Explore our ultimate guide to cloud accounting software for the answers to all your questions on this popular solution
As with many other technical fields, cloud computing has become increasingly popular in the accounting industry in recent years.
In fact, a recent survey found that nearly two-thirds of accounting firms plan to adopt some form of cloud technology in the next two years, and one-third of those plan to do so within the next year. [1]
Join us to learn all about cloud accounting and how this innovative technology can help firms improve collaboration, visibility, and efficiency.
What is cloud accounting?
After the days of paper ledgers, accountants utilized traditional (or on-premises) software that either ran on individual desktop computer hard drives or a server owned and maintained by the firm to do their jobs.
Nowadays, forward-thinking accounting firms and large corporations utilize cloud-based accounting software to host software remotely on the cloud. With cloud accounting, the software application is accessed online through a cloud application service provider.
Learn more:
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How do cloud accounting and traditional accounting software differ?
Cloud accounting software offers all of the same core functions as the traditional software, just through the Internet. The key differences between the two lie in the vast opportunities cloud-based software can offer your firm.
Cloud accounting software frees up time, space, and resources while increasing the flexibility of firms by allowing employees or third-party accountants to access encrypted accounts from any location and device with proper login credentials.
What are the benefits of cloud accounting?
In addition to the flexibility provided through its online nature, cloud accounting software can offer many benefits, including:
- Improved accuracy: Traditional accounting software often requires manual data entry, but with cloud-based software, financial information is automatically updated and financial reports generated in real-time. This means that account balances are always accurate and fewer errors occur.
- Ease of scalability: With on-premises software, your firm is often required to buy new hardware or pay licensing fees for database, systems management, and additional software as your firm grows. Cloud accounting eliminates these extra expenses and space fillers by being a fully remote solution that can easily scale up alongside your firm.
- Cost savings: Cost savings is a top concern for cloud users with one survey finding that 59% of respondents cite optimizing cloud usage for controlling costs as their organization’s top cloud initiative for 2022. [2] Whether it’s through new equipment or required maintenance, traditional accounting software is often more expensive than cloud solutions in the long run. It also saves money by needing less initial server infrastructure to store data and in-house staff to maintain the system.
- Better security measures: Without reliance on physical hardware, cloud accounting is more secure than on-premises software since no trace of critical financial data is left on any computers that access the cloud. Cloud solutions also keep data encrypted and password protected as part of maximum security protocols. Most cloud accounting software also maintains multiple backup servers to ensure you can always access your data even if one server network goes down.
- Integration capabilities: Most cloud accounting solutions can seamlessly integrate with other cloud solutions that your firm utilizes which will improve overall efficiency and increase the capabilities of each of the separate solutions.
- Increase in collaboration abilities: By using unique login credentials that offer different levels of visibility, your firm can allow anyone on your team or your clients’ teams to easily access their financial information as needed. This can greatly improve teamwork efforts internally and improves transparency from a client perspective. In fact, ease of collaboration and increased remote working capabilities is the top benefit accounting firms hope to derive from adopting cloud solutions. [1]
Related resource:
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Should your firm be utilizing cloud accounting?
With the ample advantages it can provide to firms both large and small, your firm should consider adopting cloud accounting software, if you haven’t already. If you want to keep up with your competitors and better serve your clients, cloud accounting will offer the digital connectivity and always-on availability to do just that.
How we can help
As your managed IT services partner in Southeast Michigan and Central Florida, you can trust our team of experts at NeverBlue IT to support you in finding the best or managing your current cloud accounting software. The right cloud solution will not only benefit your team, but your clients seeking to work with the most secure, up-to-date accounting firm on the market.
As your IT partner, we offer:
- Proactive technology support
- Onsite IT support
- Fixed monthly price
- And much more.
Ready to take your firm to the next level with the right IT partner?
Schedule your free consultation today to get started.
Sources:
1: CaseWare | 2022 State of Accounting Firms Trends Report
2: Flexera | 2022 State of the Cloud Report
