Online accounting software is becoming more popular in the market due to its exciting features that help grow small businesses. Everyone prefers to focus more on their business rather than bookkeeping, and that’s where online accounting software comes into play. Additionally, companies of any size must have a solid grip on their finances to maintain a healthy cash flow and achieve higher profits.
Online accounting software is mostly designed for small businesses to help them enter the digital world, enabling them to manage their business finances, invoices, expenses, and more from anywhere. A lot of time and effort can be saved by reducing duplicate data entry and avoiding complex calculations. Overall, accounting software can take the stress out of managing finances.
Small business owners can efficiently manage all their business needs using a simple accounting solution like Output Books. Let’s look at how online accounting can help grow your business.
What is Online Accounting Software?
Online accounting software is used for online billing and invoicing, inventory management, expense control, sales tracking, purchasing, reporting, and more in a professional and efficient way. It helps visualize your cash flow in real time through its detailed dashboard and reports. You can stay informed about your business with instant updates from all of your company branches.
Also known as Web based accounting software can be used either over Internet or Intranet. The software runs on a remote server and users can get connected to it from web browsers. There is no need of installing application in every system. It can be just accessed from any web browser from their own devices. Such way your remote branches can access the software easily and stay live.
Let us see both the advantages and disadvantages of Online Accounting Software in detail.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| Quick Data Entry & Faster Payments | No access without Internet |
| Accessibility from anywhere | Browser Reliance |
| Easy to use (User friendly) | Server Down Concerns |
| Accuracy in Numbers (Accounting) | On going Cost |
| Centralized Data Accessibility | Data Theft over Internet |
| Backup & Security | Less customizable |
| Save Cost | Reduced Speed |
| Unlimited User Access | Less Flexible |
Why is Online Accounting Good for Business? – Advantages
There are many features offered by web based accounting software which makes it essential and useful for business accounting today.
Quick Data Entry & Faster Payments
Create Online Invoices instantly, send invoices as emails to clients & get paid faster. Manage your cash flow by knowing each and every detail of transactions, customer payment history, your profit history, etc.
Accessibility from anywhere
The most important feature of online accounting software is it can be accessed from anywhere via Internet connected devices. Have every business data in your finger tips. Create Invoices online and send to clients wherever you are. Take care of your business with ease.
Easy to use (User friendly)
It is designed very user friendly that anyone without accounting knowledge can start using it.
The interface is made to work fast & easy to enter your billing & accounting data. Output Books is very easy to learn and use.
Accuracy in Numbers (Accounting)
Accuracy is a very important factor when dealing with financial data. Humans make errors in calculation of complex data. Such errors can be eliminated by accounting software and your business data will remain accurate. It also saves a lot of time spent in accounting processes done manually.
Centralized Data Accessibility
A biggest advantage of web based billing software is the accessibility form centralized data. All your accounting data are available online and can be accessed at any from any system web browser. Any information and financial data can be accessed by authorized users from any devices.
Backup & Security
Back-ups are taken frequently in online accounting and it is automatically saved in your company’s server. So that, your billing / accounting data remains safe even when there is server crash. So there is less chance of losing data in online accounting software.
There is always a high risk of accounting data theft in case of physical bookkeeping & offline bookkeeping. This can be overcome by online accounting which allows you to create separate login for each user, assign user roles & set permission for users to access. So that, no one can access the application without permission.
When anyone creates / makes any changes to any transaction / changes anything in the software, you can easily find who did it and when was it done. By assigning separate user login to your users, every activity done from each login will be logged.
Save Cost
The cost spent on installation of the application, maintenance, additional hardware in every client system can be saved.
Unlimited User Access
Any number of users can be created and assigned various user roles. Access permission can be set for each user role based on your needs. For instance, Administrator can have access to all features of the application whereas Sales Representative can have view, add, edit/delete permission only to Sales module.
This way you can restrict what to be handled by whom in your accounting software. Any user can access their own account from anywhere and update billing/accounting data easily.
Why Online Accounting is not good for business? – Disadvantages
There are some reasons that make Online Accounting not suitable for certain business. And some people find offline/desktop accounting more comfortable to have everything under their control.
No access without Internet
Online Accounting Software purely depends on Internet. So when the Internet fails, your accounting work will get stopped which in turn will impact your productivity. Frequent loss of Internet might cause serious problems in business and there will no access to data without Internet. Also, the Internet Speed is very important. Slow speed of Internet will affect the performance of software.
Browser Reliance
There might be problem to access the web app using certain browsers of various versions. Some features / display in the web app may not be supported in some browsers. So while purchasing web applications, it is necessary to ensure that it supports the web browsers that you and other users are using in your company. It is better to purchase a web application which supports variety of browsers.
Server Down Concerns
At times, your server might go down which will also affect your clients from accessing the application. This may occur rarely but when it occurs will impact your work. And a lot of time will be wasted until the server is back to form.
On going Cost
Online Accounting Software does not require huge amount initially but monthly charge will add up as a higher cost which is an important disadvantage. But some software like Output Books provides web app as one time payment.
Data Theft over Internet
Even with the good encryption in web app provider side, there might be data theft while transferring data over Internet. So you should always remember accessing from anywhere through Internet & transferring data over Internet is vulnerable. It is the user’s responsibility to make your account secure.
Less customizable
Usually, web app accounting can only be less customized, changed or configured when compared to desktop accounting software.
Reduced Speed
The speed will be lighter slow when compared to offline accounting software installed locally on a server.
Less Flexible
It might not support all the functionality that you require. Also some software might not allow you to transfer your data from their one to other software if you need to move to new application in future.
Finally, it is in the hands of business owners to decide which one is better for their business.
Though online accounting software has security concerns on the user side, it can be made more secure by taking certain measures, such as protecting access points, managing passwords safely, avoiding public Wi-Fi networks, and using only authorized devices.
Are you planning to move from offline accounting to online accounting ? No more waiting.
Just give it a try!