QuickBooks cloud hosting provider take on the modern day accounting methods with cloud automation.

What are the requirements to become a cloud hosting provider for QuickBooks?

Of course, there are certain pre requisites that a QuickBooks cloud hosting provider should meet in order to have a dependent cloud system for their users. As lucrative as it seems for the cloud companies, without the proper setup of a hosting environment, it is neither possible nor advisable to service the users of financial industries.

The infrastructure of cloud companies is different from each other, but still there are few parameters which are almost same for these companies, most of them are related to their setup.

Scalable Systems:

Most of the cloud users of accounting & financial industries are small business owners, as the time passes, their business keeps on growing and there comes the need of a solution that can help them scale their requirements as their growing business needs.

To be able to fulfill this, cloud hosting provider for QuickBooks have to develop an infrastructure that is scalable at any given point of time, this is called scalable systems.

The resources on the cloud are limited as per your QuickBooks cloud hosting plan, once you are at a point where you have exhausted those resources , there will be a need of a significant additional to those resources.

Now, the good thing about cloud is it is all virtual and there is no need of deploying additional hardware in order to scale your systems, a QuickBooks hosting provider can easily scale the resources required.

These resources can be RAM, CPU or SPACE; you are going to need more after a certain period. This ability to scale your cloud server without having to add any hardware to it is very essential and a must for cloud companies who are looking to host accounting & finance related software.

However, this is not a free service; there are nominal charges for adding these resources on your cloud server which adds up to your fee. It is not always the case for everyone as it completely depends on whether your business is in a stage where it needs more.

John Smith of Quick Cloud Hosting has to say: “Out of 100 % of clients, only about 28 % are the ones with in need of additional resources after spending 2-3 years on cloud and only 7 % of active users are there who seek constant need of additional CPU, RAM, SPACE and BANDWIDTH with their constantly growing business, and that motivates us to build a specific cloud architecture for such users”

So, there is big possibility that you may never have become the need of adding extra on your cloud server. But, a hosting provider for QuickBooks must ready with a developed scalable infrastructure that can be deployed instantly as it is very crucial for the providers to gain the trust.

Right infrastructure for hosting Accounting & Tax based software:

Yes, it requires a tailored infrastructure to host applications like QuickBooks, Drake, Lacerte, ProSeries, and others applications which are based for either accounting & tax purpose. These applications are developed in a way that it requires not just fully functional servers with a decent speed to perform but also optimized cloud servers that can keep up with these applications.

Cloud companies should focus on creating an environment that caters to the need of these professionals.

SSD Based Storages:

Storage is a very important aspect for QuickBooks cloud hosting as your very important & confidential gets stored on these storage systems, now obviously, we want to have a best data storing system that is advanced & fast paced to carry our tasks like data fetching and restoration.

Modern day cloud companies rely on SSD (Solid State drive) based systems as they are more durable, advanced, and compact and have a much faster speed that collaborates with CPU to give out an optimized cloud server experience.

As SSDs performs the tasks given by cpu faster in comparison to the traditional HDD drives, it becomes clearly the first choice of hosting provider for QuickBooks, with SSD based storage systems, the cloud servers not only can boot up more rapidly but also the applications on cloud load quicker and the data files gets saved faster.

Disaster Recovery:

We all know that technology is prone to disaster, no matter how advanced it is, there are times it is just not going to perform the way it should or may be some sort of disaster struck suddenly that completely interrupts the chain of deployed resources.

Now, this scenario is called a disaster and the event, methods, steps that comes after this to restore the functionality of the server to its previous state is knows as in disaster recovery.

If a cloud hosting provider is not well equipped with the tools, methods, instruments, recovery plan to ensure the continuity of your business, it is just not built for hosting business.

When dealing with software like QB, the hosting provider have complete & thorough plans to restore your data and ensure business continuity in such an event.

There are additional threats as well other than the natural disasters and a provider of cloud services for QB should always have a backup plan for that as well.

What are the practices that a cloud company must follow to become the best QuickBooks hosting providers in the industry?

There are parameters if followed correctly can make a cloud company favorite among the QB cloud providers, a well-focused approach towards hosting service for QuickBooks can lead them towards one of the reliable brand in the accounting industry.

Backup methodology: 

Backing up the data is a day to day task that has to be performed very carefully and is a mandate for every qb cloud provider, the kind of backup policy a provider have defines a lot about the resiliency of their service, most of the providers are running backups at least twice a day.

To become the best QuickBooks hosting provider, it is advisable to have at least 3 different layers of backup stored at two different locations and these backups should be taken by both automated & manual methods.

If a company has a very reassuring backup policy such as 3 months (90 Days) data backup, this gives a lot of confidence to the business owners; also keeps them in the race of best hosting provider for QuickBooks.

Data Security:

With evolving technology, the threats are evolved too which makes security the uppermost concern to the CPAs, they should not have to worry about the safety of their data, the best QuickBooks hosting provider keep it as their topmost priority to deploy the measures of safety/ security on their cloud infrastructure.

These measures include enterprise level encryption, advanced firewalls, SSL and anti-ransom ware protections. These tools are responsible for securing the cloud environment but to put tax professionals mind at ease, knowing that there data is safe & secure in the cloud environment where extreme security precautions have been in place.

There is no doubt, a cloud hosting provider for QuickBooks who can ensure this and offer this level of security to their end users will be able to hold a place in the list of best QB hosting providers.

Optimized cloud servers:

What does it means when we say “optimized cloud servers”, so an optimized cloud server would be a well-managed & maintained server by the tech department of the cloud provider.

QB providers has to have a dedicated server maintenance team that performs activities on the server & ensures that it always be in an optimized state for the users to get the best result out of it. These activities contain performing updates, upgrades, space allocation, RAM/CPU evaluation etc.

Most QB users have activities to perform like payroll processing, invoices, bank feeds, exporting reports; all these tasks are very crucial for them and part of their daily work. The users want to work in an environment where they can have a smooth working experience in their QB; a sluggish performance of the server can make a tremendous impact on their work.

If a cloud company establishes that their servers are always optimized to run accounting & tax applications in the most efficient way, this makes them one step closer to become a favorite in the QB hosting arena.

QB Expert Technicians:

All the cloud based companies have a technical support team that assist users in case of their technical queries, however, Best QuickBooks hosting providers prefer a balanced team with the knowledge of QuickBooks troubleshooting as well.

Familiarity with QuickBooks becomes necessary when you are hosting it on your cloud. The responsiveness of a tech team will depend on their expertise in hosted QB and how to fix any issues that may occur while users are working on the cloud.

If the tech team of a cloud provider is not well equipped with the technicians having expertise in resolving issues related to QB itself other than the server, it becomes very hard for them to deliver an exceptional service, a team that provides assistance for QuickBooks cloud hosting is expected to have QB experienced technicians in order to resolve the issues someone may face in their QB while working on cloud, a faster resolution with pinpoint guidance saves time and gives a feeling of reliability that someone is there to help them out.

By default, it becomes a must for companies looking to host QB.

Compliance:

There are mandatory compliances for cloud companies; it gives the organizations an ethical set of structure on which they can build their business, although , there are many compliances out there in the market but as we go by the cloud industry, few certification that makes them more reliable are:

1. PCI DSS

2. SOC Reports

3. SSAE-18 certified datacenters

It should be in the best practice of cloud companies to have a third party auditing of their systems once in a year that not only generate trust in their own infrastructure but in case, if they missed anything, auditing will make it visible to have it rectified.

Factors to consider before choosing a hosting provider for QuickBooks

Till now, we discussed, what cloud companies can do to become one of the best in the hosting business, now we are going to discuss the other important part that has to be done from your end, and that is what you need to do before choosing a QB hosting provider?

It is all about your confidential business data; we can’t just go and choose one, there is lot of factors one need to consider before making this important decision.

Here is the checklist:

 Evaluate your business needs:

The very first thing before going for a cloud hosting provider for QuickBooks is to know what exactly are your business requirements?

There are many questions you need to ask yourself that will bring out the best solution for you or your team, here are the questions you must know the answer

A. How many seats do you need on the cloud?

B. Should all my users work part or full time? How many users only work for 2-4 hours in a day?

C. What is the kind of server I need? Should I need a dedicated or shared one?

D. What effects will it have on my team? Will they be more collaborated?

E. How do I see the role of my office once everything is on cloud and accessible from anywhere?

These will surely give a rough idea to you what exactly you need from your QuickBooks cloud hosting provider, you may even realize that this is not the right time to move to the cloud for me or it is the best time that I should go forward with latest cloud technology to bring out the best from my business and employees.

 Set up a budget:

QB Cloud hosting is a paid service, after taking in considerations of your business requirements, the next step is to have an estimate of how much is it going to cost you, this will help you setup a separate budget for your cloud hosting needs so it will not impact the other expenditures.

Setting up a budget will also allow you to choose the best paid plan, as there are monthly, quarterly and yearly plans offered by QB cloud providers, if you have the budget, you can choose a quarterly or yearly plan as well and get discount on that also.

One of most experienced & reliable hosting company, Quick Cloud Hosting has a very flexible pricing structure with different plans that can be tailored for your business, and they also offer custom plans that you will found very affordable. With quarterly or yearly sign ups, there is flat 35 % off pricing.

 Datacenter Location:

Cloud technology is completely relies on a datacenter as that is where your server reside, automatically the location of the datacenter plays an important role, there are many factors to have a datacenter on your preferred location which is USA for most of you.

This affects things like Speed, latency, performance; it also gives a sense of trust knowing that my data is getting stored in a datacenter located in USA. This is not a rule that a datacenter out of USA will not be QuickBooks cloud hosting provider but, certainly it makes a lot of difference by hosting your QB on the US based datacenters, either in terms of security, privacy, cloud policies and other laws.

All you need to verify from the potential hosting provider is that if their datacenter is SSAE-18 certified. Service companies are gets evaluated on the basis of SSAE-18, it is a standard from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). These are the regulation created by the ASB (organizations auditing standard boards). A SSAE-18 certified datacenter is definitely on your list.

 Data Migration:

The base of the cloud technology is in the fact that your data will be stored on the cloud servers; therefore, migration is an inevitable part of moving to a cloud server. Again, there are question associated with data migration that you must verify before making any decision.

A. How much data do I have? What is the size of the data?

B. Is it stored at a single computer or distributed among various other stations?

C. How long will it take for the data migration to be completed? 

D. What are the channels through the data will be transferred? How secure are they?

E. How much is the downtime while the data is migrating? Does it affect my work?

Also, do not forget to ensure that your data should be transferred through secure methods, Quick Cloud hosting uses an data encryption tool that encrypts the data while migration to ensure the safety and smooth transition. It is better to have a word with cloud specialist and have them explain how it is going to work with the exact timeframe.

 Technical Help:

There is no doubt even in the best of QB cloud hosting platforms, somewhere down the line, you are going to need the technical assistance whether it’s with the server, QB, printing, scanning or maybe with the performance of the cloud. I cannot emphasis enough on the importance of having a reliable tech support team at your disposal that can guide you through any tech process and also fix issues for you on priority basis so you can have an uninterrupted cloud experience.

A. Is there a dedicated tech support team? What are their timings?

B. How responsive they are and also what are the methods of connecting to the support team?

C. How long will it take to reach support? Do they offer callback service?

D. Do they provide support for QB related issues as well? How familiar are they with QB functionality?

E. Are they going to manage my server/QB for me?

A good tech support team is an asset to the QuickBooks hosting provider, they are responsible for configuring, managing, maintaining and providing resolutions to the support queries. So, tech support carrier a lot of weight in choosing a cloud provide for QB and hence, pay attention to it.

QuickBooks cloud hosting provider take on modern day accounting with cloud automation

Stacy Williams with Quick Cloud hosting works as a “Business development manager “has to say, as a provider of cloud hosting for QuickBooks, we have to keep an eye on ongoing trend in accounting along with the directions it may take in the future, Yes, we want to be the best QB hosting provider, being said that, accounting is not just the same it was about 5-10 years ago, cloud evolution has made such a huge difference not only in the core principles of accounting but also how accountants are handling this transformation.

We have seen people struggling with the idea of being using cloud for their business; on the contrary, we also have more than 6000 clients working on our specially tailored platforms for QuickBooks cloud hosting. Now, it is expected from the accounting firms to be well equipped with the other areas as well like legal, technology and other possible changes that can bring positive changes for business.

So, definitely, it is time to move beyond core accounting and give your business more opportunity with cloud automation; this is the future and integral part for accounting sector as well.

With technological changes disrupting traditional business models and changing the way customers interact with services, accountants need to continue to evolve and adapt their skillsets or risk being left behind by the next generation of clients who are growing up in a world that is increasingly driven by digital channels. Accountants with strong digital skills will prove attractive for firms looking to modernize.

Why small business owners are leaning towards cloud hosting for QuickBooks?

As we can see, there are two important factors cloud computing has to offer that has been significantly improved the productive outcomes in accounting industry along with solving major key problem areas for accountants & tax professionals.

QuickBooks cloud hosting has solved all the accessibility related problems that has been a hassle for larger CPAs firms, now their teams can access the QB from anywhere, anytime, surveys has shown this is resulting in striking a much better work life balance. Eliminating location limitations made accountancy practices quick to respond and innovative, that will only lead to growing and thriving for them.

The other thing cloud hosting for QuickBooks have done for this accounting industry is having their teams arranged for a better collaboration with effective data sharing, this is a plus for increased productivity. Client’s expectations have changed drastically from the modern day accountants, now they are also seeking for business advice and other legal consultations from them. An accounting professional has to be flexible to meet the client’s expectations including finance advising.

QuickBooks on cloud has helped accountants to capitalize the potential of ease of access & increased collaborations among their employees that is resulting in maximizing profit and overall cost reduction. This is driving more & more professionals to give their bookkeeping business a boost.