Moving your accounting to the Cloud

The world of accounting systems for SMEs has had one dominant player for over 30 years.  Accountants had very good reasons for recommending Sage to their clients.
 

• They could transfer the data to their own systems;

• There were many, many accountants and bookkeepers that had used it before and so were more employable;

• You could link the data into Excel to produce much better management information; and last but not least;

• It is a good product, with continuous improvement.

There were other products that did a good job of competing, Quickbooks being particularly successful.
 

And then,  Xero accounting appeared on my scene as a Cloud based accounting software that new businesses were rapidly adopting.
 

Designed to work on the Cloud, Xero allowed owner managers to look at their financial information on the move and access and enter data from anywhere.
 

However, what was really cool was that they decided to let their product be developed by third party software developers just like Apple did with their App store. Of course, on the early days, the stalwarts were far superior products but as time has progressed, the level of sophistication and capability had improved and in my experience, Xero is now the default choice for a new business.
 

Xero doesn’t have a project costing module like Sage, so Workflow Max developed one to link with Xero. It must be good as Xero have now bought the company!
 

Any many others have joined the Xero market place. You can now get all your receipts scanned straight in via Receipt Bank, generate a cash flow forecast with Float and produce impressive reports showing Key Performance Indicators with Crunchboards.
 

Of course, Sage is playing catch-up and has its own Cloud based product, Sage One. Only time will tell if Sage will be the Nokia to Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy or the Kodak to digital cameras!