9 REASONS SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS SHOULD DO BOOKKEEPING IN THE CLOUD

Cloud computing is having your accounting software entirely based online via the internet. There is no hardware or software required, other than browsing the internet. There are so many reasons why it is better than hosting your accounting software on a desktop PC or local server.

1) Less Expensive and Only Pay For What You Use

Even given its greater benefits, surprisingly, the cost of cloud based bookkeeping software is cheaper than locally operating software.

2) Integration of Your Cloud Accounting Software with Other Internet Based Services

Your small business can integrate with other internet based services, such as online bill payments, resulting in much less paper work. You can glance at important real time information such as your bank accounts, accounts payable and accounts receivables.

3) Use your Accounting Software From any Computer or Location

On vacation, want to work from home, or have another office? No problem, you can work from any computer or location. You and your staff have quick and easy access to your bookkeeping files from anywhere. From anywhere you have real-time data and reporting.

4) Greater Security of your Important Financial Information

As long as you ensure you keep your password protected, with today's online security, files in the cloud are much more secure than files on your local desktop or server. Many accounting cloud host sites offer fingerprint or retina scans, state of the art anti-virus and malware protection, strongly encrypted file protection and more.

5) Always have a Backup of your Accounting Software Files

One of the greater benefits of cloud based bookkeeping software is that your files are always backed up in real time. I do not know a business owner that has not had a file corruption or computer hardware problem or theft that has caused a disaster at least once in their lives; you avoid this risk with a cloud based accounting platform.

6) Continually have the latest Bookkeeping Software and Payroll Files

Given the nature of accounting software, there are constant ongoing updates required. In the cloud your bookkeeping software is always up to date in real time. You do not need to worry about updating or any corruption issues, the online host ensures your program is running smoothly.

7) Easy to Share Files Among Anyone doing Bookkeeping Tasks

Every small business owner knows the perils of trying to share access to your bookkeeping software among multiple users in various locations. With a cloud based accounting software platform you and your staff can access files from anywhere in and out of the office. You can even access your accounting files with a tablet or mobile phone!

With the cloud you have your real-time information available to all users. You can share your access among staff, an outside bookkeeper and accountant; anyone you like. Also, you can easily have multiple users logged in at the same time.

8) Easy to Use

Cloud based accounting software does not have the limitations of historical software programs and limitations of the desktop PC based operating platform. Using the latest in internet based technology cloud bookkeeping computing has been developed with your ease of use in mind. Also, you have online support 24/7 at your finger tips.

9) System Resources Can Scale Up Given Your Business Size

Cloud based accounting software has been been built from the ground up for the web using the newest technology. Your business never needs to worry about your hardware or software resources. Your accounting software in the cloud will always have the scale-able resources to accommodate any necessary computing requirements you require. There are no limitations on computing resources, number of users and locations.

For more information about Bookkeeping and Accounting accounting cloud software for your business, contact Actegra Contact Us.

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Helping You Succeed

Actegra has an depth of experience providing bookkeeping, accounting and business advice to charities, charitable associations and non-for-profit organizations. Actegra has expertise in serving Health Care Servers, Religious Organizations, Retirement, Nursing and Care Homes, Non-Profit Clubs, Charity Foundations and Community Service Associations.

Our goal is to provide cost effective support to help your Not-For-Profit organization focus on your core goal of supporting those in need. We offer assistance with your strategic financial, software & hardware and financial reporting. We support all your Bookkeeping, Accounting and Financial Reporting needs.

Professional Service for Organizations just Starting, Reorganizing or Closing Things Down. We support every stage of the Not-For-Profit Financial Life-cycle.

As our Not-For-Profit client, Actegra will assist you in identifying new revenues and greater cost savings. We will set up your daily, monthly and year reporting to give you the financial control your organization needs.

Actegra works tirelessly as a partner in the smooth running of your Not For Profit organization. While responsive to every inquiry you might have; we are also proactive in management of your Bookkeeping, Accounting and Financial requirements. We are always looking for ways your organization can run better and decrease risks.

Actegra Not-For-Profit Service

Expertise Setting Up A New Organization or Making Changes to an Existing Not-For-Profit Organization. We offer advice on the proper setup of your organization for Government Charitable status. Also can ensure an existing organization is complying with the necessary best practices and guidelines.

Proactive Management. Actegra prides itself on actively managing the financial affairs of your organization. We do not passively wait to respond to issues or crises, we keep an engaged with your charitable foundation and keep you abreast of any possible upcoming issues you need to be aware of.

Charitable Fundraising Fundamentals. We can assist your Not-For-Profit with charitable fundraising efforts. We can help increase fundraising dollars by making sure that your donors gain the greatest tax benefit, while your organization complies with the necessary requirements. Actegra gives you guidance on donor gifting to ensure maximize tax advantages to your donors and your charitable foundation.

Donations Going and Coming From Outside Canada. We have expertise about government regulations with foreign fundraising and disbursements to support outside causes. Your foundation can focus on what you do best, while we guide your financial compliance matters.

Foundation Accountability. . There are various financial report methods, we can assist your Charitable Not-For-Profit association in selecting the best possible reporting method for your organization.

Goods And Services Tax. Your Not-for-Profit will be allowed some HST deductions for Goods and Services and Revenues. Actegra can guide you in developing your bookkeeping and accounting reporting to maximize these tax rebates.

Governance For Your Board. Your Charitable Organization and Not-For-Profit Board have a important duty to your Donors and Government. Your Board of Directors have to ensure the security of you organizations funds. Actegra will look over your organizations structure for risk and assist in implementing the necessary safeguards.

Financial Reporting and Auditing. For greater success with donors and funding sources, your Not-For-Profit Charitable Organization would require an annual Financial Review or Audit. Actegra has expertise in dealing with Audit committees and can also support your financial presentation at your Annual General Meeting.

Read about Actegra's work with a Not-For-Profit organization, Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario. Read More.

For more information about our Bookkeeping and Accounting service for Not-For-profit organizations, contact Actegra Contact Us.

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Cloud Computing also allows core IT infrastructure to be brought into large data centers that take advantage of significant economies of scale in three areas:

Supply-side savings: Large-scale data centers lower costs per server. Cloud Computing combines the best economic properties of mainframe and client/server computing. The mainframe era was characterized by significant economies of scale due to the high up-front costs of mainframes and the need to hire sophisticated personnel to manage these systems. As the required computing power measured in MIPS (million instructions per second) increased, cost declined rapidly at first, but only large central IT organizations had the resources and the aggregate demand to justify the investment. Due to the high cost, resource utilization was prioritized over end-user agility. Users’ requests were put in a queue and processed only when needed resources were available.

With the advent of client/server technology, the minimum unit of purchase was greatly reduced, and the resources became easier to operate and maintain. This modularization significantly lowered the entry barriers to providing IT services, radically improving end-user agility. However, there was a significant utilization tradeoff, resulting in the current state of affairs: datacenters sprawling with servers purchased for whatever needed existed at the time, but running at just 5%-10% utilization.
Cloud computing is not a return to the mainframe era as is sometimes suggested, but in fact offers users economies of scale and efficiency that exceed those of a mainframe, coupled with modularity and agility beyond what client/server technology offered, thus eliminating the tradeoff.

Demand-side aggregation: Aggregating demand for computing, smoothes overall variability and allows server utilization rates to increase. This is depicted in figures given below –

Multi-tenancy efficiency: When changing to a multi-tenant application model, increasing the number of tenants (i.e., customers or users) lowers the application management and server cost per tenant.

Economical Impacts of Cloud Computing

The combination of supply-side economies of scale in server capacity (amortizing costs across more servers), demand-side aggregation of workloads (reducing variability), and the multi-tenant application model (amortizing costs across multiple customers) leads to powerful economies of scale. To estimate the magnitude, a cost scaling model which estimates the long term behavior of costs is given below -

Above figure shows the output for a workload that utilizes 10 percent of a traditional server. The model indicates that a 100,000-server datacenter has an 80% lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to a 1,000-server datacenter.

Above figure shows estimated costs of infrastructure for two application servers, two database servers and a load balancer across internal, managed, and cloud deployment models.
From analysis of customer’s data, the approximate breakdown between the infrastructure costs, costs of supporting and maintaining existing applications, and new application development costs has been calculated. The following figure shows the breakdown -

IT  Spending Breakdown:

Cloud impacts all three of these areas. The supply-side and demand-side savings impact mostly the infrastructure portion, which comprises over half of spending. Existing application maintenance costs include update and patching labor, end-user support, and license fees paid to vendors. They account for roughly a third of spending and are addressed by the multi-tenancy efficiency factor.

New application development accounts for just over a tenth of spending, even though it is seen as the way for IT to innovate. Therefore, IT leaders generally want to increase spending here. The economical benefits of cloud computing enable spending in new application development by freeing up room in the budget to do so.

Capturing the Cloud Benefits

There are variations of Cloud Computing offerings. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). All of these are delivered as a “service” and compete/compliment Traditional IT deployments.

Above figure shows that the best way to harness the benefits of cloud is to use SaaS offerings, which have been architected for scale-out and multi-tenancy to capture the full benefits. When writing new applications, Platform as a Service most effectively captures the economic benefits. PaaS offers shared services, advanced management, and automation features that allow developers to focus directly on application logic rather than on engineering their application to scale.

Cloud Computing Has A More Brighter Future Waiting Ahead

The cloud computing market is expected to grow at a double-digit rate. According to experts, the SaaS delivery model of cloud computing will lead the growth story. They believe that emerging countries such as India have the greatest potential for market growth, including opportunities to support outsourcing of Cloud services.

MarketsandMarkets (a business market research firm) stated in its report of 2010 that global cloud computing market would grow from $37.8 billion in 2010 to $121.1 billion in 2015 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.2% from 2010 to 2015. The report stated that Software as a Service (SaaS) was the largest contributor in the Cloud computing services market, accounting for 73% of the market's revenues in 2010.

By 2012, nearly 85% of net-new software firms coming to market will be built around SaaS service composition and delivery; by 2014, about 65% of new products from established ISVs will be delivered as SaaS services. SaaS-derived revenue will account for nearly 26% of net new growth in the software market in 2014. The above mentioned statements are mentioned in an IDC Report. International Data Corporation, IDC, is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets.

Conclusion

It has been well explained in this paper that a move to adopt Cloud Computing technology provides significant economic benefits. These benefits accrue to a business in two distinct ways, viz. directly through reduced costs; and indirectly by allowing for increased focus on core business functions and increased spending in newer business projects.

References: Republished from www.myrealdata.com

1. Dataquest Insight: Many Midsize Businesses Looking Toward 100% Server Virtualization. Gartner, May 8, 2009.
2. The Economics of Virtualization: Moving Toward an Application-Based Cost Model. IDC, November 2009.
3. Cloud Computing – By Andy Bechtolsheim. Arista Networks, November 2008.
4. Internet-Scale Service Efficiency - By James Hamilton. Microsoft Corporation, September 2008.
5. Cloudonomics: the Economics of Cloud Computing - by Ben Kepes. Diversity Limited, 2011.
6. Self-Service, Prorated Supercomputing Fun! - By Derek Gottfrid. The New York Times, November 2007.
7. Cloud computing: Fact versus Fog - By Jocelyn DeGance Graham. Grail Research Cloud Center of Excellence and Cloud research practice, December 2010.

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QuickBooks Hosting on Terminal Servers:

QuickBooks Terminal Server hosting  transforms a standalone platform into a truly collaborative experience in the most innovative way possible, making it immensely useful for both business owners, as well as their accountant or bookkeeper. Most importantly, all Actegra QuickBooks Hosting comes with the reliability assurance of the most trusted hosting service provider which always includes 24x7 support.

The time and speed factor:

With fast performance and higher uptime for than what a local network provides, we assure you of saving your precious time accessing your accounting data. Additionally, QuickBooks Remote Access saves on your transportation costs as you and your client can concurrently work on the same file, update records, as well as print and backup those files locally, all in real time via the Internet.

Always on connectivity:

With QuickBooks hosting  on Terminal Servers, you have access to your QuickBooks file online at anytime and from anywhere.

Multi-user facility:

With QuickBooks Hosting  you don’t have to install the multiple licensed software on your local PC's as this is installed and runs on Actegra Terminal servers. Multiple users can access the same files simultaneously which saves you the trouble of installing multiple copies of the software on different PC's. Also, hosting of QuickBooks on Terminal Servers, you have the option of restricting each user to their respective file(s).

Reduce your IT Infrastructure costs:

QuickBooks hosting  leads to less expense on your IT infrastructure, as the QuickBooks software is installed on Actegra Terminal Servers and not on your PC's or local servers. Thus no need of installing new hardware or software and investment in technical expertise. It saves you of the cost of system upgrades.

Run any QuickBooks version with QuickBooks hosting service:

Actegra allow you to operate multiple licensed versions of QuickBooks. This proves greatly convenient for you as instead of installing different QuickBooks software on your desktops, all of them can be run by the hosted service provider.

Data Security:

With QuickBooks Hosting on a terminal server, you do not have to worry about the security of your data as Hosting Service Provider allows multiple backup of your files in the most secure data centers.

QuickBooks add-ons:

QuickBooks Hosting service supports  most QuickBooks Add-ons, which helps you to integrate various industry specific  business requirements in the most cost effective way.

QuickBooks Hosting: Actegra reliability:

Actegra QuickBooks Hosting Solution is the name you can trust, as it provides you the maximum level of security and reliability as far as your data is concerned. Actregra QuickBooks Terminal Server provides one of the most secure password protected data transfer protocol which makes the file safest to access online. At the same time our highly protected data centers allow the highest level of protection for your backup data. QuickBooks hosting  with Actegra is the choice you should make if you want to be completely assured of safety of your data.

To order QuickBooks Hosting service contact us or sign up as a Silver or Gold Member to receive managed services along with the software.

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