Read Part 1: Taking Off...One Firm's Journey into the Cloud
Our firm is pretty good about getting tax returns done well before the 10/15 deadline. However like most firms we also have a few stragglers that insist on coming in at the last minute. That meant going away in early October was problematic. Today is 10/13 and I am writing this entry sitting by the pool at my hotel in Sugarland, TX. My wife had a weekend party for the Plant that she's the controller for and, because of the cloud I was able to attend. I spent a few hours this morning reviewing a few returns. I had my tax software (hosted by Cloudvara) open on my lap top and the source documents open in SmartVault on my IPad! Does it get any better?
So here is where things stand with our move to the cloud...we had a hugely motivating event last month. I was in Florida and got a call that our server wouldn't boot. At first I wasn't worried because we have all of our data backed up using Carbonite. if you use Carbonite you probably know that if your back-up is over a week old you get a notification. I didn't get that email so I assumed that all was well. When I logged into my account I discovered that my data hadn't backed up since 8/11. Panic!! Our biggest issues would have been our server based calendaring and contact software (Phoneslips) and our Firms QuickBooks file. Luckily it turned out to be a bad disc controller and our hardware guy had us up and running in two days because he had to order the part.
The good news here is, although we couldn't access our QuickBooks or Phoneslips, my staff was able to work because our tax software, payroll software and Microsoft office were already in the cloud. Also, all of that data is backed up on redundant virtual servers so if there were an issue my backup would be no older than a day old.
Our next move is to get our QuickBooks and Phoneslips onto our hosted server ASAP and at that point we will be fully in the cloud. So far everything else that we have moved there is working pretty much flawlessly!
If you want to learn more about what our firm has done and maybe learn a little about Xero, join me at:
Technology Interest Group -- REGISTER
October 21, 9:00am
NJSCPA, Roseland
Along with some great technology discussion, you can learn more about our journey and earn some CPE! I look forward to seeing you there!!