Small business owners wear a lot of hats. You are an employee, stakeholder, manager, jack-of-all-trades, as well as owner. The last two years even added more challenges. You had to handle mask mandates, shutdowns, and remote work. If you’ve never dealt with remote work before, “cloud hosting” might be a term you’ve heard of but don’t know too many details about.
Cloud hosting typically involves having a third party manage and host all your IT infrastructure. Technology experts will thus handle all the technical issues and changes while you focus on your business.
Remote Access
Businesses use the cloud for just about everything now. Tools like Microsoft 365 can be used to handle emails, spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. Cloud storage services can be used to collaborate and share files with employees and clients. And with the right cloud accounting software, you can sync all your necessary data to the cloud as well as manipulate the data and view real-time financial reports based on it.
Cloud-based accounting software will integrate all the information from Xero, Intact, and QuickBooks and give you financial dashboards to view the status of your business even when you don’t know where you will be working that day. Choose any device, including your phone, from any location in the world, and you will have access to the same information that everyone else in your business does.
Eliminate IT Problems
Depending on the size of your business, you may host all of your applications through a managed IT provider, or you may have IT staff on hand. If you have your own IT department, you know the hassle of managing your software. Software must be updated regularly to get new features, fix bugs, and patch security issues to keep your systems running smoothly. Things also may go wrong, and your technical staff has to troubleshoot the issue and get things back up and running quickly.
When you move your accounting software to the cloud, both the applications and data are now in your cloud provider’s environment, and you no longer have to maintain local servers or software. You can focus on your business while all technical details are handled by experts.
Minimize Risk
Your data is vital to your business, and if you store it in a corporate data center, it could be at risk of any number of issues:
- Insecure access could expose it to hackers.
- Hard drive failures could cause data loss.
- Backups could fail because storage isn’t available.
Cloud providers use the latest security best practices. They back up data regularly — and do so redundantly — so your data is always secure and always available.
Grow Business
When you move your accounting software to the cloud, you no longer have to:
- Buy new servers and keep them updated with the latest updates and patches.
- Upgrade your networks, firewalls, and VPNs to allow your employees to work remotely.
- Worry about overheated processors, bricked hard drives, or failed motherboards.
With your software on the cloud, your cloud provider worries about all of these problems. They will be handled by experts who will fix any problems quickly. And you can use the time and money saved to focus on growing your business.
Prepare for the Future
Many technologies are moving to the cloud, and businesses expect the 24/7 availability that the cloud brings. According to CaseWare’s 2022 State of Accounting Firms Trends Report, 65% of accounting firms plan to adopt cloud technologies within 12 to 24 months. By moving to the cloud, you position your business for the future.
Now that you know all the benefits of cloud-based accounting, you don’t have to move to the cloud alone. At Pacific Accounting & Business Services, we are experts in cloud-based accounting and can set you up with fast, easy-to-use, and flexible accounting software you can use remotely just as easily as you can in the office. Learn how PABS can help by reaching out today.
