Tips for switching to and using Cloud Accounting

by | Apr 17, 2020

  1. You need reliable internet access to use cloud accounting. If your connection goes down, totally cloud based accounts will be inaccessible.
  2. Check the functionality You need is included – Your business may need inventory control, job costing, payroll, customer relationship management, etc. Not every cloud accounting offering comes with everything you need. Sometimes you have to pay more than the minimum subscription, or it’s a matter of paying for an add-on. For example, payroll is typically an extra-cost feature.
  3. Find out whether any add-ons are required do the job You need – Add-ons are extra pieces of software that extend the functionality of the cloud accounting system. Take care to check how well integrated the two products are – you want to avoid having to enter the same data. For example, you can eliminate the headaches of legal accounting using Clio and QuickBooks Online – from managing funds in trust to client billing, paying employees, filing taxes, and more.
  4. Take the training – investigate the training and support offered by the providers you’re considering. Otherwise there’s a risk of wasting time doing things the hard way.
  5. Take advantage of bank feeds – bank feeds can be a big timesaver. Transactions on your bank and card accounts are fed into your accounts, drastically reducing the amount of data.
  6. Snap the receipts – a growing number of systems – sometimes with the aid of add-ons – simplify the recording of cash transactions by letting you take a photo of the receipt with your mobile phone. The image is then processed to extract the information and generate the corresponding transaction in your accounts.
  7. Don’t mix business and personal transactions – even if you are a sole trader, it makes sense to maintain separate bank and card accounts for your business and personal transactions. Business accounts can be quite inexpensive, and the separation makes it much easier to use bank feeds and automatic allocation.
  8. Send automatic invoice reminders – cash flow can be a problem. To reduce the need for personally chasing overdue invoices, cloud accounting systems and their add-ons increasingly provide support for reminder emails. You might send a “just wanted to remind you…” message a couple of days before an invoice falls due.
  9. Collaborate online – a core feature of cloud accounting is that you and your bookkeeper and/or accountant have simultaneous access to the same data and therefore have an up-to-date view of the business. Everyone is on the same page, and decisions can be made on the basis of the most current information.