How Tax Season 2024 Will Be Beneficial For Cloud-Based QuickBooks Users

QuickBooks Desktop is a robust accounting application and has assisted multiple industries with their financial needs. Now with the tax season 2024 around, its need will be much greater than before.

However, before you head into tax season 2024, here is a question. Do you still want to use your traditional QuickBooks (QB) desktop setup or ease your accounting processes by leveraging cloud-based QuickBooks?

While conventional QB systems have been in use for years, they lack certain features which may greatly assist you during tax season 2024. Take remote access, for instance. Unlike traditional QB Desktop, cloud-based QuickBooks can be accessed from anywhere, anytime. This way, you can access your QB data at any time and assist your clients even during non-business hours.

Here are some reasons detailing why tax season 2024 will be beneficial for cloud-based QuickBooks users:

1. Remote Accounting

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown restrictions drastically impacted modern work dynamics, forcing industries to either shut down or function remotely to continue their business operations. However, this turned out to be a boon rather than a curse for some businesses, as working remotely made their employees more productive and efficient. Now with tax season 2024 approaching, you will want to avail those benefits and let your employees work remotely to efficiently manage the tremendous workload that comes with the upcoming tax season.

Cloud-based QuickBooks can be remotely accessed from anywhere, anytime via an internet connection. Unlike a traditional QB system, which is bound to the device on which it has been installed and cannot be remotely accessed. Cloud-based QuickBooks can be remotely accessed from devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

2. Security Infrastructure

In the accounting industry, CPAs and accountants have to deal with sensitive client data such as Social Security Numbers (SSNs), bank details, credit/debit card numbers, personal information, and account statements on an everyday basis. While accountants require this data for carrying out their daily operations, any illicit exposure could jeopardize their clients’ safety, making them more susceptible to financial frauds and risks. It may even affect your firm’s reputation leading to a damaged market image and lowered customer trust.

While a traditional QB Desktop offers limited security, QB cloud has a multi-layer infrastructure. With cyber-attacks rising steeply in 2021, reputed cloud-based QuickBooks providers allow you to thoroughly protect your clients’ data and maintain privacy by providing a quality-backed security infrastructure with modern anti-hacking measures like an IDP (Intrusion Detection and Prevention) system, AI surveillance, multi-factor authentication, bank-grade 256-bit data encryption, network filters, the latest anti-malware/antivirus solutions, and armed security for guarding data centers. This makes your clients feel more assured while dealing with your firm and ultimately bringing in more business during tax season 2024.

3. IT Responsibility

Unlike conventional times, accountants today need the latest IT infrastructure to decrease manual errors and maximize productivity. If you decide to set up an in-house IT infrastructure, you need to solely handle all the infrastructure-related tasks like procuring necessary parts, maintenance, updates, etc. It requires you to invest considerable time managing them, which may shift your attention from crucial accounting-associated operations and decrease your overall performance—something you don’t want as tax season 2024 is approaching.

However, with cloud-based QuickBooks, the entire cloud infrastructure is managed by your competent QuickBooks hosting provider. They handle all the management, with most reputed service providers offering round-the-clock IT support (including national holidays). In the end, all you need is to manage the end devices which you will be using to access QB on the cloud. This way, they will take care of all the operations such as deployment, IT support, data migration, troubleshooting, and more so that you can freely handle all your accounting tasks without any IT worries.

4. On-Demand Scalability

If you are using your on-premise QB setup, scalability is another thing that is guaranteed to give you a headache. In the accounting sector, the computational load varies seasonally. During the tax season, the workload increases drastically, for which an accountant needs more RAM and storage. While scaling up at that moment will give you the necessary resources, once the tax season is over, the same resources are no longer required and thus remain unutilized until next year. And this is where the main problem lies.

The hardware, no matter how advanced, is meant to go obsolete after a few years. This means, even if you scale up now, the coming years may require more resources. In the end, you must revamp everything, which will lead to heavy capital expenditure. However, QuickBooks cloud is different. It offers on-demand scalability, where you can rapidly acquire additional resources by simply informing your QuickBooks hosting provider. Unlike in-house IT setup, they can quickly provide you with the required resources without significant delays and are added as a part of your monthly subscription fee. Also, once the season is over, you can scale down and save up on the extra expenses.

5. Data Availability

Now termed the new gold, data has become a powerful tool for assessing organizational performance, devising operational strategies, and making critical business decisions. Also, today’s clients simply want more than traditional accounting. They want a proactive approach from their accountants that includes a real-time focus on cash flow, fraud detection, etc., for which continued data access is necessary. However, most organizations use QB Desktop, which stores their data locally, at a greater risk of getting lost.

With tax season 2024 approaching, more and more clients will be wanting you to give them an approach, which if your local storage gets damaged/destroyed, how will you provide them? Also, data as in general, is necessary for daily organizational tasks, and any data loss may lead to a slowdown or even shutdown of your firm’s operations. This is where cloud-based QuickBooks comes into play. A renowned QuickBooks hosting provider maintains several data centers which create regular data backups. These servers are strategically located to minimize any negative impact and are equipped with advanced fire/smoke detection facilities, cooling systems, cyber-attack protection, and much more. So, even if one data center is damaged, you can still access your data and continue your business operations.

6. Operational Cost-Effectiveness

While tax season 2024 is a great opportunity for your firm to bring in a considerable revenue collection, you must judiciously use your resources for managing your firm’s operations and look for cost-effective methods for task completion. However, using a traditional QB setup comes with a considerable capital requirement which may disrupt your financial balance. Firstly, you must spend extensively setting up and deploying your IT infrastructure and then investing further to maintain it.

Also, you have to buy/rent space, manage your office rentals, ensure proper working conditions, and provide basic employee necessities. All this calls for quite a hefty capital allocation, something you can easily avoid with QuickBooks cloud. Since your service provider bears the entire IT responsibility, you don’t have to spend considerably on it. You only have to provide basic devices for your employees to access QB data, or you can even implement a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy, which is cost-effective and improves productivity. And since QuickBooks cloud can be accessed remotely, you can even avoid maintaining office space and go entirely remote to save up your expenses further.

7. Performance Ability

There is no doubt that QuickBooks is a premium accounting application. However, there are some industry-specific functionalities and tools which QuickBooks needs help with and hence requires third-party integrations to meet those requirements. When you integrate add-ons with a traditional QB setup, your system performance is bound to show signs of system latency and ultimately affects end-user performance. But QuickBooks cloud is different.

Reputed QuickBooks hosting providers deploy High-Performance Computing (HPC) servers that can easily handle the performance requirements. So, you can integrate as many add-ons as you want without worrying about slowed system performance. Also, with tax season 2024 approaching, you need a QuickBooks solution that can quickly process large volumes of data and provide a seamless end-user experience.

Conclusion

Cloud-based QuickBooks can transform your accounting processes during the tax season 2024. It also promotes paperless accounting, leading to fewer expenses and making it easier to manage and sort the files.

Are you looking to try cloud-based QuickBooks for tax season 2024? Get in touch with our Solutions Consultant at 855-264-8722.