Australian SME Business News and Accounting Articles

Managing the books manually will eventually prove difficult to maintain, especially if your small business is experiencing fast growth. If you can foresee that you will soon hire more employees, have more customers, and deal with bigger inventory, then it is best to switch now to the automatic, modern system of accounting. However, before choosing your first accounting software for small business, ensure that you have done the following:

Cloud accounting is still a small arena, and service providers commonly bank on the same features like integration, hosting, document management, and accounts receivable and payable. But if you want to grow your business faster and keep hours you spend on accounting to a minimum, look for additional features or services that facilitate easy accounting for small business.

Today, more and more businesses are moving their transactions and details to the cloud. The cloud, or also known as cloud computing, is like virtual office that gives business owners the chance to connect to their businesses anytime, anywhere from a computer. It is one kind of accounting software. News has it that its benefits are continually growing as well as more and more companies are seeing its advantages.

Millions of SME’s are not aware of how they could save business energy by using cloud computing, says E.ON.

According to a research by energy provider, E.ON, there are around 90% of SME’s that don’t understand that they could significantly reduce the amount they spend on IT energy by using cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves the delivery of computing and storage capacity as a service to a heterogeneous community of end-recipients over the Internet and entrusts these services with a user's data, software and computation over a network and are stored on servers at a remote location such as those involved in online accounting that stores accounting data entered into a network and stored on servers at a remote location.

It has been seen that cloud computing will continue taking the limelight even in the next 5 years. The conclusion was drawn after this said accounting software made it to the top 10 predictions for the IT industry. This was performed by the research body, Gartner.

By the end of 2016, more than 50 percent of Global 1000 companies will be storing their data and information in the cloud. This is a huge increase from the more than twenty percent who are already using the technology today.

However, there have been mixed reactions on this subject. According to Jignesh Shah, Vice President for Business Infrastructure Solutions of Software AG:

Cloud computing is amazingly making waves today with many small businesses availing it as their software for accounting. This Australian accounting software has allowed companies to enjoy higher efficiency at a lower cost. Cloud computing also allows companies to recover data, manage data and information, as well as ensure security.

BBC declared last year that the software for accounting has “gone mainstream” as many businesses have transferred their businesses to the cloud.

Not many countries have grasped the advantages and benefits that cloud computing offers like Australia.

In the new survey conducted by Forrester on behalf of VMware, Australia’s fondness for cloud computing, the accounting software for business, has once again been emphasized. This was according to the report of itWire.

Cloud computing has been perceived as a strategic business investment by some 47 per cent of businesses in Australia. This is in comparison to other markets as its number one benefit is cost reduction.

Compared to over a year ago, there has been an increase of seven percent in small businesses in Australia that already using accounting software for business. This is shown with 67 per cent of them using cloud computing.

With many companies now using cloud computing solutions, companies using these latest cloud computing solutions have been urged to make sure that they have a good relationship with the manufacturer that is providing them.

According to Seth Robinson, one of the authors of the CompTIA second annual Trends in Cloud Computing report, the so-called Service Level Agreements, or SLA, is a key factor in any deal to purchase and secure a cloud computing contract.

Robinson further said that a SLA is "very important" and an agreement must be reached prior to any investment in technology taking place. This is so because there are so many companies that go directly to the internet and just pick up services and sign off on things and begin using them.

Cloud computing is a new accounting software that deploys information in the “clouds”. This helps a business save space as they no longer need many computers to store data and information. The data are stored in a data center and web servers provide the information.

However, much as it is considered advantageous, there are users still who fail even after they have used an online accounting software. In order for a successful cloud accounting operation to happen, then the following factors have to be considered.

Cloud computing has become a trend for many large scale businesses. It is a accounting software that allows predefined users to access their data anytime, anywhere. The best part about it is that since it is online, there is no need for the business owner to be physically where the data source is. However, it has been advised that small and medium scale business should also engage in cloud computing.

"If you look at the market research that's being published now, I think in particular, the ready-made cloud applications that we call SaaS (software as a service) are certainly becoming a big element of choice for small businesses to quickly and cost effectively fulfill computing needs that they find emerging," said Phil Wainwright, Vice Chairman of Eurocloud.

The technology sessions at the recent AICPA Practitioners Symposium and Tech+ Conference in Las Vegas has raised one important lesson. That is the manner by which the accountant handles the business could mean the difference between staying in business and retaining clients or being lagged behind the competition and eventually closing the business for good.

However, no one can also put the blame on accountants for the slow response to change. The question here is not really with when they will accept the next wave of change, or if they ever will accept this change. It is how far lagged we will be when this happens.

Do cloud and mobile technologies really provide the answers for most firms?

The answer of AICPA is YES. Though, it has made no statements as to where the profession needs to go. If doubts of this notion arise, then the answer is nowhere else but in the statements and actions of the marketing arm, CPA2Biz, and its president.