You may have heard the term ‘cloud’ being bounced around and when referring to ‘cloud accounting’ it simply means that your accounting information is stored and accessed online.
We work in the cloud every day without even realising it with email, social networks (such as Facebook) and even music apps like Spotify. It’s really not something to be afraid of and if anything, working online can give you more flexibility, freedom and security.
Traditionally, desktop software has been used for managing your finances and this involved purchasing a piece of software that you install to one desktop computer. You access your accounting information from the same computer and manually backup and save your data. This can be time consuming and is by no means fool proof. What if your computer breaks or gets stolen? What if you need to work from home but your computer is in the office?
Managing your accounts online means that you can access your data from anywhere in the world, as long as you have a secure Internet connection. Data is securely stored elsewhere so there’s no need to backup and save data. We take data storage and management very seriously and use hosting partner’s Rackspace to do this. Our security measures even match that of online banking.
Using an online accounting service for your business also means that you never need to manually update your software. Updates are automatic; most of the time you won’t even realise they’ve been done! It also means that you never need to worry about changes to legislation as this will happen automatically.
If you work with an accountant, you can allow your accountant access to your data too so they can access your accounts in real time rather than waiting for you to send the most up to date version.
Benefits of cloud accounting
If you are ready to embrace the feature and to say goodbye to old accounting software, cloud accounting is the solution you are looking for. Many major organizations and government agencies around the world are already migrating their platform and systems to the cloud.
Benefits have been appreciate everywhere and this comes – as already said – with the ability to access data in real-time, via a browser from anywhere in the world. But just to summarize, have a look at what the benefits of cloud accounting are:
- Reduced cost – online accounting is a cost effective solution regardless of the size of the organization.
- Ease of access – cloud applications allow users worldwide to access financial data from anywhere, at any time without having to download and install software of any kind.
- Low TCO – cloud accounting applications works on a subscription model and can scale according to your company’s needs.
- Improves Business Performance – organizations have the scope to respond to business changes without incurring in migration costs because everything is outsourced.
Sage One is the online accounting service from Sage UK and comes with a free 30 day trial so if you’re thinking of heading to the cloud, there’s no better place to start. Visit http://uk.sageone.com today.