Activebooks

Accounting Systems in the Cloud

Cloud-based accounting software has a wide range of product features. Before you go shopping, determine what you require from a system. Remember that cloud-based accounting systems can handle many routine accounting tasks, freeing up your time for the more enjoyable aspects of running a business. Here is a list of important features to look for:

1. Adaptability
Invest in cloud-based accounting software that will meet your needs not just today, but also in the future—in a year, a year from now, and ten years from now. The ideal software solution is adaptable enough to allow you to customize it to match your bookkeeping procedures and scale up as your business expands. Growth doesn’t necessitate the purchase of additional servers or computers with cloud accounting.

Activebooks allows you to customize it to match your bookkeeping procedures and scale up as your business expands without requesting additional servers.

2. Billing
Although having many customers is beneficial, managing the billing requires effort. An automated, cloud-based accounting tool can send an invoice right away after a sale, approve a project as soon as you get paid, or create an automated recurring billing schedule for regular clients. Following the payment of a bill, cloud-based accounting can update the accounts receivable.

3. Accounts Payable
The more your business expands, the more challenging it is to track your accounts payable. You have more suppliers, costs, and bills. They must be entered in accounts payable, the ledger must be updated as bills are paid, and timely vendor payments must be made. It’s even simpler to lose track if multiple people handle payments at your company.

Accounting on the cloud streamlines the procedure. Your accounts can be updated wherever, whenever, and however suits you. You can log in to the system and enter the information whether you’re closing a deal outside of town or paying a bill while traveling. When you use your business credit card, an integrated cloud accounting system may even update the ledger automatically.

Learn more about how you can streamline your vendor payment processes.

4. Inventory And Order Management
Cloud-based accounting systems can streamline your sales and inventory process. If a salesperson closes a deal, they can create a sales order on the phone, reserve inventory for the order, create a purchase order for replacement inventory, and set up packing and shipping details.

Cloud accounting makes it simple to track inventory levels even if you have multiple warehouses storing your product. You can check how much inventory you have on hand, where it is, and how long it will take to bring in more.

5. General Ledger
All of your financial analyses and projections are based on the general ledger accounts of cash, assets, accounts receivable, and depreciation. Even with efficient accounting operations, maintaining the data needs time and consideration that may be used elsewhere.

When you submit information for a financial transaction, cloud accounting systems can greatly minimize the effort by changing several accounts automatically. Good software can manage all currency conversions from pesos, yen, pounds, or francs to dollars and back if your organization conducts business outside of the United States.

6. Financial Reports The top cloud accounting solutions automatically produce financial reports. You can log in from your phone and instantly generate a real-time statement if, for example, an investor wants to see your income statement for the most recent quarter before your meeting. Cloud accounting makes obtaining data on short-term liabilities, revenue, and cash flow simple. For additional information on the top financial dashboards and reports, see:
  1. Reduce the amount of manual data entering
  2. Access real-time reports and dashboards
  3. Improve the experience that customers
7. Tax Accounting
Taxes are another area of business that becomes more difficult as you expand. For instance, if you expand a retail business into multiple sales tax districts, the sales tax calculation will differ at each location. Comparatively speaking, using software to track and calculate the numbers is much simpler.