Whether it is about accounting tasks related to the business dealings of clients or tax preparation, small CPA firms have a lot on their plate. Being a team of licensed professionals certified by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), they help enforce professional standards in their industry. In terms of technology, if there is any application that is analogous to their work including billing, accounting, invoicing, inventory management, and payroll, it is QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the most versatile accounting solution used by small CPA firms for various business needs. But when it is about making the deliberate switch from local-hosted QuickBooks to cloud-based QuickBooks, many think twice before making the decision. If you are running a small CPA firm and have questions about QuickBooks Hosting, you should know how it works and can benefit your business in the long run.
Benefits of QuickBooks Hosting to Make Your Small CPA Firm Bigger
QuickBooks, as a desktop application, is highly advantageous for its users. However, installing it on local infrastructure often leads to technical issues like storage space deprivation and lack of remote access. If you are familiar with these roadblocks, Intuit QuickBooks Hosting can be your best bet as it comes with the following benefits:
1. Remote QuickBooks Access
Consider this example to understand things better:
You are back home after a tiring day at work during the busy tax season. Suddenly, one of your clients calls you to make some urgent edits to the accounting file you shared earlier. Since the file is hosted on the local computer installed in your office, you cannot work on it or access QuickBooks to make changes at midnight, regardless of the urgency.
Many CPA firm owners like you find themselves trapped in such situations and has no other option but to wait till the next working day. This is where QuickBooks Hosting can provide instant remote access to the cloud-hosted data and application, irrespective of the time and location. You can access them from an Internet-connected device from wherever you are.
With QuickBooks Hosting Solutions, the employees working in your small-scale CPA firm can also benefit from accessing the accounting files without having to visit the office necessarily. This remote working facility will ultimately increase their work productivity and take your firm towards greater heights.
2. Enhanced Team Collaboration
The next significant benefit of cloud-based QuickBooks, other than remote accessibility, is improved team collaboration. The underlying cloud technology can bring all the accounting professionals in your team on the same page by providing authorized access to QuickBooks and its data on the cloud. Let’s consider a common accounting process followed in CPA firms as they deal with their clients:
Accountant A accepts a request to submit data for the client, which, once gathered, is passed on to Accountant B for error-checking and correction. Once that is done, Accountant C takes it over to prepare the final accounting files. In case of any complexities, it may also be routed through Accountant D before final submission to the client.
If this process is not cloud-based, each of the professionals involved would make a separate copy of the data file and store it on their side for later use. All of this can only be avoided with the help of QuickBooks Cloud Hosting Provider.
Once your licensed QuickBooks is hosted on the cloud, multiple users can access the same file simultaneously.
3. No Geographical Limitation to Data Access
Ideally, you would want your CPA firm to grow in both revenue and size from small to mid-sized to large. This may also require you to expand your operations from one state to another. While it makes sense to meet the needs of customers located in other states, your team does not need to be physically available to each customer. If expanding your business beyond the current regional boundaries is on your mind, QuickBooks Hosting can help you achieve this business goal.
With Intuit QuickBooks Hosting, the interaction between your CPA firm and clients is just a device screen away. The global access to your QB files and applications is truly one of the most attractive features of cloud-based QuickBooks. With business data stored on the cloud, your team can work from almost any remote corner of the world.
4. Easy to Switch to Cloud-Based Access
Many accounting professionals find the QuickBooks desktop interface intuitive and easy to use. But this ease of use often becomes their shield against denial to switch to QuickBooks Hosting Solutions. If you are new to cloud hosting, you might think using QuickBooks on the cloud may be different from working on it on a local computer. But that’s not true.
Even after you switch to a cloud-hosted QuickBooks, the primary user interface of this application remains the same. It simply means there will be no change in the software features or any functional value it holds. It is just the mode of software and data that changes here. This implies your team of CPAs need not invest many extra hours into learning how to use QuickBooks on the cloud or familiarize themselves with its UI.
5. Top-Notch Data Security
For a small CPA firm like yours, data security is pivotal in the journey towards success. You deal with sensitive and highly vulnerable data for your clients and thus need to be more cautious about keeping it safe. In a local-hosted environment, the maximum protection you can add for sensitive data is the installation of firewalls and antiviruses on your desktop computers. Still, the risk of hardware or software crashing because of inevitable reasons persists and can lead to data loss.
QuickBooks Hosting can benefit you in terms of data security with the help of multiple safety layers, including encryption, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems. Also, the onus of maintaining the required security measures lies on the QuickBooks Cloud Hosting Provider you select. Particularly when you have your eyes on the best-in-class security measures in an economically viable way, you need not look any further than QuickBooks hosting.
Conclusion
As detailed above, switching to cloud technology to access the QuickBooks application can turn out to be the most suitable decision for next-level business growth. It brings into perspective a new paradigm that is fast, reliable, and highly advantageous for your business needs. All you need is a reliable QuickBooks Hosting Provider by your side to make things easier for you.