The advancement of accounting software has progressed steadily in the past decades. With the invention of cloud accounting software, we can now get the accounting for our business done much faster and accurately. After all, we want to channel more of our time into revenue-generating activities, right?
Let’s look at the top 3 differences between cloud and desktop accounting software.
1. The power of automation
As business owners, there are dozens of activities you need to do. Some of the more crucial ones are marketing and product development. However, there are also back-end accounting activities that you will need to perform, although they may not be revenue-generating. Such activities include generating invoices for customers, recording invoices from suppliers, performing bank reconciliation, etc.
Most companies in Singapore are still heavily relying on manual work in getting simple accounting for their businesses done. This issue causes not just bulky accounting departments but also unmotivated employees.
One good example will be a bank reconciliation. It is an accounting activity that a company can easily automate through cloud accounting software. However, most companies still stick to legacy desktop accounting software and perform their bank reconciliation manually. Business owners will need to start reviewing their accounting processes. The longer they stretch, the more money they will need to fork out to maintain the accounting departments.
2. You can now work using any computers
The biggest problem with legacy desktop accounting software is that the application sits on the desktop! That also means your data resides in the hard disk of a single particular computer. The implication is that your accounting staff can only perform the work on that computer.
If you engage an external accounting firm to perform the bookkeeping, you must send the computer over to them. It is just too much of a hassle! In addition, you will not be able to work on your accounts while the laptop is away.
With cloud accounting software, you can resolve the above problems effectively. There is no more passing around of laptop and everyone can work on the account from any computers.
3. You have your financial information anytime, anywhere
As business owners, there are many decisions you will have to make. If you are using desktop accounting software, you have no alternative but to rely on your accounting staff to retrieve the information.
However, you have all the information you need on your laptop with cloud accounting software. There is no need to call your staff for simple data that you can get faster than picking up your mobile phone.
Conclusion
In business, we want to maximise profit. There are two simple ways of achieving this. We need to increase our revenue and reduce expenses.
We will need to have a good understanding of digital marketing to increase revenue. These include things like SEO, SEM and different social media channels.
The use of cloud accounting software will not increase your top-line in any way. However, it helps to reduce your expenses. It will, in turn, increase the bottom line, i.e. our profit. There are many other articles around accounting and business in my blog. Do feel free to check out others too.
– Yanto Wong –
