The Advantages of Hosted QuickBooks
One key benefit of remote QuickBooks® access is the ability to increase your
revenue by serving more customers in more locations with less travel time and travel
expense. However, the available remote-access solutions vary greatly.
The following sections compare Hosted QuickBooks solutions, like our offering, with
QuickBooks Online edition, remote-access web plug-ins, and the built-in remote access
features of the Full-Featured versions of QuickBooks. The comparison places special
focus on how well the varied remote access solutions support outsourced bookkeeping.
To learn what makes Right Networks the best, read our Proven Provider document.
Easy Remote Access
Ideally, remote QuickBooks access should work just like QuickBooks running on
your local PC.
- QuickBooks Online edition:
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To switch from QuickBooks Pro, Premier, or Enterprise to QuickBooks Online edition,
you have to learn an entirely new interface and you give up several important QuickBooks
features.
- Built-In Remote Access:
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The remote access feature built into QuickBooks is available only in the Premier
edition and uses WebEx to allow only one user at-a-time to take control over
one remote computer. A user must be present at each computer to set up each session,
taking turns following the instructions Intuit provides in a 17 page manual.
Because a user must be present at the remote computer, this feature is fine for
demos or interactive reviews of financials, but is unsuitable for a wide-range of
remote access needs including outsourced bookkeeping.
- Web Plug-Ins:
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There are several web plug-ins that provide various levels of remote QuickBooks
access, but none makes the full features of QuickBooks available remotely.
Web plug-ins are intended to provide remote access to only a limited set of features
whose access is required remotely by a specific set of users.
- OUR SOLUTION - Hosted QuickBooks:
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Hosted QuickBooks provides the closest to the ideal for ease-of-use because,
unlike the other approaches, you actually run the same QuickBooks as you do on your
local PC, but it is running on a remote server, inside a "virtual PC" - a computer
we set up just for you.
Important QuickBooks Features
A remote access solution should not take away features, especially from my customers.
- QuickBooks Online edition:
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In addition to having to learn an entirely new interface in order to run QuickBooks
Online edition, you lose several key features of QuickBooks Pro, Premium,
and Enterprise (and even Basic) editions.
- No purchase orders or inventory tracking,
- No job costing or estimating,
- No customized price levels,
- No integration with ACT!, Word, or Outlook,
- No online bill payment,
- No true payroll integration (no integrated payroll input),
- No support for multiple companies in one subscription, and
- No forecasts, business plans, sales order tracking, or inventory tracking.
- Built-In Remote Access:
-
The remote access feature built into QuickBooks makes many of the standard features
of QuickBooks accessible remotely as long as you can get a user at the remote location
to help you set up the session and relinquish control of the computer until you
are through with it. Having to give up a computer during remote access sessions
can be a significant inconvenience to your customers.
- Web Plug-Ins:
-
Web plug-ins are intended to provide remote access to only a limited set of features
whose access is required remotely by a specific set of users. Therefore, web plug-ins,
by design, leave a lot of features behind.
- OUR SOLUTION - Hosted QuickBooks:
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With Hosted QuickBooks, you actually run the same QuickBooks as you do on your local
PC, so all of the features you need are available remotely, exactly where you expect
them.
Simplified PC Management
Is PC maintenance what you really want to be doing?
- QuickBooks Online edition:
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QuickBooks Online simplifies PC maintenance because you run it via a web browser.
There is no need to install or maintain any version of QuickBooks on any of your
PCs. In fact, with Online edition, there is no benefit to installing QuickBooks
on any of your PCs because Online edition cannot provide a QuickBooks data file
that you could otherwise use on your local PC if your Internet connection goes down.
- Built-In Remote Access:
-
Of the alternatives explored here, the remote access feature built into QuickBooks
is the most difficult to maintain. You not only have to install and maintain all
the necessary, matching QuickBooks versions on every PC involved in the remote interaction,
but you also have to set them up for WebEx use.
- Web Plug-Ins:
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Web plug-ins do not add any complexity to PC maintenance since, like QuickBooks
Online edition, they are used via a web browser. For users that need full-featured
access to QuickBooks, however, web plug-ins do not remove any complexity, as these
users will still need to install and maintain the appropriate QuickBooks version(s)
on their PC(s).
- OUR SOLUTION - Hosted QuickBooks:
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Hosted QuickBooks simplifies PC maintenance because, like QuickBooks Online, you
run it via a web browser. There is no need to install or maintain any version of
QuickBooks on any of your PCs. However, if you want to use your QuickBooks data
when you are off-line (to view reports, etc), you can. Hosted QuickBooks solutions
allow you to download your QuickBooks data file from the server and use it from
a locally installed version of QuickBooks.
Reliability
I know that a data-center offers the best reliability, but I still want a local
copy of my data.
- QuickBooks Online edition:
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QuickBooks Online gives you data center reliability, but doesn't give you a local
copy of all of your data.
- Built-In Remote Access:
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Of the alternatives explored here, the remote access feature built into QuickBooks
is the most likely to have reliability problems because more systems must be working
properly for it all to function: the local PC, the remote PC, and the WebEx system
that connects them. While there are local copies of the data, none reside in a data
center, so the responsibility for backing up the data is left to the user (another
place where things can go wrong).
- Web Plug-Ins:
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Web plug-ins are as reliable as the web server on which they run. Whether the QuickBooks
data that they use is backed-up or whether you have access to a local copy depends
on the offering.
- OUR SOLUTION - Hosted QuickBooks:
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With Hosted QuickBooks, you get data center reliability AND the ability to keep
a local copy of your data.
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