Online Accounting
Accounting in USA has seen lots of change. There was a time when
the accounting was more of book keeping done in huge ledgers and
was the purview of select few. It's not so anymore. Accounting
is much more widely accepted as a business function and general
people also look for the accounting details of the firms they
are associated with. Also lot more transparency is required now.
Keeping in line with the development of IT and other
technologies, the accounting is also now based on internet and
has taken wide strides. Online accounting services, viewed as
merely experimental only a few years ago are now becoming the
run away business.
As such accounting industry as been little slow to adopt the
newer technology and has not left fully its love for the pen and
pencil work.
The SU accounting industry has seen new trend of outsourcing its
work now. All these have forced the industry to adopt the Online
Accounting. The internets as well as other technologies are used
now to build more efficient book keeping systems. Also it's
becoming more cost efficient for larger firms to outsource the
work. Outsourcing is very much easier with work being delivered
online. It's much more cost effective as well as fast also.
The shift from the practice where clients paid the accounting
firms as per the billable hours to a fixed fee based system is
forcing the accounting firms to deliver efficient work in cost
effective manner. This means that they can not any longer cover
their inefficient work by merely putting in more time into the
projects. This has favored the Online accounting practices much.
Value billing has forced accounting professionals to become more
efficient.
Online accounting very effectively cuts short the time taken to
transfer the time taken by information exchange between the
clients and accounting firm. The seamless transfer is far more
efficient and much faster. The accounting firm has dynamic
access to the sourcing documents of the clients firms and can
access anytime any information it requires from its clients
side. The online accounting system also allows the accounting
firm access to client data from far away locations at the a few
clicks on the internet. The time sensitive financial data is
readily available to the accounting firm.
Other then the speed and cost of services, online accounting
enables better customer service and more reliability and trust.
Accounting firms recently have been exposed as in cahoots with
some very big clients, committing serious financial crimes. In
this scenario the new practice builds more transparency also.
The online accounting practice also provide for more timely
communication between the firm and clients. Since the client has
more immediate access to information and to time sensitive
documents with Online Accounting practices, questions and
problems can be more easily identified and resolved. This
translates into increased profits as well as happier clients!!
Since the clients get better service, they get more value for
the money they spend. It is generally quite cheaper for the
business owner to outsource the bookkeeping and accounting than
to hire and supervise it in-house. Savings for the business
owner can be as much as 30% for some clients! Online Accounting
is great for such services.
The accounting firms also charge now a fee (fixed on a monthly
basis) almost five times the average monthly fee (based on
billable hours) they charged earlier.
Generally the various online accounting processes available are
customized for their users where they can choose the menu of
features they like.
Online Accounting is an excellent tool for accounting and book
keeping, one that is help full for both the accounting firms as
well as the clients.