Accounting Cloud Software

Nowadays most of us rely on “computing” that’s provided by machines we never see and could not locate even if we tried. They are somewhere out there in the internet “cloud”. Cloud application that most people would use on a daily basis are email such as Hotmail and Gmail, social network applications like Facebook or music streamed to digital devices via ITunes. It’s very different from how things used to be.
Now, most of what we think of as “computing” is increasingly done using a smartphone or an iPad or a simple, stripped-down, laptop or “netbook”. Much of our data – documents, emails, photographs, spreadsheets – is no longer stored on our devices but is held in distant server farms operated by the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.
What made this possible was the penetration of broadband – i.e. internet connections that were fast enough to ensure that interactions with distant machines happened at a tolerable speed. Once these types of connections became widespread, the die was cast. Now it is the turn of accounting software to jump into the cloud. MYOB have just released its beta version of the cloud application of their largest used product AccountRight Live to accountants for testing. MYOB estimates that there are over one million users in Australia using the current AccountRight product and it wants to move as many of these users to the cloud platform.
What are the advantages to the end user you ask? The big advantage will be both the users and the accountants will be working on a single file. Gone are the days where the clients would email the file to their accountant to do the BAS and fix any errors, while waiting for the accountant to send back the file so they could continue entering transactions.  With the cloud version, the file is in the cloud and the accountant just logs into the file makes the changes in real time, while the client continues entering transactions. The client has no down time while waiting for their accountant to perform his part.  Another advantage is MYOB will have the bank feeds being received directly into the clients file which takes away the task of manually entering bank transactions. With the use of memorised transactions, these entries will code themselves in the back ground with no user intervention.  What will this cost me? The cost will be on a monthly subscription basis. The user will no longer be required to buy updates from MYOB as they will always be using the latest version. We have also been looking at another product call Xero which has been operating in the cloud space for a number of years. The Xero offering is similar to MYOB and offers a number of subscription levels.  We are in the process of evaluating both and we will give our feedback in a later newsletter. What has to be taken into account is the speed at which this type of technology is moving forward. Coupled with apps, these offerings are powerful business tools. There is a Xero app that allows a user to issue clients an invoice via an Ipad. The email is instantly sent to the customer with bank account details and reference for payments, while at the same time the invoice is uploaded into the client’s Xero software. When the bill is paid it will automatically be matched with the invoice. Now that is a quantum leap from the old manual invoice system and allows the users to work on their core business and not be trapped under a mountain of paperwork and administration.
If you have any questions or want to convert to cloud accounting, please contact us. Below are the website from MYOB and XERO. MYOB What is AccountRight Live? XERO Online Accounting Software