small business trends – Page 7 – Cooper Mann Consulting

September 5, 2013June 24, 2020

Hosted QuickBooks and Office 365 a Complicated Technical and Licensing Model (until now)

When Intuit acknowledged the ability for companies to host QuickBooks desktop editions, service providers were presented with the opportunity to offer hosting for the QuickBooks desktop editions from their host servers and infrastructure. The benefits of using QuickBooks desktop products in a hosted environment are many, including the introduction of mobility, disaster recovery, remote access and other things now associated with cloud computing models. But the evolution of application delivery technologies and software as subscription service models is challenging the “traditional” approaches used to deliver hosted QuickBooks services. One of the greatest challenges facing these QuickBooks hosts is the changing landscape of Microsoft Office licensing, because QuickBooks is just no fun without Microsoft Office.

While the QuickBooks application handles a variety of essential business functions, it relies upon other software to accomplish certain important tasks, such as reporting. Most of the QuickBooks reports can be exported to Excel worksheets, allowing users to refine and manipulate the document outside of QB; QuickBooks Enterprise Edition uses Excel to handle consolidated reporting. QuickBooks uses Word for writing customer letters, and Outlook as a tool to email invoices. There is a lot of functionality in QuickBooks that relies on the MS Office products, so it is pretty typical for a QuickBooks user to also be an Office apps user. In order for the applications to work together properly, they need to be installed on the same computer. If QuickBooks is hosted “in the cloud” with a hosting provider, and Office 365 applications are installed on the local PC, the two applications don’t “talk”, and the integration isn’t seamless or even functional.

image credit: Microsoft Corp | Microsoft.com

When a small business subscribes to Office 365 (or Microsoft 365 now), they are provided with rights to install their Office applications on their devices (depending on the subscription level). While this enables users to have Office apps on multiple computers they use at different times, it does not provide authorization for the application to be installed on a hosted server where it is accessed by those users.

What this means is that customers who purchase Office 365/Microsoft 365 subscriptions to get their MS Office productivity applications can’t generally use those licenses in a hosted environment.

But there is an answer for small businesses who want remote and mobile access to their QuickBooks desktop editions and who also have Office 365 application licenses. The answer is to deploy QuickBooks desktop on a Microsoft Azure cloud server. This solution allows users to run their QuickBooks software as well as their qualifying Microsoft Office (M365 Apps for Enterprise) licenses on the Azure cloud server. The cloud platform enables the anytime/anywhere access desired and keeps all the applications and data secure and available for those who need access.

There is almost never just one way to solve a problem, and the cloud is introducing new options – and challenges – at all levels. As application licensing and delivery models continue to change, solution providers will come to recognize the value they provide in bringing the right selection of services and technology models together to benefit not just their customers, but their own revenue streams and profit potential.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet Make Sense?

August 29, 2013August 30, 2013

Focus on the Finance Department: QuickBooks in the Cloud

Vendors and IT solution providers are all buzzing about their cloud services and solutions available via the Web. This buzz often includes statements about lower cost of IT acquisition and service management and how mobility and remote access benefits the business. These statements are proving true for many businesses, yet there are still vast numbers of small business operating on local computers and unmanaged service. The reasons which hold back these business from adopting cloud computing models are as many and varied as the businesses themselves, but there is a consistent thread to be found in these reasons, and it has to do with a lack of understanding of what certain applications really mean to the business. In this case, the discussion is about the focus on strictly operational or administrative areas of the business and not on the finance department which, in so many small businesses, uses QuickBooks.

Cloud solution providers are in business to make money, and hosting companies in particular are looking for the right applications which will drive usage and revenues on their platforms. When these providers look at the small business market, they’re trying to identify the applications and services that small business owners will adopt in volume. Identification of these opportunities to serve a large customer base is essential to the provider’s economy of scale and profit model. It makes sense that hosts would want to offer the applications which drive the highest degree of usage in their environments, so they tend to focus on the applications used by the greatest number of users within the customer organization. In the small business market, these applications are email and productivity tools – solutions which are used broadly throughout the business and which serve a horizontal rather than vertical industry orientation. Those are the two easy picks; finding the next most valuable solution represents a bigger challenge for the provider.

With Intuit QuickBooks desktop editions boasting the lion’s share of the small business accounting market, it seems that hosting QuickBooks products would be the next natural selection by hosting providers already serving their small business clients with email and productivity solutions. However, because these service providers do not fully understand the essential functions QuickBooks serves in the small business, the assumption is that the usage of the solution is so nominal that it doesn’t make sense to develop the capability to offer it. It is a misunderstanding that many providers have, and is the result of a lack of historic participation in the product. QuickBooks, you see, is a direct to consumer product rather than a channel product, and most IT service providers and hosting companies recognize the product name but not really what it does or how it operates. And these hosts are often large companies and therefore have no direct experience using the product, so there is no frame of reference for them to work from. These service providers are simply overlooking the important role that QuickBooks solutions play in many small businesses, where it is used to handle various operational aspects of the business as well as being the product of choice for bookkeeping and accounting. Particularly with the QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise editions offering additional functionality and industry-specific features, the products are used widely by small businesses and not just for accounting and finance.

The point of the discussion is that hosting companies and “cloud server” providers should look at the mixture of applications used by their small business customers, and they are likely to find that QuickBooks products are pretty high on the list. Even if there are only a few people in the accounting department, and the usage by these individuals is not representative of the entire hosting opportunity, hosts should recognize that those few individuals and the software they use are not only essential, but are probably processing payroll for all those other users on the system and are paying the bills for products and services purchased. After all, if you’re going to make anybody in the company happy, make sure to focus on the finance department and help them get their QuickBooks in the Cloud, as they’re the ones that will be paying the bill for the service.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet

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August 26, 2013October 9, 2017

Cloud Computing for Small Business: It’s All About 3 Apps

Every business uses technology at some level, and every business has certain fundamental needs which are most frequently met through the use of computing technology. Regardless of business type or size and independent of industry orientation, there are 3 fundamental things which every business does which means that there are 3 fundamental application types or solutions which every business will buy at some point. These 3 application types, which could be distilled down to just “applications”, have become so broadly used in business and so widely recognized as the standards that their names are often used instead of the term representing the functionality they provide. When it comes to cloud computing for small business, it’s all about these 3 applications.

In what are now referred to as “legacy” or “traditional” models, these products would generally be purchased as software and associated hardware to run it, and would be installed and managed on the local premises. With cloud computing models, the solutions may be purchased or subscribed as managed infrastructure and application licenses, or as a full service subscription (SaaS). Regardless of the service model, the applications are the key to the customer win. While cloud computing may be challenging how IT products and services are sold and delivered to customers, it is not fully impacting which solutions customers are actually looking for. Over the past 16 years this has been the reality, and it may take another decade before these products are unseated from their top positions simply due to the inertia of the installed bases they’ve already developed. Service providers have found (or will find) a way to deliver these applications in cloud computing style, or small businesses will simply not move everything to the cloud very quickly. It is really just that simple, and I’ll explain why.

The three things that each and every business does, and which they generally purchase computers and software to facilitate, are communicating, producing information, and keeping score.

1. Communicating is an essential need for every business. Whether it is communication via phone, fax, email or otherwise, businesses will communicate and they will purchase products which help them do it better. The standard for business email communications has become Microsoft Exchange, which is now available as a highly affordable subscription service from Microsoft or from a wide variety of commercial MS Exchange hosting providers. Certainly the popularity and growth of hosted Exchange supports the argument that not only is MS Exchange mail very widely used in businesses of all sizes, but that it is also highly acceptable as a hosted solution because users retain desired functionality and are able to benefit from a variety of add-ons and additional services from their hosted Exchange email provider. The other thing about hosted Exchange is that the user can still use MS Outlook on their desktop to get their mail. Now we’re back to the desktop application again. Regardless of what mail server and service the user has, they are often more attached to using Outlook than they are to the mail service. In fact, when you ask a fairly non-technical user what they use for email, they’ll often say they use Outlook (the desktop client, not Outlook.com).

2. Producing Information is another essential need for every business. Whether the information is produced for internal or external use, there is a lot of information created to inform various people about the business. Documents, spreadsheets and presentations are used in every business, and productivity applications help people create them. The standard in this area is Microsoft’s Office suite of products which includes Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It isn’t unusual to have someone suggest “making a powerpoint to get the message across”, rather than using the word “presentation”, and does anyone expect to get a document not in .doc format? When users ask for productivity products, they usually ask for Office software and they usually mean Microsoft Office suite products.

The broad use and proven suitability of these products has well established them as the standards for use in business. While these applications are now available as limited-functionality web-based applications, most businesses continue to rely on the desktop products which resulted in myriad file sharing and “collaboration” tools which work with the Office products. Microsoft recognized the value of having the feature-rich productivity applications available in hosted and managed service models (as hosted applications rather than true web-based apps), and made the products available for licensing and distribution via their Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA). Microsoft (direct and via partners) also offers Office 365, which provides licensing for Office desktop applications and/or hosted Exchange email services.

Hosts with cloud servers and managed infrastructure and VDI solutions are all facing this truth: their services are useful when there are applications running on them, and among the most frequently requested applications are the Office apps. This is why so many providers offer not only cloud servers and virtual desktop solutions, they add value to their service by also offering the Microsoft Office products. At least in the case of MS Office, service providers have recognized that certain fundamental applications must be present in order for the server or desktop to have value for the SMB customer. After all, “moving the server to the cloud” doesn’t solve the problem if all the apps remain on the local PCs.

And then we come to the final application – the last fundamental small business application for service providers to focus on. It is with this application that hosting companies will make real impact in moving their small business customers from local to hosted applications, virtual desktops, and the world of cloud servers and managed hosting.

3. Keeping score, or accounting, is the final absolute and fundamental business function which exists in every business regardless of size, type or industry. This is another area where service providers are focusing, realizing that within the realm of small business accounting there is a single standard product line which serves the exact profile of the target SMB/SME customer: Intuit QuickBooks desktop products.

When challenged to find a single application solution which addresses a fundamental business need, is not oriented towards a particular industry segment, and which is likely to drive increased usage simply due to existing market penetration and sales – there is only one name that answers, and it is QuickBooks, most specifically the Pro, Premier and Enterprise desktop editions.

Looking further into the problem reveals that there may be more options for small business accounting emerging in the SaaS market, but this doesn’t help the hosting companies looking to increase usage on their own platforms. Additionally, while new and emerging solutions may be introducing options for very small business, the activity actually serves to increase awareness of and usage of computerized accounting solutions, resulting in increased share of the market looking for and purchasing these solutions – increasing the overall market for SMB accounting products and providing an opportunity to sell QuickBooks solutions to those new users. Further, Intuit QuickBooks remains the dominant choice once the business has needs beyond simple invoicing and bill payment, and continues to see growth in product sales and distribution for this reason.

It’s also true that, once a business has itself “invested” in an accounting product, change is not something considered easily. In many (most?) cases, the business is more closely tied to their financial systems than they are to their service provider. If the provider can’t work with the software, the business is likely to seek services from another provider.

Moving everything but finance to the cloud is not an option for most businesses, either. Particularly with small business/small enterprise, there are generally systems which serve a broad business need and not a single function. QuickBooks is not just a back-office accounting product. It also provides some front-office functionality, such as storing general customer information, handling invoicing, inventory management, job costing and other functions. It is essential that service providers not minimize the importance of this solution in their target client operation.

The financial system is not an island and is often integrated with or connected to other applications and data. Even though the QuickBooks desktop products are designed to suit businesses up to 250 employees, it is unlikely that a business will have all 250 people running QuickBooks. Rather, the product may be used by 2 or 3 people in the accounting department, or possibly by up to 30+ users in an Enterprise deployment where the product serves more operationally oriented functions. The rest of the company is likely using MS Office and email as suggested earlier, and perhaps some other operational or business specific product which may integrate with QuickBooks. The point is that it’s unwise for service providers to minimize the importance of the financial software and systems, even if those solutions are used by only a very few of the total number of users within the organization.

More evidence suggesting that the name QuickBooks has become almost synonymous with small business bookkeeping is visible within the accounting and bookkeeping industry, where bookkeeper training programs focus as much on the QuickBooks product (if not more so) than on actual accounting fundamentals. Businesses hiring bookkeepers don’t ask for bookkeeping experience, they ask for QuickBooks experience. If a small business owner asks his accountant what product to use, it’s a good bet that the accountant will recommend, and possibly even set up, QuickBooks for the client. There is momentum there which cannot be argued with, and it represents significant opportunity for those who have platforms to run the stuff. Weirdly, QuickBooks desktop editions and other desktop-based financial products available in a cloud hosted model represent a last and final element which is driving broad adoption of cloud servers and hosted desktops within the SMB markets.

It is all about the apps, but not just any apps. It’s about the apps small businesses need, want, know, and currently use. Service providers who can offer their customers these applications as cloud service – as managed applications on a cloud server or VDI platform – are in a position to serve the broadest base of SMB/SME customers. Talk about addressable market… at that point, it becomes a simple function of exposure as the value proposition is undeniable (and barrier-free).

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet Make Sense?

August 12, 2013August 14, 2013

The Language of Accounting: Disconnect between Accountants and Bookkeepers

There are a tremendous number of bookkeeper training programs developed over the years which propose to deliver the essential bookkeeping knowledge (e.g., double entry accounting) required in order to properly service business bookkeeping requirements. Particularly as the CPA profession stepped away from traditional bookkeeping in favor of performing “higher level” and more profitable work, there was and continues to be a great need for skilled and experienced bookkeepers. While it seems that accountants and bookkeepers would be a natural fit for partnering to serve small business client needs, there is often a disconnect between the two which causes the working relationship to not always prove as beneficial as it could. What is the cause of this disconnect? In many cases, it is due to the fact that the bookkeeper training educated the operator on the use of a software product, and not on the fundamentals of accounting and bookkeeping.

Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to look through a lot of bookkeeper training programs, and the thing that stands out is that many of these programs aren’t really training bookkeepers on accounting principles. More frequently, the training is focused on teaching users how to use software (usually QuickBooks). With the number of users of the QuickBooks product, it is obvious that there is a need to educate users on the solution because people need to know how to use their software properly. But it happened at some point in time that a majority of the industry came to believe that learning QuickBooks (or Xero or Freshbooks or Kashoo or whatever) was somehow synonymous with learning bookkeeping.

When I first started working with my father in his accounting practice, I had to use a manual general ledger, check register, etc. It was all manual – computers didn’t come along for a while (yes, I am that old). It was time-consuming, but it taught me the fundamentals. I know what a subledger is. In consumer-friendly software like QuickBooks, you don’t work in the AR subledger; you push the button that says “customers” or maybe “invoices”. QuickBooks, in many ways, doesn’t speak accounting. It speaks record keeping. And this is where the disconnect begins.

An old school accountant will recall the green eye shade days and working with book ledgers and 13-column pads, but even “new” school accounting professionals know that the fundamentals of accounting aren’t available for re-invention. A debit is still a debit and a credit is a credit. Yes, there are intimacies involved which speak to specific treatment of items for reporting and tax purposes, etc., but the essentials of double entry and other basic accounting principles are consistent and unchanging.

The “language of accounting” includes certain precise terms with specific meaning, and this precision in the use of terms simply doesn’t exist in many bookkeeper training programs. Rather than focusing on the fundamental accounting training bookkeepers truly need in order to be of maximum value to the business, these programs focus on helping users become experts in using the software product, or even to become experts at teaching others how to use the solution. While this software expertise may be beneficial in terms of helping accountants work with their clients who use the software, it doesn’t add enough value to the relationship to warrant partnering. What accounting professionals need are bookkeepers who understand bookkeeping and who can apply basic accounting principles to the task. Which software they operate is secondary to that purpose.

Professional bookkeepers, accountants, and the business client are all in a position to benefit tremendously when the service providers team up to provide comprehensive service. The key to making these connections lies with the professional bookkeeper who must not only understand basic accounting principles, but must also be able to speak to the accounting professional in their native language.

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Bookkeeping Needs Better Reporting Tools

There are many articles and papers available which discuss the rapidly increasing “volume and velocity” of electronic information moving through businesses these days. The focus of the discussion in most cases is on how businesses need to adopt tools and solutions to help them with the management of this electronic data flow. What isn’t being discussed at length is the visceral business intelligence which is lost due to less direct interaction with the raw data.

By manually working through each item, the person regularly processing the information would often develop somewhat of a picture of the business simply through a level of intuition, a gut reaction to the information. This is a rapidly declining model, thanks to intelligent technologies and direct system integrations.

With the plethora of electronic information sources, data collection tools, and transaction download facilities, many bookkeepers and business owners are finding that their gut instinct and business intuition is being lost in the shuffle of managing and matching up all this electronic data.

Focusing on small business bookkeeping, the processes are now being oriented more towards matching up electronic transaction data points than on entering the information from the raw source. Where bookkeepers were once perceived as “mechanics” in terms of performing the bookkeeping data entry, the activities of these professionals is becoming even more mechanical in nature as the primary requirement shifts from entering the information to importing it and then matching it to source documentation.

Even decisions regarding categorization of the transaction are often made by software solutions, eliminating more involvement by the bookkeeping or accounting pro. At the same time that bookkeepers and accountants find themselves having difficulties communicating the value of the service they deliver, technology trends in the industry are weighing even more heavily on that value proposition by providing users with do-it-yourself tools and self-service solutions.

The answer to the challenge of demonstrating value in the bookkeeping and accounting processes is for accountants, bookkeepers and business owners is to focus on the result of the work rather than focusing on the work directly.

Small business owners will challenge their accountants and bookkeepers to explain why processing a limited number of transactions per period would cost much, and the professional ends up fighting a battle which cannot be won; there is far more value in the work they perform than simply entering the data. It’s this explanation of WHY bookkeeping and accounting takes skill and has value which become arguable to the business owner, and is a discussion which the accountant or bookkeeper is more likely to win if they were to in a position to provide their client with proof of this value.

Too often, accounting and bookkeeping service providers attempt to prove their worth to the client by espousing the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of their services and say too little about the value of the result they will deliver. Additionally, many professionals introduce their clients directly to the accounting software and try to engage the client to work cooperatively with the bookkeeping, as there is a perception that the client may see more value in the work if they can a) see it being done in real time and b) see how complicated it could really be.

Unfortunately the accounting and bookkeeping solutions often implemented by small businesses actually look pretty easy to use and are intuitive, which serves to even further diminish the value proposition as the client perceives that they could likely operate the software just as well as the bookkeeper.

In order to deliver the proof to the client that the bookkeeping work has value, the result becomes the focus of the effort. Rather than providing balance sheets, profit and loss statements and bank reconciliations, those involved in the bookkeeping and accounting process for the small business should also focus on reports which demonstrate the value of PROPER bookkeeping and accurately reflecting business activities.

Would the client know the real difference between cost of goods sold and a regular business expense? Reflection of that single transaction with two different treatments could be the trigger to get the light bulb to light up. How best to demonstrate the variation? Not in pure written report form, that’s for sure. Numbers alone don’t generally trigger real understanding, but painting a picture might.

Today’s dashboard and reporting tools – solutions which use information from the accounting system to reflect visual trends and representations of business performance – can deliver far more meaning and easier understanding than a columnar report with numbers and percentages. Further, these tools can address the task of revealing critical insight into business value, demonstrating (for example) the difference between cash flow and profitability, or identifying trends which indicate patterns in how the business is causing or reacting to change.

As small business owners feel continued pressure to improve performance and profitability, and as lending sources for business credit remain difficult and costly to engage, the necessity for quality bookkeeping and accounting services does not diminish, it increases. The challenge is in finding ways to read the data and discover the insight and meaning it reveals.

The value of bookkeeping and processing accounting data for businesses is ever-increasing in these days of global markets and global competition, and the forward-thinking professional will recognize that deeper insight into the business – insight enabled through the use of realtime reporting and analysis tools – delivers an ongoing opportunity to work closer with the client in addressing challenges identified and presented, and allows the accounting professional, bookkeeper and business owner to be guided by real information rather than emotion or intuition.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

read the original posting at The Progressive Accountant.

August 6, 2013April 25, 2019

The Most Popular Models for Working with QuickBooks Desktop Editions and the Cloud

cloud-computing When Intuit created the Authorized Commercial Host for QuickBooks program, a variety of providers were enabled to offer not only managed application hosting services for QuickBooks desktop products, they were also permitted to provide QuickBooks desktop product licenses for rent. By allowing these hosting providers to also license the QuickBooks products on a subscription basis, the entire solution – the hosting of the QuickBooks, the management of the company data files, and the licensing of the software – was able to be packaged together and offered as an equivalent of the SaaS solution. The benefits of running tried-and-true business applications on the business network had already been proven, and creating the ability to access this resource at any time and from anywhere (mobility!) became the feature which encouraged a wide variety of large and small business to move to “cloud” and online working models.

While the complete hosted application model – where the business desktop applications and associated data are installed and managed on the service provider servers – addresses a broad requirement for many companies, there remains a large community of users who have needs which do not extend to “cloud server” or remotely hosted desktops and complete managed application services. For these users, having access to the data file from anywhere is the primary goal (maybe even multi-user access for just a couple of users), and management of the software and license across multiple computers is not their first consideration.

Here are the most popular models for working with QuickBooks desktop editions in/with the cloud. Each of these approaches solves a different business problem, so it is important to understand which problems need to be solved before shopping for the solution.

1. Storing the QuickBooks file in a file sync solution

Solves: gives access to the data file from various locations (not at the same time)

Doesn’t solve: no multi-user access in real time, still have to purchase QuickBooks licenses, install and manage applications, and secure and backup data

The popularity of Dropbox and similar file sync solutions clearly demonstrates the value of giving users the ability to store, sync and share files securely via the Web. Further, these services allow people at different locations to access files in a relatively collaborative manner, giving otherwise disconnected users the ability to sort of work like they’re on the same network and using the files in near-realtime. While this approach works awesomely well for Word documents, PDFs and other files, it doesn’t work as well for QuickBooks company data files. It’s pretty much an automated approach to using a file storage solution (like any web drive, file share service or such). To clarify, users can store copies of QuickBooks company files in a Dropbox or sync folder to have that file sync’d to the host and to other permitted computers, but a “live” QuickBooks data file doesn’t like living in this type of folder. The sync or file sharing method of applying a cloud solution to QuickBooks allows for only one person to be in the “real” file at a time, and each user still has to purchase, install and manage the QuickBooks software on their PC. Oh, and bandwidth will become an issue when files must be sync’d frequently and when the files are fairly large (which QB files tend to be).

2. Using secure remote access to QuickBooks, remote desktop or remote app solution (like hosting, but the host just happens to be an on-premises computer already in place)

Solves: gives access to the file and applications from various locations, allows for multi-user access to company file, allows access to just QuickBooks or any combination of applications on the host computer; low-cost solution providing mobility and device independence just like commercial hosting but at a fraction of the cost

Doesn’t solve: have to purchase QuickBooks licenses, install and manage applications on the host, and backup data

Secure remote access solutions like MyQuickCloud allow users to connect to applications that are installed on existing workstations or servers. This approach provides users with access to QuickBooks and other software installed on the in-house computer. The problem with this model is that the bandwidth and the in-house computer need to be sufficient to support remote users, and the activities of the user sitting at the in-house computer will take priority over the remote user requests.

3. Using a hosting provider and/or platforms for QuickBooks, remote desktop or remote app type of solution

Solves: gives access to the file and applications from various locations, allows for multi-user access to company file, may allow for rental licensing of QuickBooks software, files are backed up by service provider

Doesn’t solve: commercial hosting is not a very low-cost solution for those who only need file sharing

Application hosting models allow users to connect to servers where the applications are installed and managed by the service provider and delivered to customers as subscription service. This approach provides customers with flexible options for accessing QuickBooks software installed and maintained on the host’s servers, and to have the multi-user capabilities of the product just as it would function on a local network. Application hosting models are generally offered as standardized service or as custom service, with variable pricing and features associated with each.

Because these hosting models require that all components of the delivery be combined to deliver the service – from networks to servers to desktop virtualization to application virtualization, application licensing, data management… it’s a big list of things – the cost of service may seem a bit high for a single user or very small business to bear. This is among the reasons for continued popularity of do-it-yourself remote access solutions that deliver mobility but fail to address any sort of system management benefit.

When business users ask about using their QuickBooks desktop editions in the cloud, it makes sense to drill down into the details of what they’re really looking for. In many cases, the QB user simply doesn’t know how to ask for what they want, using popular terms without real understanding of what they mean. This is something which frequently happens when a prospective customer contacts a QuickBooks hosting provider, and the sales department of the hosting provider isn’t generally in a position to offer consultation – they are there to sell their solution to the prospect. The result is that the customer doesn’t really get what they want, and the provider gets a bad review.

The problem isn’t necessarily with the provider or service (I wish more sales teams were able to offer more consultative approaches, but that’s an entirely different conversation); the problem occurs largely due to the variety of services being offered around “cloud QuickBooks” and the ambiguity which exists in much of the marketing language around them. Maybe this information will help businesses as they look to find solutions to the variety of problems with “enabling” their desktop QuickBooks to work with the cloud.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet Make Sense?

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Focus on the Finance Department: QuickBooks in the Cloud

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The Language of Accounting: Disconnect between Accountants and Bookkeepers

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