usability will all influence the buyer’s decision regardless of the marketing hype.  It may simply be that users will have to try each model before they decide which one works best for them.  It seems that, with the introduction of the desktop app for QuickBooks Online, the QuickBooks-users club has voiced an opinion which sounds a lot like they liked the desktop software approach best.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J

 

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Two Ways to Get QuickBooks in the Cloud

Get QuickBooks in the Cloud: Hosted QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online

cloud-computingRunning applications online, or “in the cloud” using today’s parlance, is top priority for a lot of businesses.  It’s not that these organizations have a burning desire to post their financials to the web, which is what a lot of folks thought was going to happen when we first suggested they use their financial applications online.  Rather, business owners and managers have begun to recognize and experience the benefits of connecting their various locations, remote and mobile workers with real time access to business applications and data.  Further, centralization of IT coupled with outsourced IT management and subscription service pricing has introduced financial and operational benefits which make businesses more cost-efficient as well as more agile.  From being the basis for foundational process and workflow improvements to allowing the repositioning of IT costs from capex to opex, online application services are proving their value in various ways every day.

The evident popularity of cloud solutions is clearly visible in one small corner of the global software marketplace: the small business accounting solution market. Intuit’s QuickBooks product, almost a default go-to with entrepreneurs and small business owners, is still the most prevalent accounting solution in use by US small businesses.  While there may be growing usage of other applications on the web, such as Xero or FreshBooks (both are awesome SaaS apps that do what they do quite well), there is equally strong growth in Intuit’s own SaaS version of QuickBooks.  The SaaS applications are easier to localize for different places in the world – different languages and currencies – so international use of these products is likely to continue to grow.  Even more to the point, these solutions address functionality and pricing levels which are acceptable to entirely different classes of users that previously wouldn’t even consider buying accounting software to do the books (like freelancers and solo/soho operators), so the overall size of the market of “businesses who use accounting or bookkeeping software” is actually growing.

Intuit’s QuickBooks Online edition is a true SaaS solution that is quite different from the desktop-based QuickBooks.  While QBO has gained tremendous popularity, it has yet to reach the user numbers the desktop products have.  The desktop solutions boast not just a particular range of functionality, but integrated applications and add-ons, and – perhaps most importantly – being a foundation for a wide variety of financial and business record keeping, bookkeeping, accounting, operationally oriented and reporting processes.  To sum it up: it’s embedded.  People know the software, the data is in a known format, and the product is simply part of how the business operates.

Once a solution is as entrenched as QuickBooks is – kind of like the entrenchment Microsoft Word and Excel have in the productivity area – it doesn’t go away very quickly and only when the value proposition is much greater… and maybe not even then.  Rather, folks find ways to make the solution they want work for them.  This is where hosting comes in and meets with the market’s demand for running applications (yes! even desktop applications!) online, as managed subscription service.

Running your QuickBooks desktop online via a hosting provider is how businesses take advantage of the best benefits of SaaS without actually converting to a SaaS application. They retain investments in training, process and integration yet introduce mobility, remote access and office connectivity, centralized information and predictable costs. QuickBooks-using businesses need to know about hosting their QuickBooks and the providers who can offer anything from standardized to extremely customized service.

As technology continues to evolve at ever-increasing rates, businesses will continue to be faced with new paradigms for doing business.  Some will adopt early and some will adopt later, and some simply won’t adopt.  Certainly the market as a whole doesn’t adopt as quickly as software companies would like, but then that’s always the way it is.  Customers will do what works for customers, and right now hosting is working for QuickBooks customers.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense

J

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QuickBooks Online vs QuickBooks Desktop: The Great Debate

QuickBooks users around the country are facing a dilemma like never before – they’re being forced to consider exchanging their beloved QuickBooks desktop editions with a subscription-based online application that seems like an entirely different product.  It not only seems like a different product, it is.  And this is where the debate begins.

For years businesses both large and small found Intuit’s QuickBooks software to be their solution for business bookkeeping and accounting.  Over the years the product line grew to support larger businesses, with the Enterprise edition scaling to 30 users and boasting a load of operational process support features.  Accounting professionals, too, grew to favor the QuickBooks products because there were features just for these “mechanics” who learned to make the software do what was necessary to support the business, even if the software wasn’t intentionally designed to be used in that manner.  After all, it is this “unintentional” activity which often results in really cool new features being introduced in the product – features that the designers didn’t think up but that users did and the news eventually got back to the developers.

dt-v-online-great-debateWhen Intuit introduced QuickBooks Online, however, the tried-and-true solution known as “QuickBooks” became something very different at first glance, creating the need to educate the market about the continuing existence of desktop QuickBooks products as well as the newer online QuickBooks product.  Differentiation of the two is not really the “desktop” versus “online” moniker – Commercial Hosts for QuickBooks, who essentially turn the desktop products into online application service, pretty much eliminate the whole “any time, anywhere” debate, as hosted QuickBooks desktop editions are just as anytime/anywhere as the online edition is.  The benefit of Internet access and running on any device is now removed from the equation, so what’s left to compare other than functionality, benefits and features… and a proven track record?

We could, in the past, have a conversation about the features, benefits and functionality in QuickBooks and know that the flow-through of product use knowledge, stored data and integration with other business solutions would be fairly seamless and consistent.  QuickBooks Online has demonstrated none of this, fracturing the seamlessness and consistency users could previously expect as they move through the product line – as businesses will do as they grow larger and have more demands from their software solutions.

So now there’s a debate – which solution is best?  The answer really isn’t necessarily about which is best, but which addresses the business need now and, if the business intends to be around for a while, in the future.  Sometimes the argument is more about getting you where you need to be rather than simply supporting where you are now.  I know I’m not yet ready to place any hard bets on whether or not the QBO  model will truly deliver the goods for growing businesses long-term.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake 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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Where do we go from here? The SMB SaaS Migration

Where do we go from here?  The SMB SaaS Migration

Forests are a great renewable resource.  You may cut them down, but you can replant and grow new ones to cut down again later.  I suppose it’s sort of like that for software vendors who provide small business solutions.  While many small businesses fail and close every year, lots and lots of them start up and continue operating each year.  Since there’s a steady stream of new prospective customers coming up each year, maybe it is OK when some of them outgrow the product and leave (leaf?).

On the other hand, maybe it makes sense to understand where those customers who do grow up and flourish will go… to which products or solutions they will migrate, and how the company might actually retain a relationship with them through that process and beyond.  Some businesses will mature successfully, and will outgrow their small business solutions and leave their vendors, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way for all.  For some key software vendors, a fair question to ask themselves is where their customers will go from here… where “here” is the solution the customer is using now.

When this question is applied to the small business accounting market, it ends up centering on the QuickBooks product line.  Intuit is currently encouraging all QuickBooks customers to look at the QuickBooks Online solution, the fully SaaS-based offering which is different from the desktop editions.  The QuickBooks desktop editions, on the other hand, service small businesses very well.  The functionality improves and increases as users move up the product line from the Pro version through Premier and to Enterprise edition.  This line of solutions has done a great job of serving the needs of both small and larger businesses – all within the same product set.  But now Intuit wants users to experience the benefits of subscription-based service and an online working model.  Those are great benefits, but there’s a question that is left open for the asking.  Where are QuickBooks customers supposed to go from there, assuming that at least some of them might grow beyond the capability of the online product?  It’s a fair question, and here’s why I think so.

fall_from_cloudOnce a business has adopted a certain working model and the mentality that goes along with it, it is difficult to come in and tell them they have to change to a new model and find a way to adjust.  Change doesn’t come that easily for many individuals much less an entire organization, so this is a big deal and potentially very impactful to all aspects of the operation.  Yet this is exactly what is currently suggested with Intuit’s desire to have customers use the online edition.

It may be a great solution for now, but what’s the next step up from there?  Is it QuickBooks Enterprise on the desktop?  Kind of a weird message, don’t you think?  Let’s have customers adopt an anytime, anywhere subscription solution model, and then migrate them back to the desktop where the management and maintenance of the solution is higher due to number of users, and where there is no mobility, multi-location or remote access capability as there was with online.

The thought is that QuickBooks Online will eventually compete with the Netsuite and Intacct class of SaaS solutions, but right now it doesn’t and there are customers who must leave that product for something that handles their larger and deeper business needs (like the QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise solutions do).   There is a big gap between the entry level accounting products and those which are designed for the larger or midsize “small business”, and the QuickBooks desktop editions represent the only viable options in that very large space.  In fact, many businesses utilize line of business products that allow them to retain use of QuickBooks even as the enterprise scales far beyond the expectation that QuickBooks could handle the need.  But it often can, and it makes sense for businesses to leverage this ability if they are able.

The answer for these growing businesses  – the place they should go when they’ve outgrown the small business SaaS solution like QuickBooks Online (or Xero or Freshbooks or whatever) is to a hosted or remote-enabled QuickBooks model.  With the QuickBooks desktop editions hosted and managed by a cloud provider, businesses are able to retain the benefits of managed service, subscription pricing, and anytime/anywhere access while utilizing the products that are recognized as the industry standards for finance and accounting for growing businesses.

The hosted approach gives the businesses a clear path for the advancement of their systems in line with the growing needs of the business, and removes the need to shift working models from online to on-prem.  As needs increase and the complexity of systems grow through integration and scale, the service provider manages the platform and systems, enabling the business to not simply continue operating, but to grow and expand with the confidence that there is a plan to grow and expand the systems which support it.   The place to go is the cloud, and whether it is an entry-level SaaS solution or a hosted desktop and server approach, the service is there to handle the business.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J