• The bulk of their accounting and bookkeeping work is done by an independent accountant, who generally works from home.
• Historically, the accountant would come into the client’s office on weekends to work on the computer that had Peachtree installed.
• The accountant no longer wants to work on weekends.
• The computer that was traditionally reserved for the accountant needs to be used occasionally by other office staff. So giving the accountant remote access to this computer from home would not be a sufficient resolution. We could not guarantee remote access whenever the accountant needed it.
• The manager of the business occasionally needed access to the accounting system from her laptop, which she travels with frequently.

I checked with Sage Software to see what options were available. As it turns out, there is an entirely cloud-based version of Peachtree, called ePeachtree. However, the cloud-based product has some limitations, and unfortunately those limitations are only hinted at on the web site. Furthermore, there is a custom conversion process for businesses trying to migrate from the desktop version to ePeachtree. It sounded too risky.

Peachtree offers a hybrid solution as well, called Peachtree Web Accounting. This service requires the traditional desktop product to be installed first. It then synchronizes the data between the desktop and the cloud and allows remote users to work on the data through a web interface. The remote users won’t get 100% of the functionality of the desktop product, but the idea is to include enough functionality for the typical remote user, including an independent accountant.

My client is going to give Peachtree Web Accounting a shot. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Today’s entry is Autotask, a professional services automation (PSA) tool designed specifically for information technology consulting companies. I use it to:

• enter and track which recurring services my clients are using (e.g., how many PCs and servers they have);
• create tickets for projects, change orders, help desk calls and other issues;
• track work on those tickets and record time spent; and
• create invoices based on the time spent and the recurring services in the contracts.

Additional modules are available and new ones are constantly under development.

Autotask is not the first on-line PSA tool I’ve used. In fact, when I started my business back in 2000, one of the first things I did was to create an account with OpenAir. (Back then, OpenAir was free, like so many on-line services used to be before the DotCom bubble burst.) I stopped using OpenAir when I started doing my invoices through QuickBooks because the integration between the two was very expensive.

PSA solutions are particularly well-suited to the cloud because PSA software users are often required to access the system from outside of a central office (e.g., at a client site or at a WiFi hotspot between appointments). Having the application in the cloud means there is no need to synchronize data between a mobile device and a home-office server. Keeping databases in sync between servers and mobile devices can be extremely tricky because of the risk of conflicting updates.

Another advantage of having my PSA tool in the cloud is that I can open it up to subcontractors and clients without having to give them access to a server within my own network. The ability to cross company borders to allow work with customers, contractors, and vendors is often a critical advantage of a cloud-based solution.

One downside of Autotask is that it currently runs only in Internet Explorer, not in Firefox or other browsers. Ideally, a cloud-based application would not be tied to a specific browser.