Before the inception of the cloud, setting up a new business was a costly affair. It meant acquiring hardware, paying software licensing fees and training staff to maintain the servers.
You had to anticipate software upgrades whenever tax regulations or accounting rules changed.
To ensure your servers didn’t overheat, you even had to keep your servers stored in rooms that were constantly cool and properly ventilated. Let’s not forget that manual accounting meant having an office overrun by heaps of paper, financial documents, and receipts.
Even with server technology advancing, the costs of an on-premise solution will still set you back thousands of dollars. For this reason, many firms are embracing the future, letting go of old-school accounting ways and transitioning to the cloud.
Growing your firm in the cloud
When deciding on the best cloud accounting software for your firm, budget plays a huge role. Not all cloud accounting software is created equal. Each will have their features, guarantees, and pricing plans.
Based on the size of your firm and the number of clients you have, you may not need all the offered features. The beauty of accounting software is that they are scalable. As your firm grows, you can add to your existing solutions with a simple call or email to your cloud services provider.
Cloud accounting apps that you will encounter most as you start to research and compare solutions will include:
Whatever apps you choose, migrating to the cloud means lower costs, better collaboration, increased flexibility and many opportunities for integration. Cloud-based solutions allow you the ability to integrate with multiple cloud-based providers. These involve other specialized back-office operations such as marketing and human resources, allowing you to provide superior customer service and offering more innovative solutions to your clients.
Moving to the cloud promises you the business agility to grow your firm quickly. Because cloud accounting means automatic updates, pay-as-you-go pricing models and improved collaboration, you have more time to focus on strengthening client relationships and day-to-day operations. To increase the productivity, consider the following apps:
Making a move to the cloud
It surprises many accountants that they’ve probably used cloud technology without realizing it. For every time you’ve used ShareFile, Dropbox, Google Apps for Business or Microsoft Office, you are accessing data remotely via the cloud.
When you decide to undergo a digital transformation, schedule the timing of your transition to the cloud; migration can take about a month or two to complete. You want the move to be easy and smooth for both you and your clients.
If you’ve been using an on-premise IT infrastructure up until this point, consider migrating to the cloud before the start of a fiscal year to avoid disrupting processes mid-year. Alternatively, you could migrate clients as you finish cleaning up and reconciling their data to ensure that only accurate data is introduced into the new system.
Taking your firm into the future probably excites your clients as much as it will your staff, particularly since it means eliminating manual accounting tasks and making data more accessible. Ultimately, the move to the cloud tells your employees and your clients that you are determined to remain competitive but above all, connected.
