This growth brings the firm’s international reach to six countries including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the UK and is part of a strategic expansion programme which will see the business established in 12 countries by 2012.

E-conomic launches in Spain is a post from: Online accounting system – e-conomic blog

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Listen and enjoy!

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Here are some comments from the “IT Counts” online forum run by the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW).  Only a very small sample of the Institute’s overall membership participate in the forum, but even amongst this group the comments show a reticence towards online accounting and SaaS:

• “Most, if not all, of the Cloud providers are using servers which are outside the European Union.”
• “If the provider loses your data, then your business is ‘toast’ which is clearly NOT acceptable for any accountant.”
• “Cloud computing – a cautionary tale”
• “Whereas beckaup and security of on-premise solutions are entirely controlled by the user, cloud solutions do require trust to be invested in the on-line supplier. If North Korea can hack into the White House’s computers, how safe is safe?”

I have personally checked out over 40 providers of web-based accounting systems in the UK alone.  No doubt some of them have data centres outside the EU and some of them may not be robust enough to rely on.  But the above generalised assertions imply that us vendors are fly-by-night operations who store your data in some far flung and insecure part of the world.  This makes my blood boil because I know the effort that goes in to providing a stable, robust platform for our users.

Doing due diligence on your supplier is just as important with online systems as it is when you buy software to install.  If you’re a customer of ours and the above comments have made you wonder, let me put your mind at rest…

1. Our hosting partner is Fujitsu.  We selected them for the service they provide, their global reach and the credibility they bring.  Today we only have one data centre and it’s in Copenhagen, which is in the EU.  We may set up additional data centres to service other parts of the world, but we will not remove our presence in the EU and we will continue to develop and manage the software centrally in order to maintain the economies of scale that enable us to deliver a lot at a low price.
2. We backup your data every 15 minutes (or 96 times a day) and have a separate storage facility for the backups.  You can also take your own backup at any time using the “Export data” button when you are logged on.
3. Some practices require local data backups to ensure that their clients’ data is copied to their local jurisdiction.  This is a regulatory requirement in some countries (for the UK, the data just has to be in the EU) and it’s a service we provided through our hosting partner, Fujitsu.
4. When we were a new company, we made arrangements to protect customers if we ever got into financial difficulties.  We still have them, even though today we have a strong financial and operational platform.  Our track record shows that we have never made a loss whilst continuing to grow and our revenues in 2008 were £3.8m.  There are almost 20,000 SME’s (that’s companies, not just users) using e-conomic along with their accountants and bookkeepers.  We expect to grow by around 40% this year and have just opened new German and Spanish web sites.

We’ve been around since 2001 and have seen many phases of growth and development, both in the application and as a business, so that both our application and our company infrastructure are ahead of most of our competitors.  Richard Messik, partner at Vantis (ranked 13th biggest practice in the UK in 2008), visited our HQ recently to see our core operations at first hand, feel free to ask his opinion directly.

While many accountants may be reticent, just look at this comment by Charles Verrier of CVC , a consultant to accountants.  Charles was responding to a blog post by Richard where he asked what could be the tipping point that makes more people turn to SaaS.  Charles uses online accounting and talks about the business benefits, the quality of service he receives and the issue of security.

While Charles’ views are the polar opposite of the above comments from the ICAEW forum, that’s not to say that all companies like SaaS and no accountants like it, but it does seem as if companies are taking more of a lead.  Which is a pity, because the practices who are ignoring this technology are missing out on tremendous benefits, which means that their clients are missing out too.

Polar views of online accounting and the question of risk is a post from: Online accounting system – e-conomic blog

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“99 percent of EU firms are small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but only nine percent of them use electronic invoices and only 11 percent have IT-based human resource management.

“If SMEs could access computing power over the web, they would no longer need to buy and maintain technologies or IT applications and services,” Reding said. “Such web-based services — called cloud computing — are the medicine needed for our credit-squeezed economy: they can make businesses more productive by shifting from fixed costs (for example, hiring staff or buying PCs) to variable costs (for instance, you only pay for what you use).”

Reding added that efficiencies brought about by cloud computing could “lead to electricity savings in computing activity of up to 80 percent”.

Full article here.

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Although the article makes no clear link between the reported increase in stress and the use of technology, there’s little doubt that the flow of information we all have to deal with, be it in e-mails, systems, web sites, Twitter, or whatever, can cause stress.

In practical business terms, it can be labour intensive to manipulate a client’s financial data, especially if you have to clean it up in order to arrive at a true picture.

The vision of e-conomic’s co-founder, Jacob Wandt (himself a chartered accountant facing the usual pressures of dealing with SME clients), when he created e-conomic was:

• To enable companies of any size to have an affordable, easy-to-use and robust accounting system.
• To improve the cooperation between accountants and clients, leading to improved service and greater efficiency.

The second point is important to this discussion, because working with clients in e-conomic means that all data is gathered and integrated on one platform, including data capture, data processing and reporting. From intelligent scanning of invoices – where the system itself recognises the type of invoice and suggests the accounts in which to book the invoice lines, to additional modules like Report Designer which allows you to create tailor-made reports for different customers and purposes.

By exploiting the freedom and usability of the internet, there are new and better ways of working that can reduce the stress and workload, which has to be a good thing for both accountants and their clients.

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What particularly caught my eye was that the offer was from EJBC, an accounting practice that uses e-conomic!  I was talking to Keilor and Emma at EJBC recently and heard that they have an important and healthy line of business with Sage, but they also have a number of clients on e-conomic and a positive view of online accounting.  They even have a log in to online accounting right on their home page.

Traditional accounting software is embedded in the processes of so many accounting firms that it’s obviously not going to disappear any time soon, but online accounting brings an extra dimension to their processes and client services.  Those who use e-conomic become accustomed to the benefits of being able to instantly see the results of work done by others and easily integrate data from other systems.  Not only are they able to do what they always did more efficiently, they can also provide services that, with traditional systems, would have been too costly for the client to afford.

This could form the foundation for an eye-catching offer comprising a new and innovative service that gives the client business owner something that they perceive as having real value, rather than just a bit of software.  How about a “Free monthly review, correction and approval of your books“?  (e-conomic provides the tools for this.)  The business owner would feel reassured by knowing that their books are accurate and up-to-date, it would also enable the practice to ensure that any issues are ironed out along the way rather than having to unravel a truck load of queries at year-end or at the end of the VAT quarter.

Such an offer might also help the accounting practice stand out from the crowd as a firm that offers great, innovative services.  The inclusion of a “Free-for-12-months online accounting system, including free training and support” (e-conomic provides free training and support) would be the glue that makes such a service possible, but because the actual software cost is small there’s scope to add value on top.

The offer could also say: “The software is much easier to learn that traditional packages and we [the accountant] will be able to work with you more easily because we can log on with you – no need to send files to and fro – making it easier for us to assist you when you need to ask a question or when the time comes for your next VAT return.”

That starts to sound fairly compelling, providing you’re prepared to consider using an online business application, which more and more businesses are – especially SME’s.

Can online accounting enable you to deliver more value than traditional software? is a post from: Online accounting system – e-conomic blog

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Basically this is what we do with regards to accounting software
And we are true believers of the most important part of SaaS is SERVICE. Feel free to put us to the test.

What is Software as a Service? is a post from: Online accounting system – e-conomic blog

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