Why Cloud Accounting

The future of accounting is in the cloud and the future is here. Before we dive into this topic, you must understand that your approach to accounting needs to change. Gone are the days where you use one accounting system. Cloud accounting applications are designed to be narrower than your traditional “one-size-fits-all” model. Each application has one primary function and they do it with excellence. If you just tried to use that one application, you would have an incomplete system. But if you combine these applications into one single system, you can customize it to meet your needs and still see the benefits we will discuss later. Today, I want to share three reasons why you should consider a move to cloud accounting.

The first reason to consider a move to the cloud is ease of access. Multi-users are becoming more necessary even in a small business world. It is more difficult to set up a system with multiple individuals on the same network than it is when it is all cloud based and can be accessed through the internet. In addition, when an individual needs a new computer, you don’t have to transfer the files to the new computer. You simply login!

Another reason to consider a move to cloud accounting is efficiency. It can take hours and hours every week to keep up with the data entry of an organization. Bills and credit cards need to be maintained regularly so that the business owner can monitor the financial health of the business. What if it could be done faster? What would that be worth to you? Certain cloud accounting applications (“apps”) use artificial intelligence to automate the bookkeeping process. An example would be Hubdoc, which reads the bill and pulls information such as vendor, invoice number, date, due date, and amount. It will pre-populate the bill in your system and all you must do is review and approve it. The result is that you get more accurate information into your system much faster than before. Another example is bank feeds. An online accounting system like Xero can pull in your bank transactions automatically. The user reviews and approves them with the click of a button.

The final reason to make the move is time savings. Time is our most valuable commodity and we often don’t have enough of it. Even though the cost to implement a cloud accounting system may be greater than your traditional single accounting system, the time savings and other benefits far outweigh it. To illustrate this, I want to share an example in our own business. We were serving a daycare that has roughly 25-30 employees at any given time, most of which are hourly. We implemented a system of time tracking that sync’d with our payroll software. That means the hours once approved from the time tracker, automatically loaded into the payroll software for seamless processing. What used to take 3 hours to run payroll, now takes 15 minutes! Those time savings were reinvested in the organization to make additional improvements in their business. We are now tracking data on a more granular level (by classroom). That would have been impossible without the additional time savings we received from this move.

The bottom line is that there are many benefits to moving your accounting to the cloud. The question is, what is it worth to you?