5 Reasons Entrepreneurs are Making the Switch to Paperless Accounting
You didn’t get to where you are today by relying on others. But wait, that doesn’t sound right. If anything, we ARE successful because we rely on others. The success of small business owners relies on the strong bonds we build within the entrepreneurial community. Together we network, recommend the latest must-reads, and strategize to help build and improve one another’s organizations.
Why then, are we so skeptical when it comes to relying on outsiders to store our data? Just a few short years ago, most small business owners thought they’d never trust an outside company to store and protect their financials. Today, however, reveals quite another story.
More and more entrepreneurs are switching from traditional accounting software to digital or cloud accounting, here’s why:
1. Access from Anywhere
How many times have you had to excuse yourself from a conference call because a client asked for numbers you weren’t expecting? Or that one time you finally got out of the office to enjoy a nice sit-down lunch and your phone rang before the waiter even took your drink order. Sorry, client, can I get you those numbers in an hour, once I rush back to the office?
You’re not always at your desk or even at your office. But you don’t have to be. By switching all of your accounting to paperless, you can access your data anytime, anywhere, on any device. And yes, going digital will simplify your life. It will also make you more efficient.
2. Immediate Access to Upgrades
It’s important to choose an infrastructure that can scale with you. When you grow, it grows to scale with you. It’s equally important, as a small business owner, that you don’t put your business on hold waiting for an update to complete. Frantically rearranging your calendar so a new installation doesn’t interfere with an important meeting doesn’t sound fun.
Switching your accounting to digital will afford you more time since upgrades and updates are automatic and available immediately. Everything is done online. No installations, no lost time, no headaches.
3. Superior Security
It’s far better—and safer—to hire a company whose business depends on security versus relying on your IT guy to haphazardly check the server once a month, if that. Forget month-end; imagine if your server crashed at year-end. What a nightmare! If you don’t put your data into the cloud, you and only you are responsible for backing up your data. Backup and recovery needs to be priority number one for every company, start-up or fortune 500.
The data isn’t stored on your hard drive. This means if your laptop is stolen, your data remains safe and secure, pending the perpetrator doesn’t have your login information. If you can access the internet, you can access your data.
4. Premier Quality Team Members
With cloud accounting, employees can work remotely. This means you can reap the benefits of being a distributed team. Going digital means you’re not limited to the talent in the city where your office is located (local candidates only, please!). You can hire the most qualified team members who completely gel with your company vision because going digital quite literally makes the world your oyster.
5. Multi-User Access and Shareable Documents
Worried you don’t have the most current version of the document you’re working on? Or you have to wait 30 minutes for a team member to complete her updates and exit before you can access financial details? Single user access is just one of several problems traditional accounting software has.
Making the switch to cloud accounting will save you from bouncing data from one desktop to another. It will save you from storing your data on an unreliable USB drive, or spending thousands of dollars keeping backups. Now you can access the same documents at the same time, making updates simultaneously.
This makes collaboration easier because it doesn’t limit the work to one user. With digital accounting, several users can share a document and be in-the-know. This leads to better decision making since you’re dealing with real-time reporting. Looking at numbers that are three months old won’t help in the decision-making process.
Digital accounting is relatively new to all of us. But, and for obvious reasons, it’s the future. Even mid- to larger-sized companies are gearing toward making the switch to digital accounting for one reason: it’s revolutionizing the way we do business. If we can’t rely on that, what can we rely on?
Ready to make the switch? Basis 365 can get you started. Talk to us today.
