FITbiz

Image via Wikipedia

“Cloud computing” is a commonly heard buzzword lately and refers to a change in the way computer programs are delivered to your company. Rather than being delivered by disc or download and being stored and executed on your local rigs, cloud software is stored and run on a remote server and accessed over the web.Many accountants are stating to commit to cloud computing. Are you one of them? If it is, good for you! Cloud computing is  unquestionably very nearly the rule rather than the exception.

Be aware, on the other hand, that there are probable risks with this movement.

We repeatedly take our office software for granted, but it has taken most of us many years to incorporate our office systems. Have you ever honestly considered the number of applications you employ each day to run your practice? From spread sheet programs to accounting software to your document manager – your time is usually scattered across a range of various systems. If our office was really optimized all of them could communicate with one another.

Specifically:

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do this without losing your mobile minutes?

You take a night off to meet an old friend. After a while your friend excuses himself. He says, “Keep talking. I’m just going to run out and feed the meter.” And so the conversation continues while your friend is three blocks away.

Of course this is a nice little story, but not many of us have the good fortune of making our fortunes dining out with friends. But this kind of communication is also vital professionally.

Now in a conventional software environment it’s unlikely that two people will have compatable messaging software, but in the cloud it’s easy.

Efficiency Matters

Although cloud computing may be an important resource and a real time saver, that potential dwindles if apps in the cloud can’t communicate with the programs on your computer.

Existing accounting software has been integrating with supporting applications for many years, so for the most part these programs are already pretty good at this. They are able to communicate effectively quite well with one another. It makes all of these applications more efficient. For example:

• Client records are updated when Tax talks to Engagement and Practice.
• Work papers are linked when Engagement talks to Microsoft Office.
• All applications to Document Management – and so on.

But imagine if Tax and Practice weren’t able to talk, or the link between Engagement and Excel was broken. You would have to move the data to other applications manually – resulting in a loss of productivity.

There Are Risks to Mixing Apps

Old school office apps like Word, Excel, and Quickbooks don’t usually play nice with web based ones like Google Docks and Quickbooks Online. The coding glitches are enough to cripple interactivity between them. You’re going to have real problems using a cloud service for tax software and trying to link it to a locally hosted tax manager.

Before adopting cloud services make sure you thoroughly test it’s compatability with your existing office systems. You may not be able to make the move piece-meal. You may need to make a more dramatic transition.

Protecting Your Data

Most small accounting firms don’t have on-staff IT experts. This means that reputable cloud services are better equipped to handle your data security in almost every respect. All good cloud services have security pros on-staff to protect your data from accidental loss. If you’re using a decent cloud service it’s exceedingly unlikely you’ll lose data to a virus, hacker, fire, theft, or natural disaster.

There are other security issues to consider, though. Data storage could become a serious problem. Many cloud applications will let you store client data online. It’s a lot quicker to store data in this manner than it is to upload and download files each time you work on them. Unfortunately it also leaves vital client data stored off-site. Can you imagine restructuring your business to rely on a cloud service only to find out it’s been bought out or closed? Likewise if a cloud service finds itself with a need to raise some quick capital what’s stopping them from changing the rules on you? Never allow your vital business files to be stored exclusively off site. Always backup your files to a local machine daily.

Proceed with Caution – But Proceed!

In short order accountants can anticipate finding all or most of their important applications are hosted in the cloud.

Until then mind the gap or you may pay a price.

About The Author

Brian O’Connell is the CEO and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country’s biggest website design businesses oriented entirely to accounting website design. His firm presently provides websites for more than 4000 CPA and accounting firms.

Related articles

• Open Standards in the Cloud (blogs.cisco.com)
• Common troubles with cloud computing (techattitude.com)
• HP launches cloud service beta (infoworld.com)

Cover via Amazon

As I look at my projections for 2011 I am trying to figure out how to maintain profitability in this challenging economy. And while I haven’t raised my prices in a while now, this sure doesn’t feel like the climate to raise prices . . . so how do I navigate this and make sure I stay a FIT business?

For my business, I am looking long and hard about HOW I price – instead of just thinking of our services as traditional hourly rate I am starting to explore pricing that is based on the value we deliver to clients. That gives us an incentive to become more efficient for our clients without constantly eroding our own income. I want to move to a healthy environment in which my interests and my clients interests are completely aligned. And I want to make sure we are creating customer delight always, not encouraging clients to ask why we spent 15 minutes doing one thing or another . . .

So on my short list is Ronald J. Baker’s Pricing on Purpose: Creating and Capturing Value . . . check it out! I think FIT businesses need to reflect on how they price themselves. Join me in talking through how we can all improve our bottom lines, even in a challenging economy!

PlusStuff helps small businesses grow by simplifying the execution of critical business functions, such as launching an integrated marketing campaign.

We are committed to providing the business services and constant support necessary to transform great ideas into even better companies.

We recognize that it takes much more than financial support to get a company off the ground, thus we provide assistance in every aspect along the way allowing you to develop and grow a profitable business.

With our business knowledge and experience, we can help you transform your vision into a business. We have managed and grown numerous businesses – some were stellar successes, some were not. We learned from both. Our executive team offers insight, experience, and a hands-on approach to cultivate, manage and grow commercially successful businesses.

We are committed to providing the business resources and constant support necessary to transform great ideas into even better companies. We recognize that it takes much more than financial support to get a company off the ground, thus we provide assistance in every aspect along the way allowing you to develop and grow a profitable business.

Related articles

• Pricing – in THIS economy? (plusstuff.com)
• Time Management for Entrepreneurs (fitbiztools.com)
• Show some Appreciation. (bayviewhunterspoint.com)
• FIT businesses budget (fitbiztools.com)
• Straight Talk About Social Media Marketing (understandingecommerce.com)
• Small Business Work Out Partners (fitbiztools.com)
• Tips for Easier Discount Giving (plusstuff.com)
• Small Businesses Use QuickBooks for Budgeting (plusstuff.com)
• Business Growth in a Down Economy (fitbiztools.com)

Image via Wikipedia

FIT businesses budget. Now is the perfect time to look back on what happened in your business in the first half of 2011, and put together your best estimates about what will happen in the rest of the year. Budgeting forces you to focus on what might happen, what might change in your business, and how all of that will impact you and your general strategy and planning. The exercise of creating a budget makes you define the relationship between the various things that impact your business – if my sales decline in this economy, what do I do about my staffing? What is my equipment purchase budget look like for this year? Should I invest more in advertising and marketing in 2009?

If you are using QuickBooks, you can actually create a budget using last year’s data and then just tweak as needed. So actually putting the budget together is pretty simple – the catch is to get the numbers “right”.

Once the budget is in QuickBooks, monitor your actual performance to what you budgeted. This will help you revise your budget and understand in detail how your income and expenses may vary along the way. It was also help you see how some trends in your business are going to back up and cause you more challenges down the line.

So commit today – take 30 minutes and create a 2009 budget in QuickBooks. Then commit to spending 30 minutes a month reviewing your actual performance versus your budget. It doesn’t have to be perfect – just do it. Your business will benefit tremendously!

PlusStuff helps small businesses grow by simplifying the execution of critical business functions, such as launching an integrated marketing campaign.

We are committed to providing the business services and constant support necessary to transform great ideas into even better companies.

We recognize that it takes much more than financial support to get a company off the ground, thus we provide assistance in every aspect along the way allowing you to develop and grow a profitable business.

Related articles

• Small Businesses Use QuickBooks for Budgeting (plusstuff.com)
• Importing web sales into QuickBooks (bayviewhunterspoint.com)
• Pricing – in THIS economy? (fitbiztools.com)
• Online Marketing Strategy (understandingecommerce.com)
• Cost of Marketing: What Is the Average Budget? (bjconquest.com)

Every business has specific activities which must be done accurately and be provided top most attention. Among these important activities in a business enterprise is bookkeeping. It’s but obvious that several business proprietors have taken this activity for granted thinking that this can be done the next occasion. Nonetheless, failure to consistently focus on your bookkeeping necessities can signify trouble. You can function out this situation effortlessly with the help from bookkeeping New York.

No single business enterprise can be productive without proper bookkeeping system in their corporation. Remember that every receipt included in your business transaction has value in your functions irrespective of how small the amount included is. This is the key to get a company’s smooth business operations. Nonetheless, there are certain entrepreneurs who rather spend more of their time in exercising ways to increase their sales and profit as opposed to hanging out in realizing their books. This may be a dangerous thing to be accustomed to. This can soon result to failure to figure out whether or not your business in certainly making profit or in any other case.

As a business operator, you should bear in mind that bookkeeping is as vital as making money. How will you manage to decide if you’re truly making income when you’re not working out your financial records? Sure, bookkeeping can demand an excellent bulk from your time. Yet this will not mean you could do nothing with regards to it. How about asking some help from the professionals? Bookkeeping NY is the good friend you can lean on to in cases like this.

It is true that supervising your financial records can streamline your business transactions. Or else, butting it in to your large plate of obligations can jeopardize your financial records. You’ll be in danger of getting into an erroneous report even though you only have carried out one single wrong posting. A number of entrepreneurs have been in this situation. Instead of giving up, a majority of them, specifically those who handles small businesses, have worked with bookkeeping NYC to be able to make things better.

It is simple to find the people who can provide you with the effective assistance with the emergence of online bookkeeping service providers these days. Soon, maintaining your records will be easy and convenient. These agencies hire competent accounting consultants and providers so you can make sure of obtaining best service. Efficient recording and accounting will be yours to reap the benefits of if you make this critical decision earnestly.

Related articles

• Essential Tips for Small Business Bookkeeping (smallbusinessbranding.com)
• Bookkeeping Outsourcing: the Unique, Competitive and Dynamic … (consolidated-outsourcing.com)
• What You Should Understand About Basic Bookkeeping For New Business Start Ups (pro2sell.com)
• Easy Business Bookkeeping With Business Credit Cards (smallbizbee.com)
• Seven Bookkeeping Tips to Save Time and Money (entrepreneur.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Did you ever wish you didn’t have to manually enter your web sales into QuickBooks? Have you wished that you could just press a button and have the information automatically import in? You can!

T-Hub is a great solution if this is all you need or want to do. Trust me, this can really save you a lot of time and headaches! Once you install T-Hub, you do a one-time set-up and mapping into QuickBooks. And then voila – when you have new web sales, you can simply launch T-Hub and ask it to look for new orders. You will then see a list of web orders. Simply press a button and instruct T-Hub to bring these into QuickBooks. Sales Receipts will be automatically generated for each web sale. This will take all of about 2 minutes start to finish. And it works like a charm!

This is one of those small changes that can make a big impact on your business. FIT businesses know that the right tools make everything work better. So if you are generating web sales, check out this tool to bring those orders automatically into QuickBooks. And if you have more questions, check us out.

FITbiz helps small businesses grow by simplifying the execution of critical business functions, such as launching an integrated marketing campaign.

We are committed to providing the business services and constant support necessary to transform great ideas into even better companies.

We recognize that it takes much more than financial support to get a company off the ground, thus we provide assistance in every aspect along the way allowing you to develop and grow a profitable business.

With our business knowledge and experience, we can help you transform your vision into a business. We have managed and grown numerous businesses – some were stellar successes, some were not. We learned from both. Our executive team offers insight, experience, and a hands-on approach to cultivate, manage and grow commercially successful businesses.

Related articles

• 140 QuickBooks Tips eBook is Ready to Help You (chris.pirillo.com)
• You’re the Boss: A QuickBooks Alternative for the Accounting-Phobic Owner (boss.blogs.nytimes.com)
• QuickBooks Pro 2011 (lockergnome.com)

Studies have shown that over 30% of U.S. businesses that take care of payroll in-house end up facing IRS audits and pay fines for payroll miscalculations? Would you like to get rid of the hassles of payroll processing while improving its efficiency? Are you aware that quality service providers can substantially shrink the costs of payroll processing? Are you ready to find out what characteristics distinguish effective payroll processors from the crowd? If yes, then please read on to discover the seven habits of highly effective payroll providers.

Habit 1: Understand accountability

Reputed firms are responsible for any errors in payroll and are swift to spot and fix them. Effective service providers use an in-built error identification system to catch errors before delivering checks or money transfers.

Habit 2: Compliance

Effective providers comply with all local, state and federal employment and tax laws. By using stringent checks and balances, they radically reduce or get rid of the likelihood of IRS audits and penalties for transgressions that manifest during payroll processing or payroll tax processing.

Habit 3: Online data transfer

To ensure smooth payroll processing, timely delivery and means to conveniently deliver payroll data to your provider is important. Effective service providers allow you to transfer data, essential for payroll processing, via the internet. They also offer online systems that can be accessed through web interfaces to stay away from any need for installation and maintenance of expensive software.

Habit 4: Allow flexible billing

All good payroll outsourcing providers offer you a variety of fee structures. Most impose an initial setup fees and a flat fee for every employee per payroll cycle. Some firms offer different fee structures that charge you extra, above and beyond the annual flat fee per employee, for additional services.

Habit 5: Multiple online tools

Payroll services should offer a range of online tools for your staff such as tools to view and print payroll stubs and tax forms and to make modifications to deductions. They also offer different online tools for business owners. These include tools to input time card information for hourly staff and tools to monitor payroll expenditures and deductions to enable you to assess and control your finances.

Habit 6: Great customer service

An effective payroll processing company will provide you with exceptional customer service with quick responsiveness to your questions. It is important that they are quick at fixing errors in paychecks, creating accounts for new employees and taking care of other payroll related issues.

Habit 7: Advanced services

Excellent payroll providers offer a variety of advanced services to further reduce your payroll concerns while enhancing its efficiency. For retirement plans, they work with financial advisers to support your staff in making the correct investment decisions. Other services include running background checks, distribution of key communications to staff members when required, and enrollment and monitoring of health care, life insurance and other benefits programs.

Evaluate multiple payroll providers, services offered and fees charged before making a hiring decision. Get references and uncover performance and market reputation of your preferred providers to assure yourself of quality and reliable service. Lastly, consult your accountant and attorney before signing the contract. Daljeet Sidhu is the author of this article.

Related articles

• Payroll tax cut won’t benefit all (dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com)
• Which Payroll Deductions Are Taxable? (brighthub.com)

In tough times, you have to work smarter, not harder . . .

It means doing more with less. It means leveraging your time wisely.

FITbiz provides you the tools to work smarter – We integrate a variety of tools in your business to make you work better – like linking QuickBooks so that it can seamlessly talk to your shopping cart. No more time wasting double entries. No more hidden fees.

At FITbiz we know it’s tough out there, but now is the time to train your business for success.

We offer a variety of time and cost saving tools that will help you become a FITbiz. It’s a small investment in your business to make a BIG difference in your bottom line.

You’ll be surprised how much you can save – contact us today!

FIT businesses budget. Now is the perfect time to look back on what happened in your business in 2008, and put together your best estimates about what will happen in 2009. Budgeting forces you to focus on what might happen, what might change in your business, and how all of that will impact you and your general strategy and planning. The exercise of creating a budget makes you define the relationship between the various things that impact your business – if my sales decline in this economy, what do I do about my staffing? What is my equipment purchase budget look like for this year? Should I invest more in advertising and marketing in 2009?

If you are using QuickBooks, you can actually create a budget using last year’s data and then just tweak as needed. So actually putting the budget together is pretty simple – the catch is to get the numbers “right”.

Once the budget is in QuickBooks, monitor your actual performance to what you budgeted. This will help you revise your budget and understand in detail how your income and expenses may vary along the way. It was also help you see how some trends in your business are going to back up and cause you more challenges down the line.

So commit today – take 30 minutes and create a 2009 budget in QuickBooks. Then commit to spending 30 minutes a month reviewing your actual performance versus your budget. It doesn’t have to be perfect – just do it. Your business will benefit tremendously!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Good Business Budgeting Can Help Your Business Grow (dohertyassoc.com)

Are you in the midst of trying to collect vendor information so that you can complete your 1099s? I often find that vendors are reluctant to share their tax id information and if you have already paid them, they often have little or no incentive complete your paperwork request. So my advice to you is to take care of this on the front end, so you don’t get stressed out on the back end. Before you pay a new vendor, ask them to complete a W-9 form so that you can “set them up” as a vendor. You can get a W-9 form on the IRS website at www.irs.gov. It is easy to just send this as an email attachment. If you request that a vendor complete this before you pay them, trust me – they have incentive to complete this quickly and get it back to you for your files! Plus this is the documentation that the IRS wants you to have on file . . . Once you have this information in your system, it is easy to input the information into QuickBooks. And once everything is in QuickBooks, printing our your 1099s at this time of year is a breeze! So resolve to reduce or eliminate 1099 stress – this could be your year . . .

Did you ever wish you didn’t have to manually enter your web sales into QuickBooks? Have you wished that you could just press a button and have the information automatically import in? You can!

T-Hub is a great solution if this is all you need or want to do. Trust me, this can really save you a lot of time and headaches! Once you install T-Hub, you do a one-time set-up and mapping into QuickBooks. And then voila – when you have new web sales, you can simply launch T-Hub and ask it to look for new orders. You will then see a list of web orders. Simply press a button and instruct T-Hub to bring these into QuickBooks. Sales Receipts will be automatically generated for each web sale. This will take all of about 2 minutes start to finish. And it works like a charm!

This is one of those small changes that can make a big impact on your business. FIT businesses know that the right tools make everything work better. So if you are generating web sales, check out this tool to bring those orders automatically into QuickBooks. And if you have more questions, check us out at fitbiztools.com.