Here is how I packed for the trip or for any trip. I have a packing system. First, I get showered, dressed, and ready to go myself. Then I begin packing. I pack the way I get dressed in the morning. First I pack underwear, then pants and shirts, then socks and handkerchiefs. Next I pack my electronics. This is a very important step. I need to be certain I'm not missing any cords I will need to recharge my iPhone or laptop. Finally, I pack toiletries and prescriptions. I have another set of procedures for how I pack these, but I'll spare you that in the interest of time. I close my suitcase and laptop bag. I am done, total elapsed time, one hour from shower to the door.
On the other hand, Laura spent two hours the night before the trip packing and almost two more to get ready the next day. Just before we left, she discovered she hadn't packed her bras and panties. Four hours and she hadn't packed the first items she needs each morning.
Let's compare our results. I spent one hour packing and Laura spent four hours. For those of you, who are great at math, she spent four times as much time as I did. In other words to accomplish the same work, I needed 25% of the time she spent. Based on this scientific productivity study, women should earn only 25% of what men earn. I am in favor for equal pay for equal work. You should be too. These study results are accurate to within 2%.
Does your accounting software work for you, or do you work for your accounting software? Do you find yourself entering data, or hiring someone to enter data, that then has to be reentered somewhere else to be useful? When you're traveling, do you have to lug around ten pounds of laptop and find a high speed internet connection to stay connected to your accounting data? Do you worry that, with the next storm of the century, years of customer sales information will be flushed into the nearest ocean as your file server floats down the street? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are working for your accounting software and not the other way around.
Fortunately for you, in the past year, accounting software technology has moved to the cloud. This change is bigger than any change to accounting technology since Y2K. Moving your accounting system to the cloud will make your bookkeeper more efficient, make your data easily accessible from anywhere in the world, and ensure your data will be available even if your office is bombed by a disgruntled employee.
Moving your accounting system to the cloud will make your bookkeeper more efficient by reducing or eliminating duplicative data entry. She will no longer have to enter data in multiple systems or places. In fact, in many cases, there will be no data to enter at all. The technical term for this is “zero data entry.” Zero data entry means using data for your accounting system that was produced by someone else. Cloud based accounting solutions accomplish zero data entry by accessing credit card and bank transactions directly from your bank. Very shortly, you will have access to data from your vendors and customers as well.
Wave Accounting Software (www.waveaccounting.com) is a fine example of zero data entry at work. Wave connects with thousands of banks to grab your banking transactions, such as credit card charges, electronic payments, and deposits, and enters them automatically in your accounting system. You can get a profit & loss statement with absolutely zero data entry on your part. Best of all Wave is free. I wouldn't recommend it if you need sophisticated internal control or process lots of receivables or payables. However, for sole proprietors using simple cash basis accounting, Wave is a great solution for getting your records ready for your CPA. In fact, you can give your CPA access directly to your data, no more exchanging thumb drives or CD's.
Moving your accounting data to the cloud will give you instant access to your data any place you can get an internet connection, and you don't even need broadband. Cellular access or Wi-Fi through tablet devices works fine. The reason you don't need a lightning fast broadband connection is that all of the processing occurs in the cloud. Your device, whether a desktop, laptop, or tablet computing device, just accesses the data. You can process customer orders and take credit card payments while in your customer's office or at the beach. I would add you can do this in a strip joint, but writing that just seems like cheap titillation. Trust me, I have not tried this. That's my attorney tells me to say.
QuickBooks online edition is a perfect example of having the full functionality of your accounting system on an iPad. QuickBooks has robust accounts receivable and payable capacity. You get access to all of that functionality anywhere or on any device where you can get a web connection. Previously, to use hand held devices to enter customer orders, you entered the orders on a crippled version of your accounting software that would reside on your device. Then you had to physically connect the device to your desktop computer and run a synchronization procedure. Now you can enter orders in real time directly into your system. Your shipping department can process your orders and give you a confirmation before you leave your customer's office.
Finally, moving your accounting data to the cloud makes your data more secure. That seems counter-intuitive. How can opening up your data to the world wide web make your data more secure? There are three main security risks to your accounting data stored on your server.
The first risk is physical security. The biggest risk to your data is theft. I don't mean theft by someone hacking into your server. I mean someone walking out the door with your file server – a break in. In the cloud, you don't have a server in your office. You only have workstations, and even your workstations have no data on them to steal.
The second security risk is the physical safety of your data in case your office floods or catches fire. Maybe you have an off-site backup. Maybe it will actually be restore-able. I can't tell you how many times clients have called me, because we had the last known good backup of their accounting data. They tried restoring their backups and found the backups either never happened or didn't complete properly.
The third security risk to your data is unauthorized access from outside your office - hacking. If you have any computer connected to the internet, you are vulnerable. There are plenty of free programs available to determine your vulnerability to hackers. I guarantee your vulnerability is orders of magnitude higher than you suppose.
Your accounting data in the cloud is safer than your office server for all three of the security risks. Your cloud data is safe from both physical theft and destruction. Your cloud provider does your backups for you. They know how. Their up time is measured is “nines.” Four nines is the gold standard for cloud providers. That means your data will be accessible 99.99% of the time, far better than with your office server.
Finally, your data in the cloud is more secure from hacking. The major accounting system cloud providers undergo rigorous testing and are graded on the effectiveness of their security systems. The gold standard for cloud security is “SOC2.” The testing to achieve this level of certification involves both the physical security of your data as well as vulnerability to hacking. There is no perfect guarantee of security in any situation. Cloud security isn't perfect, but it doesn't have to be. It only has to be better than what you have. It is.
Here's a message to the douche bag in the Obama campaign commercial who complains that after he and his cohorts were fired by Romney, the company was worth $100 million more. What does that say about you???? It says you're a turd to be flushed. Get a job and earn a living. Anytime a company is worth more AFTER you are fired, you weren't worth much, probably not even the water to flush you. Mitt Romney is nicer than I am. For $100 million, I would not only fire the dude, I'd beat him to death with a baseball bat. Hopefully, this guy didn't reproduce. We need to let evolution do its job.
As always, thanks for reading. If you want real tax and accounting advice, please visit our main S&K site at www.skcpas.com. We have made a whole bunch of improvements to our client center in the past week. Please take the tour.
Until next time, let's do it to them, before they do it to us.
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