QuickBooks is a near-perfect accounting application for businesses of all sizes. Its features include accounts receivable, accounts payable, billing, inventory, payment processing, and payroll.
QuickBooks has a dominating market share in the category of small business accounting software (measured as 94.2% in 2008 and 93% in 2011). According to Kathy Yakal of PC Magazine, the reasons that many businesses prefer QuickBooks to Sage 50 and other accounting applications are its ease-of-use, its large number of features, and its extensive selection of add-ons.
One thing that the desktop versions of QuickBooks, QuickBooks Accountant, QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, and QuickBooks Enterprise are missing, however, is the ability to access them from outside the office. This limitation of QuickBooks is especially troublesome for businesses with multiple offices or that have employees that perform most or all of their work off-site.
The problems with not having a single, consolidated, and anywhere-accessible deployment of QuickBooks may include:
- Having to deploy QuickBooks individually at each office
- Having to go to the trouble of importing the QuickBooks data from the secondary offices into a centralized repository at headquarters
- Employees not being able to access or use QuickBooks from home or when they’re providing services or selling products out in the field
- The company’s accountant having to travel in-person to gather financial data from each office
Businesses with multiple locations or a dispersed or mobile workforce can avoid these hassles by signing up for QuickBooks Hosting from IronOrbit. Unlike locally-installed versions of QuickBooks, our QuickBooks Hosting solutions can be accessed from anywhere with any Internet-connected computer, tablet, or smartphone. In addition, IronOrbit can host any version of QuickBooks—including Accountant, Pro, Premier, and Enterprise—and, unlike the stripped-down hosted edition offered by the software developer, we host only the full desktop versions of these applications. The features of QuickBooks Hosting that businesses with geographically-separated offices and workers stand to benefit the most from include:
- Enterprise-wide real-time bookkeeping. Because an IronOrbit Hosted QuickBooks deployment is centralized and can be accessed from anywhere, the accounting data of a business is always up-to-date, consistent, and accessible to anyone.
- Anywhere-accessible accounting. With IronOrbit QuickBooks Hosting, employees can continue to access and use their QuickBooks even after they leave the office. Not only does this mean that accountants can put in some extra hours from the comfort of their own home or their favorite coffee shop, it also allows employees that sell products or perform services off-site to do things like check inventory, process payments, input data, and generate invoices no matter where they are.
- Less hassles and lower costs. With IronOrbit QuickBooks Hosting, businesses don’t have to purchase or maintain any on-site servers. It’s also more cost-efficient for IronOrbit to host QuickBooks than it is for businesses to deploy the application on-site because of our economies of scale and our singular (and more efficient) focus on hosting.
- The same power and flexibility as the on-premise version. IronOrbit Hosted QuickBooks has all of the same features and launches and performs faster than a locally-installed desktop version of QuickBooks. In addition, IronOrbit QuickBooks Hosting and on-premise versions of QuickBooks have the same licensing system, so businesses with unexpired QuickBooks licenses don’t have to purchase new licenses when they switch to IronOrbit Hosted QuickBooks. Furthermore, IronOrbit Hosted QuickBooks supports all of the same add-ons as locally-installed versions of QuickBooks.
- Advanced data security. IronOrbit Application Hosting solutions are monitored 24x7x365 and are protected with firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion prevention and detection systems. In addition, each of our hosted QuickBooks deployments is hosted on its own private server. Our solutions also comply with data security regulations such as SOX, GLBA, and PCI DSS.
Businesses that need to host QuickBooks in a way that is both centralized and accessible from anywhere should contact IronOrbit at (888) 753-5060 or [email protected] and sign up for our QuickBooks Hosting solutions today!