Successful accounting firms must provide high-value strategic support to multiple offsite clients including high-net-worth individuals and small businesses, plus run a tight ship in house. One key to maximizing the profitability of client accounting practices is reducing time-consuming manual efforts. Another is ditching high-maintenance technology in favor of modern, cloud-based financial management solutions. Accounting software choices have never been more numerous, full-featured and capable than the products offered today – most of which are positioning for the benefits of cloud financial management. Cloud accounting software solutions are target organizations in the market with efficiency, speed and control for a mobile workforce that needs to be plugged in 24/7 with access to real-time data.
According to a recent article in CPA Practice Advisor, 3 Steps to Identify and Fix Bottlenecks in Your Firm’s Workflow, CPA firms should closely evaluate their current tools to see where inefficiencies can be improved by adopting automated solutions. Once weaknesses are confirmed – typically blatant and time-consuming manual bottlenecks – accounting firms should look to develop new tool sets to do away with cumbersome manual processes and establish centralized, standardized client information processes that proactively monitor project progress and status – delivering greater real-time visibility into capacity and performance.
What’s so great about cloud accounting?
- Cloud accounting software products vary in complexity and features offered, with many products designed for use by companies of a certain size, such as enterprise-level businesses or SMBs. Depending on the scale of the solution, features for payroll, time tracking, or expenses are easy to utilize.
- Cloud computing has increasingly become a solution for organizations. It’s an innovative and increasingly popular model of software deployment that offers enterprise-class software function without traditional up-front infrastructure costs or the unpredictable support and maintenance costs of on-site software and hardware – from infrastructure to security to personal productivity to workflow.
- Cloud accounting software leverages cloud hosting on remote servers, similar (Software-as-a-Service , SaaS) models, but with the flexibility, scalability and collaborative force of working in the cloud. With cloud accounting, finance teams can benefit from real-time reporting and visibility throughout an organization, with mobile collaboration empowering teams to keep accounts balanced, accurate and updated any time, any day and from any location – accounting efficiency and transparent financial management never stop.
- Today’s leading solutions, such as Sage Intacct, deliver real-time business visibility via easy to create dashboards and reports. Comprehensive financial consolidation, reporting, and analysis across multiple business entities. Anywhere, anytime expense report submission, approval, audit, and reimbursement, increasing visibility into your company’s travel and expense spending patterns. Plus, an increased cash flow due to on-time payments and shorter cycles.
The reality is, accounting firms today are increasingly shifting financial management processes to the cloud. Cloud accounting software is dynamic, giving CPAs a real-time picture of finances at different levels and for different projects and operations. Cloud accounting deployment is quick, efficient and, for competitive accounting firms – cloud accounting is here to stay.
