Cloud-Based vs Desktop Bookkeeping: Tips for a Smooth Transition

West Sussex chartered accountants, James Todd & Co, provide tips to smoothly transition your record keeping processes from desktop to cloud-based bookkeeping

Every business owner will likely be aware of cloud-based software used for bookkeeping and accountancy – not least with the phased implementation of Making Tax Digital, which requires companies to submit varied tax reports in an MTD-compliant digital format.

However, many remain concerned about how well a cloud-based system would work, what level of training would be necessary, and the security of transitioning from desktop software or manual records to a completely new approach.

The James Todd & Co team, accountants in West Sussex with decades of expertise supporting UK business clients in every aspect of their internal controls and financial obligations, provides straightforward advice to help you choose the right way forward and upgrade your record-keeping processes without disruption.

Balancing the Benefits of Cloud-Based Bookkeeping

Any significant shift can feel daunting, but the reality is that cloud-based solutions have been around for some time and have evolved to provide a huge range of advantages, performing faster and more reliably than any legacy accounting system.

The best starting point is to establish your objectives and goals, such as:

• Finding ways to make reporting, tax declarations and management accounting quicker, easier, and less exposed to manual errors.
• Reinforcing data security safeguards and privacy controls to protect your commercial data and customer information from data breaches.
• Choosing software that will make it easier for colleagues and managers to identify issues such as cash flow shortages and access important information on demand.

Analysing cloud-based vs desktop systems demonstrates why these outcomes are so important. For example, a cloud bookkeeping system automatically updates when the software provider issues security patches or upgrades. In contrast, a desktop solution may remain outdated and with significant vulnerabilities unless the business actively purchases a new version or installs a downloadable update.

Likewise, features such as automated back-ups remove the risk of data loss. These tools are ideal for busy business owners, who can rest assured their data is always recoverable and is not reliant on manual back-ups or stored on a hard drive or disk drive that could become lost or damaged.

Choosing the Right Cloud Software for Your Company

Once you have established the positives you stand to gain by making the switch, it's also essential to adopt a systematic approach, beginning by working through all the potential options to make careful decisions about the software that is best suited to your business.

The most appropriate solutions may depend on the sector you trade in, the size of your workforce, and how you tend to manage your bookkeeping.

If you are unsure which cloud-based bookkeeping package best meets your requirements, you are welcome to contact the James Todd & Co team at any time. As Xero Gold Champion Partners, Xero Certified Advisors and Certified Sage 50cloud Authorised Experts, we can offer guidance throughout and suggest implementation plans that will ensure the process is well-managed.

Introducing Cloud-Based Accounting Software

There are several practicalities that are best practice in any software switch, such as backing up data beforehand, archiving older records, and keeping a copy of your chart of accounts to hand to ensure you transfer all the important information over and won’t need to start from scratch when you begin recording new transactions.

However, one of the most important aspects of changing your accounting software is staff training and education. For a big change to be successful and produce those positive outcomes you expect, you need your colleagues to be engaged and have all the skills necessary to make the best use of your new and improved software.

Change strategies can be valuable for larger businesses. Still, even very small companies can benefit from open discussions to explain the reason for the change, how it will improve processes or make bookkeeping more accurate and invite questions and dialogue from employees to address any reservations before the transition begins.

Comprehensive training in the tools, functions and features of your selected software is a great way to upskill your teams, ensure they are conformable and confident using the system, and know how to request help if carrying out a task for the first time.

Our training programme can be adapted to the size of the business and ensures your dashboards, reporting functions and integrations with e-commerce or other packages are ready to go. Companies can also implement additional training following induction tuition, giving finance colleagues greater capacity to use more complex functions as they become familiar with the system.

Migrating Bookkeeping Information to a Cloud-Based Upgrade

The migration phase is often the part of shifting to cloud-based bookkeeping that causes the most concern – but modern, high-performance cloud-based systems are designed to make data transfers secure and swift with bulk transfers that take minimal time.

Rather than lengthy manual data entry, bookkeepers and accountants can upload the chart of accounts, select the accounting periods they'd like to copy to the new software and continue their daily work without further interruption.

We've mentioned data backups, and it remains worth running a backup before the data transfer starts, purely because unexpected events such as a power cut could disturb the process.

Choosing your timing is another aspect which can influence the ease with which colleagues pick up on the benefits of a new cloud-based solution. Some businesses decide to transition from day one of their next financial year, others align the switch with the end of a quarter, and others might choose to move as quickly as possible, ensuring all records are double-checked to make sure the data transfer has been completed correctly.

It might also make sense to use a staged transition, initially moving some aspects of your bookkeeping and then rolling out cloud-based software throughout your organisation. For example, you might opt to deal with general bookkeeping initially and then apply the same transition to payroll processing once you're happy the new system is working well.

For any further advice about choosing cloud-based bookkeeping software, managing a transition, tax advice Chichester, or providing the professional training colleagues will require to make the best use of your new solutions, please get in touch at any time. Alternatively, you can learn more about our cloud-based switching service through the James Todd & Co website.

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About James Todd & Co

James Todd & Co have been providing accounting services for more than 30 years across Chichester, Farnham, Lavant, and Sussex and Hampshire businesses. Their clients trust them to provide bookkeeping, financial auditing and compliance, management accounting and financial advisory services.

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Source Company: https://www.jamestoddandco.co.uk/