Why Your Accounting Business Needs Hosted QuickBooks During COVID-19?

COVID-19 has been an eye-opener for companies in terms of their business workflows, client expectations, and the IT infrastructure deployed. In an unprecedented move, some businesses had to transition the entire workforce to remote work.
For accounting businesses that use different versions of QuickBooks Desktop software to carry out their functioning, it was even more challenging as they had to facilitate secure data access of their critical accounting data to remotely-working accountants.

To overcome the security and remote accounting challenges, the best solution is to host your QuickBooks on the cloud of a service provider. Cloud offers your QuickBooks (and subsequently your accounting operations) with advanced capabilities such as remote access, better security, flexible infrastructure, and more.
Let’s ponder over some factors that make QuickBooks hosting the right solution for accounting businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Work Freedom

As a majority of the workforce is working remotely during the current COVID-19 times, the accountants need a flexible solution to work remotely. However, locally installed QuickBooks can be accessed from the office only, posing a challenge for the accounting firm.
Hosted QuickBooks offers accounting professionals the convenience to work from remote locations at any time. As your QuickBooks license is installed on remote cloud servers, it can be accessed remotely on internet-connected devices like thin clients, smartphones, laptops, and tablets.
This comes as a boon during COVID-19 as the accounting businesses can carry out their operations from the comfort of their homes, reducing health risks.
Recommended Reading – How Can Accounting Firms Manage Their Remote Work?

Secure Accounting Operations

Accounting operations require a robust security architecture as they work with confidential customer data and financial information.
With QuickBooks and accounting data on cloud, any theft or malfunction of the office desktops and laptops does not lead to data loss. In addition, QB hosting providers deploy a multi-level security environment with safeguards like end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, network monitoring, OS patching, intrusion detection, DDoS and ransomware prevention, among others. Such robust security ensures smooth operations even from remote locations during COVID-19.

Minimized Capex

In the COVID-19 challenge dawning upon the accounting world, it became essential to move the operations to a remote working environment. However, it rendered the existing on-premise IT infrastructure idle. Accounting businesses had to provide new devices to the workforce with the existing security policies and applications, leading to substantial costs.
However, by adopting Hosted QuickBooks, accounting businesses can eliminate the capital expenses (CAPEX). As QuickBooks is hosted on the cloud (along with data and all other applications), there is no need to deploy the on-premise IT infrastructure. Moreover, according to a study, employees are not at their desks 50 to 60 percent of the time. During the COVID-19 situation, businesses can reduce the office space by minimizing the hardware equipment.
QuickBooks hosting has proved to be a game-changer for businesses, leading to most considering a full-time remote working environment.

Business Continuity

Customer satisfaction is the top component to business growth in any sector, more so for a service industry like accounting. However, during the pandemic, offering uninterrupted customer services has become essential for sustenance in the market. This calls for continuous business operations, with the accounting professionals being at the beck and call of their clients.
The hosted QuickBooks providers ensure continuous accounting operations on the cloud made possible by their redundant and fault-tolerant infrastructure. Most providers are able to guarantee an uptime of 99.99% to their customers, which means only a few minutes of downtime in a year.

Expert Support

One department that has had its work cut out during the COVID-19 pandemic is IT. Providing IT support remotely has not been easy. As the workforce is in diverse locations, the response and resolution time has increased significantly.
QuickBooks hosting providers offer accounting businesses with round-the-clock customer support. The server components and data traffic are monitored continuously and any issue at the backend is resolved without you experiencing it. Still, if there is an issue, you can contact the support team anytime via call, chat, or email.

Unified Platform

The error-free flow of information among the accounting team and clients requires a smooth communication channel. Emails have been the traditional go-to platform for this, despite it leading to long threads and multiple file versions. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting businesses need a more efficient platform for collaboration with remote clients.
QuickBooks hosting offers accountants the ability to share their files on the common cloud platform. It does not matter where the accountants and clients are; every individual can login to the cloud using their credentials and view the files. Moreover, the admin can set access policies giving rights to certain users according to their roles in the organization.

Reduced IT Efforts

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the CIOs have had the critical duty to ensure a smooth transition to remote working. However, with the time crunch and the inexperience of previously executing a remote working strategy, it is quite an uphill task for accounting businesses.
When you decide to host QuickBooks on cloud, you are free from all the IT-related tasks. The competent service providers in the market offer managed services that include all the essential IT services. Apart from migrating your entire accounting process to the cloud, they also take care of hardware maintenance, upgrades, and application updates.

Flexible Infrastructure

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the growth cycle of businesses worldwide. While a majority of businesses saw a major decline, some experienced unforeseen growth. With such disruption, the IT requirements of accounting firms also needed adjustments. The on-premise IT infrastructure offers limited options in that regard.
QuickBooks cloud is a flexible platform that can be altered as per the current IT requirements. The service provider can add or remove server resources such as RAM, users, storage, and processing power instantly upon your request. Moreover, you need to pay only for what you use.

QuickBooks Hosting Offers a Competitive Edge

Hosted QuickBooks can be the difference between you and your competitors in the COVID-19 pandemic by helping you server clients better. It offers a robust security architecture where you can accomplish all your accounting tasks from remote working without the scares of cyberthreats. Your accounting business also gets a high-performance infrastructure that is otherwise an expensive proposition to deploy on-premises.
If you are still reluctant to opt for QuickBooks hosting, ask the provider for a free trial to make an informed decision.
Want to try QuickBooks Hosting for free, start your free trial now or get in touch with our Solutions Consultant at +1-855-223-4887.