Creating your accounting firm is the biggest challenge that you will initiate, and possibly it can turn into a rewarding decision. Your dedication towards hard work allows building your firm, and you can offer real value to your clients that could flip and shape your destiny.
As per today’s technological advancements, it would be better to choose an option that can provide reliability, security, and a convenient working environment for managing the accounting and bookkeeping of any financial institution.
Cloud hosting is the answer to your requirements. It provides a consolidated platform for your business functions, where you can deploy various applications and can store an enormous amount of data without the stress of data security and management. Being an accountant, you can access accounting data from anywhere and anytime at your convenience. Cloud computing will give you more benefits more than you have expected.
You can deploy cloud computing in your office, but then you have to take care of all the expenditures that involve infrastructure, electricity, and equipment for server cooling.
For a cost-effective setup, you can choose cloud service providers that can take care of all your requirements based on available subscriptions.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is an association of servers where their capabilities get merged to provide high-performance computing. They provide a work environment as a single integrated server.
Cloud hosting providers offer various applications with enormous storage space. If any server goes under downtime, the other servers can handle the entire load and ensure business continuity.
Models of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a limitless technology and flexible so that you can use it in different ways. Still, there is some specific and basic model that you can deploy in your firm as per your requirement. The basic models are :
SaaS (Software as a Service)
This model gives you access to third-party applications or stores the files on the cloud. For example, Google services like Google Sheets or Google drive are the SaaS model.
Google offers you to use these applications and store the data in its cloud. You can control your data where these are Google’s products.
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service )
This model offers various resources as per your business requirement. You can use these resources to host accounting software like QuickBooks. You can get customized service from the cloud service provider and, you can pay for the service you use. You will get a virtual server with secured credentials.
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
With this model, the cloud service provider gives you a platform to build an application. It provides you operating system, database, and server resources to develop and create your application software.
Requirement of Cloud Hosting
Accounting and bookkeeping are tedious work that impacts the accountants handling the various issues in the process. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the productivity of accountants by optimizing the accounting process.
Cloud computing is the solution that sets you free from the complexities of the accounting process along with the cost-effective options to manage and access secured way to your work.
The different issues which accountants encounter daily and solution offered by cloud services are:
Accessibility
The traditional way of accounting is related to desk-service culture. The accountants need to go to the office and makes the accounting job dull and tedious work.
In cloud computing, accountants can access their accounting process from any location. It is possible due to internet connections that connect cloud servers with digital devices.
You can conveniently access your accounting software and start working from your smartphones, laptops, or tablets.
Sharing of Data
The old way of data management and sharing includes paperwork, but now the digital mode of transferring data via emails is the trend.
Sharing the data and files via email can become a repetitive way of editing and creates multiple files for the same information. Also, specific information gets stored in the local system, and you require permission from the user to access the files.
Cloud computing offers the facility to view, edit, and share files without recurring emails. You can easily share the files and accounting data with everyone via a cloud platform, and they can review and edit the files as required. Real-time information sharing leads to improved productivity and minimizes repetitive work for the staff. You can also share the data with the clients to have transparency towards your business.
IT Cost and Maintenance
Budgeting is the main criteria for any business planning. The high-performance servers deployed in your office are expensive. Maintenance and updating the servers requires timely replacements and investment of money and time. It can impact the budget of your business high time.
With cloud hosting, you are free from all the stress of maintaining and costing servers for your business. You require only basic hardware that you can access. You can even access your accounting software with mobile phones, laptops, or tablets without any on-premises hardware set up. It is the better cost-effective solution for your business.
System Restrictions
Local hardware comes with limited resources. The RAM, storage and processing hardware gets upgraded only by replacing it. Therefore, for the system upgrade, the IT team needs to perform all the reconfiguration of your hardware that costs extra time and effort.
With the cloud service provider, if the server needs an update for storage, then you can contact your service provider and, they will fulfill your business requirement instantly.
Security Measures
The financial data contains sensitive and confidential information of the clients that require privacy and security. Local hardware is more prone to downtimes, and sometimes it can cause loss of necessary data.
The cloud service provider offers you security advancements and makes sure that your confidential data is safe in the cloud environment. You can access the information securely as the data transmission gets encrypted. Also, you will have multiple-factor authentication login credentials that only you can access. They set up firewalls in the cloud infrastructure to monitor data to protect it from any malicious software.
Technical Support
The digital setup of the accounting software requires technical support most of the time. For resolving these issues, you will need a dedicated IT team. You need to hire a skilled IT team to handle your technical issues, and it is expensive too.
In cloud hosting service, the provider gives you technical support round-the-clock for resolving issues relevant to your network. It also takes care of set up, maintenance, and updating the process as required. It gives you an optimized business solution.
Conclusion
Every financial institution should consider migration of their business process to stay updated with advanced technology. In today’s technology world, accountants are also emerging as advisors to clients and business growth. Cloud computing allows accounting professionals to stand out as sharp and more productive professionals instead of just handling the regular accounting and bookkeeping workflow.