Blog : cloud computing

Taking QuickBooks to the cloud using Method Integration and CPAASP(InsynQ)

Method_Danny — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:38:00 GMT

Having access to your QuickBooks and business data is vital to any successful company’s survival, especially in today’s economy. Not only does the data have to be easily accessible, it needs to be fast, secure and provide little to no additional work in order to keep it running. It doesn’t matter how small or large your company is, the same rules apply and if you don’t think your company’s financial and business data should be a high priority, it’s time for a wakeup call. What’s that old saying? Time is money.

Many Method users already take advantage of the fact that their QuickBooks and business data can be accessed from anywhere, provided they have access to a simple webpage. This cuts down the immediate overhead costs of installing and administering software applications on PCs (or Macs) being used in the office. Not to mention, if you’re a small business and you’re the one taking care of all the admin needs for your employees, you know exactly how much of a pain it can be, especially when you would rather focus on your business.

Method allows for all your data entry to be done in the cloud, so your admin, sales, marketing, support, and remote staff never need to worry about where they can access their data. Of course, any QuickBooks data they enter through Method is going to appear in QuickBooks just as you would expect. Now as a business owner, I know I can have all my staff doing their data entry through Method, control what they see and how they enter data, have them use industry applications that I can tailor to my own needs by customizing Method and never have to have my employees touch QuickBooks. Great!

What about your accounting department that needs to use QuickBooks desktop? Or the business owner that wants to have access to his or her QuickBooks data? Or even the accountant who now manages the QuickBooks files for their client but doesn’t want to be responsible for hosting the QuickBooks file at their own office?

Wouldn’t it be nice to put your QuickBooks desktop in the cloud so that only privileged users would have access to QuickBooks and everyone else does their data entry through Method in a controlled environment that you can change?

Guess what? Now you can!

I am very happy to announce our partnership with CPAASP(InsynQ). CPAASP(InsynQ) provides accounting professionals and their clients the ability to host their QuickBooks desktop in a hosted and secure environment. This places the traditional QuickBooks desktop that you have installed on your laptop, home PC, office PC or server in “the cloud”. That way you have access to it anytime and anywhere you want. To make things even easier, the server on Insynq is already configured and ready for QuickBooks and for Method from day 1. This means you can get up and running in no time.

With this exciting partnership, you can place your entire company’s QuickBooks and business data in the cloud and have it accessible from any location.

Your back office (by CPAASP(InsynQ))

Manages your QuickBooks desktop data and is accessed only by owners, managers and accountants that need to access QuickBooks directly.

Your front office (by Method Integration)

Manages all other data entry for your admin, sales, marketing and support, including QuickBooks related data, CRM and industry applications such as Field Services, Professional Services, etc,

Listed below are a couple of example implementations. For more information on CPAASP(InsynQ) and getting started, click the link below:

http://www2.cpaasp.com/software.php?sid=165&lid=

Sample implementations of Method Integration and CPAASP(InsynQ)

Company: Jerry’s IT Consulting Company

Before:

Jerry owns a small IT consulting company that is growing rapidly. He needs to be able to allow his 2 office staff to schedule technicians as calls come in and also allow his field technicians to keep track of their time at a client’s location. He would like to avoid having to manually enter in the technicians’ timesheets. Jerry also has an accountant that comes in weekly to do his accounting since he has QuickBooks installed on his laptop.

After:

Jerry now has his QuickBooks desktop hosted with CPAASP(InsynQ). When he needs to access his QuickBooks information, he simply does so by logging into the CPAASP(InsynQ) server. He has also setup an additional user so that his accountant no longer needs to come into the office to do his accounting. Jerry also setup his Method account and has his 2 office staff scheduling work through Method Field Services. They are able to add new customers through Method and dispatch work for technicians. The technicians also login to Method to enter in their times and see newly scheduled work. The services times being entered and customers being added by the office staff appear in QuickBooks in real-time and the only people having to access QuickBooks directly are Jerry and his accountant. Jerry sleeps well at night knowing his data is secure with Method and CPAASP(InsynQ).

Company: Mina’s Accounting Services

Before:

Mina is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. For several of her clients, Mina needs to login remotely to their computer to do their accounting work. Mina typically needs to call the client in advance to ensure they are not using the PC she is logging into. This is sometimes frustrating since she needs to wait until that user if off the computer before she can do any work. For some of her other clients, Mina collects their QuickBooks file on a monthly basis in order to do the books. Most of her clients do basic functions in QuickBooks like creating invoices, bills, entering times or receiving purchase orders. Mina would love to have a way to manage the QuickBooks files for her clients while allowing her clients access to necessary information and allowing them to run their day to day business. She would prefer to not host the QuickBooks files at her office since the infrastructure and security are not in place.

After:

After learning about Method Integration, Mina was thrilled with the idea of hosting the QuickBooks files for her clients and having her clients do their data entry through Method. All the business functions her clients needed were available using the Method interface and this meant that she would always have access to the QuickBooks desktop data. Since CPAASP(InsynQ) had the ability to host the QuickBooks files and run Method, Mina now has all of her client QuickBooks files hosted on CPAASP(InsynQ) and logs onto the CPAASP(InsynQ) server to do her day to day work. Her clients are thrilled since they’re no longer interrupted in their daily operations to assist Mina and are able to gain access to their information over a simple webpage.

Cheers,

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

The future of web apps: end-user web platforms

Method_Paul — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:20:00 GMT

Since the launch of Method, I'm asked more and more for my thoughts on what the future holds for small business software. You might be surprised that I respond that the future of small business software isn't software at all! The future is customizable web apps, built on end-user web platforms.

During the last 10 years, I have had the pleasure of working with thousands of companies, learning about their needs, as well as the software they depend on.

When it comes to my thoughts on which business technology will push to the forefront in the years to come, my nod goes to developers that can truly (I mean truly) satisfy the demands of small business. Sound like a cliché? Of course it is. Especially when you look at what small businesses actually want.

So, what does every small business want? Across the board it's actually the same. They want something simple their staff can use. But they don't want to sacrifice on the features they need. Oh, and did I forget? It's got to be very affordable and it's got to be today! In other words they want to have their cake and eat it too…..and it should be no more than 0 calories, and it can't cause a tummy ache.

Wait, wait! Don't despair software developers…...there is hope! Those of us who have started to get their hands dirty with end-user web platforms can report back: "We've seen the future, and the future is friendly."

Let's do a short history lesson.

Desktop Software Programs
The 1980's and 1990's saw desktop software jump on the scene. The model was simple: find a core problem for similar companies in an industry, and sell as many one-size-fits-all products as possible. For small businesses, it was certainly a lot cheaper and painless than getting a custom program made. But with desktop programs the famous Henry Ford quote comes to mind when selling his Model T car: "Pick any color - so long as it's black". Contrary to the desktop software model, companies in the same industry are not all that similar. So, in order to sell more products, developers over-complicate their programs by jamming in as many features as they can in an effort to say "yes" as often as possible. Ironically, this gave them the illusion of being useful, but ended up having the opposite effect.

Web 2.0 apps
In the 2000's, business apps started moving to the web, in the push towards Web 2.0. The big "ahh-ha" for web apps was that it became completely acceptable to produce a simple solution and stay simple. In fact web apps proved that smart, streamlined design made systems more useful than complicated desktop software. The best example, and a company I'm a big fan of, is 37Signals. They built an incredibly successful company on the idea of creating products that "do less than the competition — intentionally". Web apps were made to be simple partly from necessity: browser-based websites using html and JavaScript just have a hard time doing the fancy things a desktop program can do. So rather than try to mimic the desktop, successful web apps focused on being the opposite of everything desktop programs stood for, and used the browser based constraints to their advantage.

The other reason the web apps were successful was that they had the advantage of learning from the mistakes of desktop programs - since web apps are sold on monthly subscriptions they don't have to jam in features to justify selling annual upgrades. Companies like Salesforce.com built empires on being the "anti-software" based on this reason.

End-user web platforms
A shortcoming of Web 2.0's model of keeping it simple, though, is that a well disciplined web developer must say "no" much more often than "yes" to features requests, and must turn away users who start to outgrow their apps - otherwise they'll fall into the tangled feature trap that desktop programs fell into. This, of course creates friction with end users who justifiably can't be expected to appreciate the bigger vision that developers have for their apps, and get frustrated from hearing "no" to most of their feature requests.

Web 2.0 apps have taken us a long way. But they are no match for the next generation technology I refer to as end-user web platforms. Imagine you are an end-user and you have two, nearly identical apps to choose from. Which of the following would you choose?

Web App A: Developed by a programmer using code. Updates are made by feature requests only.
Web App B: Developed by a non-programmer on a platform. Updates can be made by users using drag and drop tools.

Of course you would choose Web App B! The platform app would always win. Web App A is a simple, useful app that solves today's core problems. But Web App B is a simple, useful app that not only solves today's core problems; it also imposes no limitations on solving tomorrow's problems - whatever they may be. Perfect for small business! It's like taking Henry Ford's Model T, clicking a button on the production line to paint it red, and then a month later clicking another button to add a sunroof, and then the following month clicking another button to add a rear spoiler! Who wouldn't want that?

I'm going to clarify what I mean by an end-user web platform. Unlike regular web-platforms, which are designed to be used by programmers, in an end-user web platform the user must be able to design and create a system themselves, without any programming knowledge. Users must have the same tools available to them as the developer that built the app.   In other words, here’s the big test: it must be possible for end users to re-create an entire web app themselves from scratch using drag and drop tools. No coding.

Now, that's a whole new way of thinking isn't it?

Method Integration - Suite of Apps
When we created Method, we weren't trying to start a revolution. We actually stumbled upon the idea of creating an end-user web platform. At first, it was a platform we created for ourselves so that we could create a suite of simple QuickBooks apps that enabled users to develop and share their own features. It was our solution for not having to put new features into our desktop software every year, thereby preventing it from getting more and more complex! So for the problem we were trying to solve, the solution that later became known as "Method" just made sense.   We had to create our own end-user web platform since, at the time, such a thing in the web world didn't exist.

Now that we have a platform, we can rapidly churn out useful, integrated apps for QuickBooks. Later this week, we'll be putting out Method Warehouse, which is an inventory management app for QuickBooks. It's amazing how simple inventory management can be when you strip it down to its core. It's all about knowing where your inventory is (locations and bins), how they got there (transfer orders), and how much material you need to build and purchase in order to meet finished good deadlines (MRP). The entire app is in one single "Warehouse Center" tab within Method. How were we able to make it so simple? Because the Web 2.0 world taught us to strip the problem to the core, solve the problem and nothing else.   But since it is built on an end-user web platform, users can keep it simple by adding only the features they need as they need them. Nothing less, nothing more.

Given the optimal solution provided to small businesses, tomorrow's web apps will be built more and more on end-user web platforms, so my advice to everyone is to hop on early and enjoy the ride.

Want to spread the news? Click here to Digg this article.

'till next time,

Paul