Why Should Bookkeeping Companies Host?
By Lisa Gecko
In the past few years with the expansion of cloud computing services and a wide variety of organizations taking advantage of them, bookkeeping companies are finding many reasons to follow the trend. With cloud service providers (CSPs) offering services for hosting QuickBooks desktop applications via the IHP, there is now a very stable and secure framework that bookkeeping companies can use to their advantage. In this article we will take a look at what it means for these companies to utilize commercial hosting, and what some of the benefits of this software as a service (SaaS) are in the short and long term.
What the program provides is the ability for licensed copies of QuickBooks to be hosted remotely by authorized CSPs, who in this case are working as application service providers (ASPs). Licenses can also be sold on a monthly basis for clients, which can help keep costs down as companies upgrade software over time. There is an application process with Intuit and independent accreditation, but in all likelihood, CSPs are already working with larger corporations and even government institutions that can have more stringent requirements for approval. In either case, accreditation is required, and by moving QuickBooks to a remote host, bookkeeping companies can take advantage of a number of benefits the cloud has to offer. Some of the more important of which we will now explore.
Centralized security with enterprise level hardware and software is now available without the staggering cost it would require to build on-site. Protecting customer data by hosting QuickBooks on a commercial host is certainly one of the more prominent advantages. CSPs utilize the very latest in security technology that they can offer at affordable pricing due to scalability and multi-tenency. In the case of Bookkeeping companies, the multi-tenancy plays a larger part, but the benefits are the same. By working with a provider and moving QuickBooks online and off-site, businesses will gain access to a level of security that most corporations cannot afford.
Access your QuickBooks online file(s) at any time from anywhere in the world. As more and more businesses are finding the number of remote employees grow, it is more important than ever for end-users of any application to have universal access. By moving this desktop application to a commercial host, there is no longer a need to actually be in the office. An employee that has any device that can run QuickBooks that has access to the internet, can open files and get to work. There are a number of savings here, including transportation costs and other time-consuming aspects of an in-house data center application.
Take advantage of cloud hosting server power for faster performance without upgrading in-house hardware. This is again a benefit of cloud computing across the board. Most companies just can’t afford, or even justify the expense to purchase the level of technology required of CSP infrastructure. This is once again a time-consumption advantage. With enterprise level processing speeds, compute time for even exceptionally large amounts of data will be substantially less without any need for in-house hardware upgrades. In fact, working with a CSP can drastically reduce infrastructure costs short and long term as there is no need for new hardware, and no need to upgrade outdated hardware in the future.
Just as many organizations are not accounting experts, which is why they outsource their accounting needs, it is likely that most bookkeeping companies are not IT experts. For most businesses the IT aspect can be a real drag on production and overhead. Moving QuickBooks to a commercial host, provides a drastic reduction in a variety of expenses, while offering a number of the well known advantages of cloud computing including universal access, CSP server power, and enterprise level security.
