5 Tips Using Cloud Accounting Software To Achieve Small Business Success

Starting your very own small business is an exciting yet daunting venture. You’re chasing your dream – leaving everything else behind to do what you’ve always wanted to do, the way you envision it should be done. On the other hand, you’re putting it all on the line. You’re risking not only your career but your entire livelihood. The success or failure of your business will have a direct impact on the entirety of your life.

According to the U.S Small Business Association Office of Advocacy, about a third of businesses fail in their first two years of operation and about half fail within the first five years. Poor financial management is one of the main reasons businesses go under. When resources are tight it is easy for ambitious entrepreneurs to overspend, believing that profitability is right around the corner.

There is really no excuse for not staying on top of your finances in this day and age. There are a number of financial tools that are now easier to use and more accessible since becoming readily available in the cloud. The following list highlights the types of web-based software all small business owners should use in order to achieve financial success.

#1. Accounting

Cloud accounting software is the best way to keep track of your business cash flow. It provides owners and their accountants both high-level and detailed views of their current financial situation, in real-time. Many solutions connect with their user’s bank accounts, allowing bank transactions to be fed directly into the ledger, eliminating the need for manual data entry.

What sets cloud accounting software apart from its desktop predecessors is that it is accessible anytime, anywhere. This not only makes it easy for business owners to check their finances on the go, but also lets accountants access their client’s books whenever it’s convenient. The accessibility factor makes for greater collaboration between both parties and really gives accountants the ability to act as trusted financial advisors that monitor the financial well-being of their client’s business.

#2. Payroll

Traditionally, running payroll was a burden that reoccurred every two weeks or so for small business owners. Thanks to the new features made possible by payroll in the cloud, this is no longer the case. Many payroll software vendors provide an employee app, where staff can log in and request time off and access paystubs without having the ability to view the greater financial data.

The payroll manager can set PTO rules and let the software automatically track accruals. The ability to have the entire company take part in payroll removes much of the hassle for the person who ultimately processes it.

In addition to the employee app, features like automatic tax calculations and filing, API integration and comprehensive reporting are now commonplace for online payroll software.

#3. Expensing

Passing along a pile of paper receipts attached to an expense report has no place in the digital age we now live in. There are numerous applications that make expense reporting quick and easy. Like cloud accounting solutions, web-based expensing software can link with online bank and credit card accounts, allowing for transactions to be automatically imported into an expense report.

Many solutions also offer mobile apps that make it simple to track and automate expenses while employees are on the road, spending money. For instance, miles traveled can be tracked using mobile GPS capabilities and expense items can be imported via a photo of a receipt.

#4. Invoicing

Creating, sending and keeping track of invoices is now much more efficient than it once was. Good cloud invoicing software lets users create an invoice, send it from the application and monitor when the client has viewed it. This makes it easy for small business owners to keep a close eye on how outstanding invoices are affecting their cashflow and determine when it is the proper time to follow up with the customer.

Invoicing software often has the capability to pre-load inventory items and their cost and upload company logos. This makes generating an accurate and branded invoice a task that can be accomplished in only a few clicks.

#5. Time tracking

Accurately tracking the number of hours spent on a client project is an absolute must for service-oriented businesses. Not long ago it was easy to lose track of hours, leading to imprecise invoices and questions from the client. Luckily this is no longer the case thanks to the emergence of online time tracking software.

Contractors, freelancers and other service providers can track the time they spend on particular projects by using web or mobile timers, which automatically import the total hours into a timesheet. The project manager can keep tabs on overall progress by tracking the hours of each team member, ensuring everyone stays on schedule and budget.

As much as the cloud has expanded the capabilities of each of the financial management tools mentioned, its greatest achievement is that it lets all of them interact and share information. Accounting ledgers can be updated automatically with external invoices, pay runs and expenses. Timesheets can be imported into your invoicing software. Approved expenses can flow into payroll software. Using the cloud, small business owners can build a custom total business solution that meets all their needs and gives them a comprehensive and accessible view of their financial health.

6 Predictions About How We’ll Use Technology In 2014

Each year, we wonder what the upcoming 12 months will bring in terms of trends that can help us do more with our businesses. Over the years, we’ve benefited from technology trends like social media, cloud computing, and software as a service.

So what will 2014 bring, technology-wise?

#1. More Analog Tasks Will Go Digital

If you’re old enough, you know why we say we have to “balance the books” when it comes to accounting. It’s hard to imagine not using accounting software. This year, I predict the average small business owner will start using digital versions of paper and analog tasks like:

• Employee scheduling (that’s what my company does)
• Keeping track of calendars and appointments
• Tracking travel expenses and scanning receipts

#2. We’ll See More Outsourcing and Virtual Teams

More businesses are letting go of the idea that a team can only be functional if all members work in the same physical office. That opens the door to working with freelancers and dev teams in other locations, as well as letting your staff work virtually. This can help you realize major cost savings if you don’t have to worry about the overhead of an office.

#3. We’ll Get a Better Handle on Analytics

So Google took our keyword data and made it harder to figure out how customers were coming to our site. While this necessitates us changing how we view analytics, it also invites new solutions. I suspect we’ll see several new types of analytics companies presenting options for us to analyze a customer’s behavior before and after arriving on our website, without our Google training wheels.

#4. Voice Recognition Will Become Commonplace

If you’ve been a newer-gen iPhone user, Siri’s old hat to you. If you’re an Android phone owner, you were probably delighted last year when Google rolled out its voice recognition program. Expect to see more widespread adoption of voice tools, as well as integration into different platforms.

#5. Tablets Won’t Be as Novel as Business Tools

Even just a year or two ago, it was a shock to see a restaurant using an iPad to take orders. We’re not seeing complete adoption in the restaurant industry just yet, but we are starting to see more industries using tablets in creative ways, such as doctors using them to record notes while with a patient. Tablets are now affordable enough to be “just another office tool.”

#6. Wearable Technology Won’t Get Far…Just Yet

If you’re tired of hearing about Google Glass and not actually seeing mainstream adoption, you’ll probably be happy if the hype dies down a little. And I suspect it will, though fashion designers might (should, anyway) get involved to make the innovation more user-friendly and fashion-forward.
It’s always interesting to ponder what technology holds for us. We live in exciting times, don’t we?

Satellite Internet vs. Ethernet: Why Satellite is Years Behind

There are plenty of times and places to apply satellite based network services. Many people who have remote locations run an entire branch on one satellite modem. However for a larger network infrastructure or for packet heavy communications, Ethernet services perform vastly better. That’s why businesses are weighing satellite internet vs. Ethernet.

Understanding How Packets Create Network Speed and Quality

Even Satellite Today understands the problem that even advanced satellite modems encounter, data packet partitioning. When information passes through a network, it sends packets of data to the end destination. These packets can be large or small, but each bit of information that needs to be passed is bunched into a packet for the network.
Satellite modems are very capable of sending large packets of data, however they run into issues if they need to send a lot of packets, such as 20 people using VOIP providers to communicate. The modem may be able to handle eight large packets of data, but when it starts to receive more packets than it can handle, quality will suffer if the modem has fail safe protocols, or lock up and reboot. For this reason, it is especially important to carefully consider not only the data speeds of the satellite modem, but also the packet capacity as well.
Ethernet services work on a slightly different principle to take advantage of the hardwired, reliable connections called Asynchronous Transfer Mode, or ATM for short. Instead of allocating a number of packets and sending large volumes of data across the network, Ethernet modems chop up that large data into smaller packets and give them a 16-bit code of address information called an ATM tax in the IT world. This packet allocation protocol allows the network to handle infinite number of packets coming through because at the receiving end, that 16-bit address line tells the receiving modem how the packet is meant to be reassembled.

What Does This Mean to the Large and Small Business Owner?

There are some remote locations where satellite internet is all that is available. In those situations with smart IT planning, a hybrid system of Ethernet routing and a satellite modem can adequately satisfy the needs of the business or operations. However, the reason satellite internet is years behind, is that even with a well managed suite of Ethernet services, the satellite modem and data transfer protocols will always be a bottleneck that can be compensated for, but never alleviated.
An Ethernet based network resulting in a cable or fiber-optic network connection creates a lateral network. Rather than data circulating naturally, only to slow down at the smallness of the pipeline, Ethernet with its ATM protocol can perform almost outrageous feats of networking such as sending one ultimate data files through two routers using standard ATM packets, coping with hundreds of different packet sources requiring data communication of both large and small file size, and Ethernet services also provide IT teams many opportunities to redesign the network to alleviate congestion, or clamp down on an insufficient network.

Making the Ultimate Decision

When deciding on your routing and modem technologies, you the business owner know best what to do for your company, but consider these pivot points before you invest too much in either technology.

1. Consider the actual size of data files passed over the network.
2. The number of packets transferred at one time, think about how many computers, devices, and VOIPs are connecting to the modem.
3. Fiber-optic and cable line development, which can give you more bandwidth often at a cheaper rate, which disfavors satellite.
4. A long distance from cable and fiber-optic services make satellite ideal

I hope this explains Satellite Internet vs. Ethernet. I’d love to hear your comments.

Software Delivery Strategy For Your Business

Is it your business’s objective to release software faster with higher quality? Are you adopting agile methodologies in your application development and delivery? Do you want to automate your application deployment process? Then, you need a continuous delivery assessment.
Nowadays, a critical situation has arisen, where competitors use predatory pricing and hefty promotion to eliminate or weaken their competitors. For this reason, many IT businesses are thinking on “Software Delivery Strategy”. The continuous demand of software across the different verticals of industries led revolutionary changes in the software delivery model. That’s why the Software Delivery Strategy is alluring and has a wide recognition within both IT vendors and the company.

Continuous Delivery Assessment

The continuous delivery assessment enables project managers to evaluate their existing maturity level and develop a roadmap for implementing a robust uninterrupted delivery practice.
To implement continuous delivery with agility, you should focus on your software delivery strategy first, and then build a roadmap for it. In order to provide robust solutions, organizations are reconsidering their application delivery methodologies and investing heavily in their development process.
Businesses are busy in addressing their rapidly changing requirements to improve their quality products and services. Surveys on software delivery assessment show that Continuous Delivery implementation is one of the key drivers for many enterprises.
Major IT companies are adopting the Continuous Delivery model, because it not only removes the traditional obstacles but also automates manual steps. In addition, automating the manual processes will ensure fast and high quality application delivery.

Continuous Delivery Implementation Roadmap

Businesses are working with their IT experts that will allow them to design a roadmap towards an automated and integrated continuous delivery approach. Meanwhile, continuous delivery assessment enables the organization to determine the current maturity gap and assist the program delivery manager to focus on opportunities in their application delivery practices.

Here are a few recommendations:

• Improve code quality
• Use proactive development practices
• Configuration Management
• Version control
• Unit and automated testing
• Infrastructure provisioning technique
• Application build, packaging and continuous integration workflow
• Application availability and its performance
• Modernization of the application environment
• Utilization of patterns and adoption of automation tools

Businesses are following the continuous delivery implementation roadmap that enables them to gain a competitive advantage enabling rapid software development and greater penetration into the market. The roadmap brings innovative thoughts to market effectively while building justifiable cost and capital efficiencies.

Initiation

The first question that arises in our mind is how to start? You can find many books and references that describe the principles and best practices of Continuous Delivery. If you want to develop your own Continuous Delivery vision then the books and references can provide you with important theoretical knowledge in context ofthe current development and release environment for a large enterprise.

Structured Approaches to a Continuous Delivery Implementation

Below are structured approaches, taking you from the current situation to the realization of your vision.
Firstly, identify the potential changes – you must have a clear picture of your current business situation before taking any practice-oriented implementation initiative. Below are the few mitigating steps, which should be a part of your business plan to cope up with potential impact on your project delivery.
Here are 7 challenges for enterprises:

#1. Large, Tightly Coupled Applications:

Every enterprise needs to develop an application that aims to deliver unique value of their customers, which stand out in the mobile market. Yet, a very small percentage of applications at the infrastructure level are truly unique. The major threshold in Continuous Delivery is creating minute, incremental changes to your applications and services.
Development of a large and tightly coupled application must start from a small part each time. It not only helps the developers to pinpoint and remedy the source of errors and other problems such as compatibility issues, run time errors, slowdowns, but also it will streamline the Software

#2. Development Life Cycle:

A successful Continuous Delivery setup must follow the process of improvement through fast feedback and continuous support. Synchronizing the large applications will help developers to build, test, and deliver the best solution for the enterprise.
Application into Separate Modules: An effective software development process can only be possible with the use of agile development methodology with shorter iterations. Source code must be built for the specific environment so that the development, testing, and integration can be done separately for different modules.
As a result, the development professionals get more time to debug the changes. In order to deal with the pipeline projects, developers could fix the errors rapidly by incrementally break out modules of the application into separate components which could be built and deployed independently.

#3. Automate Development to Production:

A continuous delivery process requires the environment to transit a new application version from development to production. Identifying many manual steps that need automation during the development phases (Requirement gathering and analysis, Design, Implementation or coding, Testing, Deployment and Maintenance).
If your development needs more and more manual steps, this will stop you from being able to scale your Continuous Delivery execution to the anticipated number of pipeline runs. Therefore, it is advisable to automate numerous currently manual steps by using alternatives in your delivery process, or remove certain steps from the process altogether.

#4. Build a Favorable Environment:

Limiting your organization in terms of infrastructure will not work at all. If you have a limited testing environment, then there is a risk of obstruction during Continuous Delivery implementation. Furthermore, misconfigured or broken environment that have been changed by previous developers or testers are one of the leading causes of deployment failures. A dynamic pool of developers and clean target environments are required to run delivery pipeline projects. To tackle these challenges, you need cloud platforms, coupled with provisioning and configuration management tools that allow you to flourish and shrink the requirements automatically on demand.

#5. Release Management Requirements:

Let’s take a few examples for release management requirements like the a change ticket creation, placing the change on the agenda for the Board meeting, getting Change Board approval, and confirming deployment, which is very vital for Continuous Delivery of the project. It is right to say that necessity is the mother of invention and the origin of change management practices is based on providing assurance in quality and consistency during production. Experience from well-known companies that are proficient in Continuous Delivery indicates that traceability, excellence and consistency of releases can be achieved using pipelines irrespective of their change management practices.

#6. Scale Continuous Delivery Implementation

If you are running a large organization, then there will be many pipelines to manage as you scale your Continuous Delivery implementation. You have a different service portfolio that you are handling during Continuous Delivery implementation like different departments, different internal and external customers, different technology platforms, different development, and support groups.
Management and measurement of your Continuous Delivery implementation will be affected, when application defines its own custom pipeline. In the delivery process, every pipeline ends at a different stage. Therefore, it is hard to make performance matrix for successful implementation of the project. To simplify the process, a standard pipeline is needed that not only saves the time but also make the Continuous Delivery process agile. You have to create templates depending upon the variations across your service portfolio.

#7. Project Ownership and Security

Nobody will interrupt you while everything is running smoothly. But when pipeline stages fail, you will have to face many problems from the project manager and the customer as well. Therefore, it is essential that clear responsibilities must be in place to fix these things and get the delivery process effective and organized. The sense of ownership should be there with the owner (responsible person/team), who has to tackle the problems occurring during the Continuous Delivery Implementation.
There must be a visibility into the state of the entire pipeline in the different stages. Enterprises should provide a greater level of security for users or groups that will be defined by the admin rights; who can enable, disable, or modify the development and functional testing step.

Software Delivery Strategy For Your Business

Is it your business’s objective to release software faster with higher quality? Are you adopting agile methodologies in your application development and delivery? Do you want to automate your application deployment process? Then, you need a continuous delivery assessment.
Nowadays, a critical situation has arisen, where competitors use predatory pricing and hefty promotion to eliminate or weaken their competitors. For this reason, many IT businesses are thinking on “Software Delivery Strategy”. The continuous demand of software across the different verticals of industries led revolutionary changes in the software delivery model. That’s why the Software Delivery Strategy is alluring and has a wide recognition within both IT vendors and the company.

Continuous Delivery Assessment

The continuous delivery assessment enables project managers to evaluate their existing maturity level and develop a roadmap for implementing a robust uninterrupted delivery practice.
To implement continuous delivery with agility, you should focus on your software delivery strategy first, and then build a roadmap for it. In order to provide robust solutions, organizations are reconsidering their application delivery methodologies and investing heavily in their development process.
Businesses are busy in addressing their rapidly changing requirements to improve their quality products and services. Surveys on software delivery assessment show that Continuous Delivery implementation is one of the key drivers for many enterprises.
Major IT companies are adopting the Continuous Delivery model, because it not only removes the traditional obstacles but also automates manual steps. In addition, automating the manual processes will ensure fast and high quality application delivery.

Continuous Delivery Implementation Roadmap

Businesses are working with their IT experts that will allow them to design a roadmap towards an automated and integrated continuous delivery approach. Meanwhile, continuous delivery assessment enables the organization to determine the current maturity gap and assist the program delivery manager to focus on opportunities in their application delivery practices.

Here are a few recommendations:

• Improve code quality
• Use proactive development practices
• Configuration Management
• Version control
• Unit and automated testing
• Infrastructure provisioning technique
• Application build, packaging and continuous integration workflow
• Application availability and its performance
• Modernization of the application environment
• Utilization of patterns and adoption of automation tools

Businesses are following the continuous delivery implementation roadmap that enables them to gain a competitive advantage enabling rapid software development and greater penetration into the market. The roadmap brings innovative thoughts to market effectively while building justifiable cost and capital efficiencies.

Initiation

The first question that arises in our mind is how to start? You can find many books and references that describe the principles and best practices of Continuous Delivery. If you want to develop your own Continuous Delivery vision then the books and references can provide you with important theoretical knowledge in context ofthe current development and release environment for a large enterprise.

Structured Approaches to a Continuous Delivery Implementation

Below are structured approaches, taking you from the current situation to the realization of your vision.
Firstly, identify the potential changes – you must have a clear picture of your current business situation before taking any practice-oriented implementation initiative. Below are the few mitigating steps, which should be a part of your business plan to cope up with potential impact on your project delivery.
Here are 7 challenges for enterprises:

#1. Large, Tightly Coupled Applications:

Every enterprise needs to develop an application that aims to deliver unique value of their customers, which stand out in the mobile market. Yet, a very small percentage of applications at the infrastructure level are truly unique. The major threshold in Continuous Delivery is creating minute, incremental changes to your applications and services.
Development of a large and tightly coupled application must start from a small part each time. It not only helps the developers to pinpoint and remedy the source of errors and other problems such as compatibility issues, run time errors, slowdowns, but also it will streamline the Software

#2. Development Life Cycle:

A successful Continuous Delivery setup must follow the process of improvement through fast feedback and continuous support. Synchronizing the large applications will help developers to build, test, and deliver the best solution for the enterprise.
Application into Separate Modules: An effective software development process can only be possible with the use of agile development methodology with shorter iterations. Source code must be built for the specific environment so that the development, testing, and integration can be done separately for different modules.
As a result, the development professionals get more time to debug the changes. In order to deal with the pipeline projects, developers could fix the errors rapidly by incrementally break out modules of the application into separate components which could be built and deployed independently.

#3. Automate Development to Production:

A continuous delivery process requires the environment to transit a new application version from development to production. Identifying many manual steps that need automation during the development phases (Requirement gathering and analysis, Design, Implementation or coding, Testing, Deployment and Maintenance).
If your development needs more and more manual steps, this will stop you from being able to scale your Continuous Delivery execution to the anticipated number of pipeline runs. Therefore, it is advisable to automate numerous currently manual steps by using alternatives in your delivery process, or remove certain steps from the process altogether.

#4. Build a Favorable Environment:

Limiting your organization in terms of infrastructure will not work at all. If you have a limited testing environment, then there is a risk of obstruction during Continuous Delivery implementation. Furthermore, misconfigured or broken environment that have been changed by previous developers or testers are one of the leading causes of deployment failures. A dynamic pool of developers and clean target environments are required to run delivery pipeline projects. To tackle these challenges, you need cloud platforms, coupled with provisioning and configuration management tools that allow you to flourish and shrink the requirements automatically on demand.

#5. Release Management Requirements:

Let’s take a few examples for release management requirements like the a change ticket creation, placing the change on the agenda for the Board meeting, getting Change Board approval, and confirming deployment, which is very vital for Continuous Delivery of the project. It is right to say that necessity is the mother of invention and the origin of change management practices is based on providing assurance in quality and consistency during production. Experience from well-known companies that are proficient in Continuous Delivery indicates that traceability, excellence and consistency of releases can be achieved using pipelines irrespective of their change management practices.

#6. Scale Continuous Delivery Implementation

If you are running a large organization, then there will be many pipelines to manage as you scale your Continuous Delivery implementation. You have a different service portfolio that you are handling during Continuous Delivery implementation like different departments, different internal and external customers, different technology platforms, different development, and support groups.
Management and measurement of your Continuous Delivery implementation will be affected, when application defines its own custom pipeline. In the delivery process, every pipeline ends at a different stage. Therefore, it is hard to make performance matrix for successful implementation of the project. To simplify the process, a standard pipeline is needed that not only saves the time but also make the Continuous Delivery process agile. You have to create templates depending upon the variations across your service portfolio.

#7. Project Ownership and Security

Nobody will interrupt you while everything is running smoothly. But when pipeline stages fail, you will have to face many problems from the project manager and the customer as well. Therefore, it is essential that clear responsibilities must be in place to fix these things and get the delivery process effective and organized. The sense of ownership should be there with the owner (responsible person/team), who has to tackle the problems occurring during the Continuous Delivery Implementation.
There must be a visibility into the state of the entire pipeline in the different stages. Enterprises should provide a greater level of security for users or groups that will be defined by the admin rights; who can enable, disable, or modify the development and functional testing step.