Business Accounting Software

About 1510 days ago Business Accounting Software

Online Accounting: Numbers in the Cloud

Financial management is the delicate balancing act that transforms marketing success, operational results, and managerial savvy into a viable, durable business. In order for a small business to be efficient and effective in managing its finances, computerized accounting and digital financial services tools must become part of its daily kit. While such tools are traditionally desktop-based software programs, a new breed of online financial management applications has emerged in the last few years, taking advantage of the growing confidence that businesses are developing in the Web as a safe business environment. Now that entrepreneurs are indeed becoming comfortable with the “software in the cloud” model and the inherent benefits it offers, they are in growing numbers starting to look beyond e-mail or office productivity to more sophisticated and sensitive applications like financials. Web-based financial management applications are not new — think online brokerage and banking. But fully featured online packages are just now fully blooming, not only rivaling in functionality their desktop-based counterparts, but also extending their usefulness through value-added online services such as bill payments, electronic checks issuance, digital invoicing, or customer credit verification. Moreover their collaborative features, such as multi-user access and accountant view make it a natural fit for the “on the go” lifestyle of most modern small business managers. Accounting online The heavyweight of small business accounting, Intuit, has launched an online alternative to its Quickbooks software that can be finally considered a valid option. While its previous attempts were not very successful, the current version of Quickbooks Online, priced from free to $34.95/month, is a quality product that, while not as powerful as the desktop version, does a pretty good job. Peachtree, a longtime small business favorite, also has debuted a well featured online version starting at $150/year and representing a very viable alternative. Notable new online-only accounting packages for small businesses include Clarity Accounting and Less Accounting which is nicely integrated via mashups with Web favorites such as Basecamp, Shopify, and PayPal. Almost ready to re-launch is NetBooks, a product with a bit of a troubled history, but with a very interesting and complete set of features and now in final Beta release. Accounts can now be opened and used for free. A truly superb product, designed for mature small businesses is Intacct. Created from the ground up as a Web-based application, it provides very sophisticated accounting features and it natively integrates with a number of other Web-based software offerings such as Salesforce.com. For even more mature and large organizations, requiring not just accounting but a comprehensive online suite of business management applications, NetSuite is the leader in the space. Online bill payment If you think for a moment about what it is truly involved in paying your business bills using the traditional checkbook and snail mail, it is not difficult to imagine that there must be a better way to do it. Well, there is, and it is called “online bill payment.” While banks have offered similar services for quite a while as part of their online banking offerings, there are independent services that go well beyond the electronic check, and make the process of receiving, screening, tracking, and paying bills extremely efficient. Both Paytrust — owned by Intuit — and CheckFree can receive bills on your behalf, scan them, make them available to you in digital format via a secure Web interface, and allow you to pay them with a click of the mouse, issuing an electronic check or an EFT order.  This approach can be adopted for all vendors and all invoices, and cuts the average time needed to process a bill by more than 50 percent — in my experience — and greatly simplifies the record keeping aspect, eliminating paperwork. Online invoicing When it comes to get paid, or at least to efficiently issue and send invoices, there are a plethora of Web services available. The most notable is Freshbooks, a pioneer of the Web 2.0 era, which allows for efficient time tracking, billing, quoting, and more.  Intuit has its own offering tightly integrated with Quickbooks online called Billing Manager, while Zoho Invoices comes as part of the Zoho online productivity suite. A roster of other minor offerings fill various professional niches and differentiate on price and unique features, including: Free Agent, Simply Invoices, Invoice Place and Billing Orchard. The Web is opening the doors to scores of new software developers every day, reducing the costs to develop new products and services, creating competitive opportunities for better, less expensive products. Online financial software is just now entering the realm of full acceptance among small businesses. Expect an explosion of new, more tailored applications from large players such as Google and Microsoft as well as upstart companies. New products will surface on the horizon in the next couple of years offering true integration with banking, invoicing, billing, and all the other financial services that small businesses use every day, together with more robust ways to analyze performance, giving way to a new generation of well managed and more robust small enterprises. Andrea Peiro is the Small Business Market Expert at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Founder of the Small Business Technology Magazine, a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses, he has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. You can reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

About 1510 days ago Business Accounting Software

Tech Talk: Circuit Maker Automates Accounting Processes

PLX Technology, of Sunnyvale, Calif., designs and makes integrated circuits for customers in the computer server, storage, communications, industrial, and consumer electronics industries. Arthur Whipple, chief financial officer of PLX, tells IncTechnology.com that upgrading to new financial software helps the publically-traded company ensure the proper internal controls that allow him to produce high quality financial statements. Elizabeth Wasserman: Tell us about your business. Arthur Whipple: We’re a high tech Silicon Valley company that builds integrated circuits, which are in an area of connectivity that goes into enterprise class electronics. Our major customers include Cisco, IBM, Huawei, Dell, and various customers that make big servers and big backbone systems. We make devices that stitch together components such as the microprocessor and memory to get them to talk to each other. We’re the glue in these systems. Wasserman: Why did you need new financial software? Whipple: We decided to go with BlackLine Systems. I’ve installed this twice now. First, at my previous company, Silicon Storage Technology. The issue here was initially about account reconciliations. In order to have reliable financial statements, you have to look at each account in the financial system and make sure each agrees with reality. If you have a petty cash box, you need to count it and make sure it’s there. You have to make sure somebody actually counted and made sure the receipts are there. If you have a bank statement, the bank doesn’t know about the checks you’ve written that haven’t been cashed yet. You have to do a reconciliation from outside to the general ledger. You’re looking for an external confirmation for an internal number.  Wasserman: Why is this important? Is it just because you’re a public company? Whipple: What you are trying to do is make sure that the financial statements you put out there are correct. A lot of judgment goes into financial statements. You want to make sure you don’t have mistakes in your financial statements. The reputational risk with poor financial statements can be a real problem. You can lose credibility with your shareholders and that creates huge opportunities for attorneys and other people to come in and make claims when people make mistakes in financial statements. Wasserman: What was behind the timing of the change? Whipple: People have been doing account reconciliations forever. But up until 20 years ago they were done with pencil and paper. They made lists of numbers and added them up and reconciled them to bank statements. Over the last 20 years, people have started to use spreadsheet technology, of which Excel is the most popular. But the programming is done by amateurs. In most financial systems, the code is done by professionals, and locked up, so that you can’t change the code without someone checking it thoroughly. With Excel, an accountant can decide to make a formula change and that can throw off all your numbers. Academics have done tests and found that up to 80 percent of the Excel spreadsheets out there have some error in them. We were able to get rid of all our Excel based reconciliations and move to a program that was hard-coded by people who know what they’re doing and locked down so people can’t make errors.  BlackLine automates the entire process, virtually eliminating manual errors. The other side of this is that we are also tracking tasks. We’re making sure that the things that need to get done actually get done. It’s a glorified to-do list. There are dozens or hundreds of things that have to happen and aren’t reflected as a balance in the financial statement. You have to check with the transfer agent to make sure equity is properly stated. You have to make sure you know the number of checks that are outstanding. The analyses in 10Ks or 10Qs need to be done reliably, and you need to have a history of what you did. In this case, if I write a memo to file regarding a fixed asset impairment, that impairment letter or memo can be stored for people who need access to it and it doesn’t get lost as you have with paper documents. Once we have uploaded the file, it’s protected from loss. Wasserman: What have the results been? Whipple: The results have been excellent. There are a couple of things you don’t know for many years. We haven’t had any issues at all in terms of account reconciliations not being done. I have a dashboard I can look at and I know that all the reconciliations and tasks have been completed and, if not, I know who to go to. When we get to filing SEC documents, everything that needs to be done has been done before I sign my certification that the financial statements have been properly done. CFOs and CEOs are now personally on the hook for the accuracy of those statements under Sarbanes Oxley. I am now confident that all the things required to be done have actually been done in these financial statements.

About 1875 days ago Business Accounting Software

Taking Accountability: Selecting the Right Finance Software

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William Watcherley, the English dramatist, once said that “necessity [is the] mother of invention.”  How correct he was. When early humankind needed a way to transport ourselves relatively quickly, the wheel was invented. And when we needed to stop walking from the couch to the television to change the channel, the remote control was invented. From daily household tasks to business responsibilities, our needs have become more advanced, requiring new inventions to help fill those needs. But with so many options, selecting the right technology can be overwhelming, often leading decision-makers to implement costly solutions that don’t necessarily meet the primary needs of the company. Selecting the wrong technology can be harmful to your business, especially when it comes to how your money is accounted for and distributed. Many businesses face challenges in selecting appropriate accounting and finance software. It is essential to find a software solution that can not only support business-critical tasks such as payroll, expense tracking, financial reporting, and invoicing, but also grow with the company so that expensive upgrades can be avoided. As solutions continue to advance and more vendors emerge on the market, the question becomes, “How do I select the right solution for my business?” Kicking the tires You shouldn’t buy a home without researching the neighborhood, or a car without looking at reliability and safety reports. So when selecting an accounting software package, take the time to research the solutions on the market and identify what fits your company’s needs. As you conduct your examination of accounting software, here are some common-sense (but often forgotten) questions to ask yourself as you search for the right solution: What do I really need in an accounting solution? It’s easy to get caught up in the “bells and whistles” that many accounting solutions offer. Before selecting the most complex software, take the time to assess your company’s accounting needs. Do you need to be able to track inventory? Do you have special reporting needs or requirements?  If all you need are basic accounting features, purchasing a complex (and often, expensive) accounting solution will probably end up doing your organization more harm than good. Should I run the software in-house or consider a hosted solution? For organizations with limited internal technology support, a hosted solution can reduce the complexity of implementation by providing the required infrastructure to run the software.  Too often the costs of new hardware, disaster recovery and internal hardware support are lost in the cost equation of the new software. If I decide to implement an accounting solution to run in-house, how do I evaluate the systems implementer?  The good news is that in today’s environment there are many high quality software solutions for you business.  The key difference in a successful implementation is often the direct result of the quality and experience of the company hired to manage the implementation.  That may be a value added reseller (VAR) that sells the software and implementation services or it may be a systems integrator.  The decision of who implements your software requires at least as much diligence as selecting the accounting solution itself. Will my new software be compatible with what I already have in place? For a majority of businesses the answer to that question needs to be “yes.” Purchasing software and hardware can be expensive, and if your solutions don’t mix well, the result can be disastrous. Examine how difficult it will be to convert historical data from your old system. Evaluate what other system interfaces may be required. What kind of support does the vendor provide? In a perfect world, all technology would work correctly all the time. Unfortunately, that is not the case. As you evaluate your accounting software options, closely view the support that each vendor provides. Do you need to be able to reach a help desk 24/7? Can you access user forums to gain insight from real-world customers? What kind of documentation is available?  Are there online resources to access?  Are upgrades included and if so, how often? What is involved with implementing an upgrade? What are the annual maintenance costs?   Being prepared with the right kind of support for a potential technology problem can make the difference between a minor blip on the screen and a major company problem. From cost to compatibility, selecting the right accounting software may seem like an overwhelming process. But it doesn’t have to be. Taking the time during the selection process to evaluate your business requirements and asking good questions during the evaluation process can help you select the best fit for your company’s accounting needs. Lisa Metcalfe is a Regional Practice Leader in the Technology Leadership Practice of Tatum LLC. Tatum is the nation’s largest executive services firm, providing financial and technology leadership nationwide.