As businesses move into the digital age, many business owners are leveraging the power of technology to their advantage via QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online migration. As accountants, we are our clients sounding board. We always want to help them be as successful as they possibly can be and while QuickBooks Desktop is a great product, QuickBooks Online Advanced offers an optimal solution. It provides all the tools necessary for successful remote access and automation, as well as dynamic, real-time reporting capabilities. This can help companies reach new heights.
Cloud computing, or Software as a Service (SAAS), is becoming increasingly popular for both personal and professional usage. Moving to an online accounting system provides scalability, enabling businesses to quickly meet their changing needs as they grow. The switch can seem daunting! But given its potential benefits it makes sense to take that leap and see the potential of what’s possible. If this is something you are looking to do, I have put together this checklist to help make your migration seamless and less stressful.
Taking advantage of the cloud
Your team can enjoy real-time data sharing and updates, ensuring that everyone is working with the most accurate information at all times. Collaboration on projects and tasks becomes seamless and efficient, minimizing misunderstandings and reducing the time it takes to complete tasks. Informed decision-making is a critical element of successful growth, and accessibility to financial information is the driving force behind it. QuickBooks Online Advanced offers a powerful dashboard with key metrics and insights, providing you with a comprehensive overview of your financial situation. Additionally, the advanced reporting features allow for greater depth when analyzing your financial data, ultimately enabling you to make better strategic decisions for growth.
As your business grows, the ability to manage and delegate tasks and processes is crucial and with QuickBooks Online’s robust task management and delegation solutions, you can easily create and assign tasks to team members. This platform streamlines workflows, making it easier for you to track progress and ensure that the right people are working on the right projects at the right time.
A growing team is a natural part of business growth, and QuickBooks Online Advanced is ready to accommodate your needs with its custom user seats feature. As you add more users, the platform’s flexible pricing model allows you to easily accommodate new team members and their respective roles, ensuring seamless scalability as your team expands.
Preparing for the transition
Change management can be difficult. With QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online migration, it is important to make sure your team is in agreement and that the new solution meets everyone’s needs. All aspects of the move should be taken into account. By getting everyone on board ahead of time, it will help ease the transition when you relocate and make change management much simpler. Because everyone will be on board, there will be fewer shocks following your relocation, and change management will be easier.
Create a timeline
Creating an effective timeline and transition strategy is essential for managing a process well and keeping it moving forward. To give yourself direction, you may want to link your timeline to an audit or the end of the fiscal year. You can also phase your approach into checkpoints that help you monitor your progress.
Prepare your books
Before migrating your data, it’s important to make sure your books are up-to-date and organized for migration. To ensure a successful transfer, now is the opportunity to do a thorough clean-up of your readers. It’s also important to create an archive of your books before transferring them — this will help protect you in case you are unable to convert large files. Additionally, consider if it makes sense to bring in old files — you may not need them for the way you’re using QuickBooks now, but you should still keep them as part of an archive.
Train your employees
Training is essential for a successful transition. When introducing new software, employees must be trained before they use it. A comprehensive training program will ensure that everyone understands the new processes and can manage their responsibilities accurately. This is extremely helpful for getting everyone acclimated to the new system, hold more extensive group training sessions. Follow up by offering small team or individualized training sessions to cover specific responsibilities based on each person’s needs.
QuickBooks Online Advanced Ecosystem
After transitioning data and training your team, you can move on to working in your new ecosystem. As you and your employees build out new workflows and begin working on your new software, you’ll notice the expanded opportunities that a platform like QuickBooks Online Advanced offers, including:
One source of truth
With all your data consolidated in one place, you’ll have an improved view of your business’s performance and the tools necessary to make informed decisions. QuickBooks Online Advanced provides specific features to help you take advantage of this centralized data.
These include:
- Clarity
- Cashflow Center – budgets and forecasting.
Robust reporting
By migrating online, you’ll now get a more accurate and up-to-date view of your business performance. This enables you to create tailored reports. QuickBooks Online Advanced lets you customize your reports and keep your accountant in the loop with email notifications and updates.
Integrated data backups and security
- Security features at log-in help to keep your account safe.
- The integrated backups included in QuickBooks Online Advanced mean no external hard drive is needed, and you don’t have to worry about losing your data.
A customizable solution that grows with your business
By switching to an online platform, you can create the perfect financial system that is tailored specifically to your business. As you expand, QuickBooks Online Advanced will grow with you by providing an ever-growing list of features and third-party app integrations that are designed to meet the changing needs of your company.
Benefits of the product/ecosystem/approach
Lastly, making the switch to online business and accounting software is a tough decision. The advantages it brings nowadays make it worthwhile. With QuickBooks Online Advanced, you’ll benefit from increased flexibility, anytime/anywhere access to shared information, improved productivity, greater transparency for collaboration purposes and an ever-growing list of apps and integrations that enable you to customize a solution to your unique needs.
All these features are designed with one goal in mind: helping businesses grow and succeed.
Checklist for getting started
Click here to see the checklist to help you get started with your QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online migration!
To learn more about Liz Scott Training and Consulting, click here.
This is a paid partnership with Intuit