How do I access my files at home and office?

Try GoToMyPc.com or similar

There is software available such as GoToMyPc.com, which you download on to the computer that holds the files you want to access. You then log in to the software provider's website from the remote computer and then log in to your host computer and you have full remote access to all your files and programmes. You obviously need to leave the computer switched on and connected to the internet.

You do need good internet connections both ends and ideally the remote computer would have the same size screen (or larger) as the host computer is replicated on the remote computer.

I've had mixed success with GoToMyPc but this is due I believe to variable internet connections. It's available on free trial anyway so certainly worth a go.

I would recommend LogMeIn

Which has a free version. There is also a Pro version that allows you to print files from your remote machine at your local desk. But you can get around that with the free version simply by emailing them to yourself and then printing.

VPN (?)

LogMeIn is ok, but the connection is painfully slow at home. I do have bumpkin internet though! It's too frustrating to actually work on, so I only LogMeIn if I really need to look something  up or grab a file.

You can do a direct link which I think is called a VPN and this is supposed to be faster. You'd likely need a tech person to set it up for you.

Portable Hard drive?

I don't know your set up, or how you will organise your files, but how about using a portable hard drive for the business data and taking it to the office with you?

This would not cause any loss of processing speed because even VPN can be very slow if your broadband connection isn't fast at both 'ends', and completely removes the problem of getting online access.

An alternative approach

Having remote access from home to your "work" PC, in the office, using the two services mentioned above will work. However, I suggest that they are not the best solution.

In the scenario envisaged by use of LetMeIn or GoToMyPc you are effectively using your office (and the PC left in it when you go home) as a datacentre, albeit a very humble and "DIY" one.

This raises many potential concerns about the security of the building, security of the room, security of the infrastructure and security of your firewall - if your office PC is left switched on, and connected to the Internet, as it must be for either of the above two services to be used, it is vulnerable to unauthorised access 24/7.

Then you need to consider the speed and reliability of two broadband connections - the one between your office and the Internet and the one between the Internet and your home.

I would recommend having your files (and possibly your programs) held in an online service, providing access from either your home, office or any other location. Your files will be stored in a purpose-built, professionally managed datacentre, with high-grade security and backup procedures.

In this alternative scenario, you could have either your office PC or laptop stolen and not worry about any sensitive client data being exposed - because there's none on there.

Adrian Pearson
Business Technology Adviser

As per Adrain's final para

You could use something like 'dropbox' which allows you to create a virtual hard drive where you store your files and can then access these from any pc anywhere in the world.

Mark

Microsoft Groove

One very simple and free way to do it is to use Microsoft Groove (which is free and part of Microsoft Office 2007).  There's an article about it here, or just look it up in your Program Files folder.

Once you set up a workspace, copy all your files over to it.  Then access the workspace from any other computer, and you immediately can view, edit, and save your files no matter where you are.  It's great if you mostly use one computer, but sometimes use another and need access to all files. You can set up security and administrative privileges for others (ie some can read-only, others can edit, etc).

One computer ?

As you are just one person, why not just buy a really powerful laptop, and have a plug in keyboard and big screen at the office.

External hard drive

I have a similar set-up work-wise and manage fine with an external hardrive. Cost about £35. Haven't used 10% of its capacity yet (I have about 150 clients).

Once a week/fortnight copy the entire contents into a back-up folder on one of the two PC's just as a security precaution.

Doesnt take 10 mins to change all your software default folders to the external drive address. 

Laptop

I have exactly the same setup and have tried logmein, virtual servers, etc., all with fairly uninspiring results - often plagued with technical problems, especially broadband speed.

I got a Samsing NC10 laptop a couple of years ago, only about £300, but it is easily fast enough with enough memory and hard drive to cope with my small practice of around 100 clients.  At home, I can have it on my knee watching TV.  In the office, I used a USB hub to connect it to a proper screen and keyboard, and external hard drives for backup and external DVD reader/writer.  When I bought the laptop, it was for simple home/personal use but I was so impressed I transferred my practice data to it and havn't looked back. 

I have client data encrypted using "folder lock" in case it's stolen in transit.  As well as hard drive backup, I also have "carbonite" installed for a real time online backup.

I can't imagine ever buying another desktop PC as I just can't see the point anymore.

At the moment, I only have a couple of subcontractors so its easy to transfer client files by dvd or email between us, but I can see problems if I ever took on proper staff needing real time access to the same client data files - that would definitely need some kind of central database or server, but I expect I'd use an online virtual server which will probably be more reliable and robust in the future.

Microsoft Live

Open a free document storage account with microsoft live and you can save your files online and access from anywhere with an internet connection and resave back when you have finished.

It works well for us  and replaces the sharepoint service we used to subscribe to at £40 per month

Online practice management

When considering specific products to help in this scenario, I recommend looking into HQ for Accountants.

We use it in our practice because it allows files to be stored online, but better than using an Office Live Workspace (as mentioned by the previous contributor), it also allows those files to be stored against client histories, as part of a comprehensive practice management system.

All very good suggestions above

Provided all you are talking about is accessing files. One of the benefits of remote access to your office PC (and, yes, I understand all the inherent risks of leaving a machine on 24/7) is that you are effectively just using very long cables on your keyboard and monitor, so that don't have to worry about duplicating all of your applications onto your home machine or laptop.

We use Microsoft Live Sync

Our company has an office used by the two directors and one member of staff, each with a PC, and I usually work from home so it's a similar situation.

Live Sync, which is part of Windows Live Essentials and free, enables us to have synchronised copies of files on all the PC's; currently there are about 10GB of files. Synchronisation of the files in the office takes place over the office network. Any file added or updated at the office is sent to my PC over the internet, and vice versa, and this is quite fast.

If I create or update a file when the office PC's are off after hours, it will be sent to the office next day. As well as satisfying your reqirements (I think), this provides an off-site backup as a bonus.

Live Sync works with Windows XP, Vista and 7. A new beta version of Live Sync is available which has extra functionality such as providing 2GB of hosted storage for backup of essential files. The only downside is that it will not work with XP. We will switch to the new version when it is out of beta.

With the current version, you can opt to install only Live Sync from the Essentials suite; I'm not sure if this is the case with the new version.

Have a look at http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials-beta , which has a link to the current version as well.

Access

 Although I seem to be one of very few these days I am very wary on online storage facilities and things like " The Cloud" which are very much promoted these days. How do you know that the Online server is anything more than a computer geek with a computer in his back bedroom? What happens if that business fails, do the records end up at the tip like some Inland Revenue documents! 

By far the easiest option is to buy a large, encrypted external hard drive and just carry that backwards and forwards. You simply plug in to the USB socket and you are up and running. I have recently purchased a Seagate Black Armour terabyte external drive which is encrypted for about £85. That is 100GB if you don;t know and plenty for any small Accountant. Believe it or not I bought it from Tesco Direct as it was cheaper there. I suggest an encrypted one just in case you lose it so that your data is safe. You could work directly on the external drive from both computers but it would obviously be necessary to back that drive up to another machine or another hard drive or even both regularly which could take anything up to an hour depending on your system. I do mine overnight. The drive is only about 7 inches (or 18cm square). It does have the advantage that your data is completely separate if your computer goes down which they seem to do all too frequently. 

I have one of the countries best geeky computer bods as a client. He works in a high security area and he suggested I could do what you want plus access it from my iphone whilst out shopping if I was really that pathetic if I installed a server. It might take other nerdy pieces of equipment as well, I don't know, but the price of £1,000 for a server plus another £500 ish installation and set up charges has put me off for the moment. It obviously can be done though and I probably will do so in the long term as I definitely envisage myself lying on a cruise ship from time to time. 

Good Luck

Online is good....

...but as far as Im aware you cant host a QuickBooks file (or Sage or many other software specific file) online.  Please correct me if this is not the case.

Emails would be fine using an IMAP server but you would have to find something to sync your contacts.

Personally I used Logmein pro version (the free version is for non commercial use which rules you out unfortunately) and set my computer to sleep mode after 30 minutes.  If I need to access the computer from home I send a wake on lan request which brings the computer out of sleep mode and hopefully stops anone accessing my work pc.  I know its possible for someone to bypass it but if they want to go to that much trouble Im sure they could access pretty much anthing.

Dropbox

I use this and it is free for up to a massive 2GB Storage and after that the fees are still modest.  We set up folders and also give access to clients for relevant files.  Security is encrypted the same level as online banking.  Any file you alter is automatically synced to the dropbox website and can be accessed there and it is also snced to my other desktop, my laptop, my iPad and my iPhone.  We don't have a server, which some of teh other suggestions needed and you don't need to leave your office equipment running, which is required by some of the solutions.

team viewer

it's really easy to use, and set up.

use something like goodsync to keep the two sets of files in line .

Or in gotomypc there is a sync option.

just be vvvv careful. my staff are somewhat miffed that they delete a file and it has reappeared the next day when i do a sync. Really you need synching that propagates deletions, as in goodsync.

programme software

 I don't know any of the software you use as I use primarily Excel and Sage myself but the general rule of thumb is that you would need the software on both computers to access the files on any of the media you are considering. Sage are so protective of some of their Tax software that you have to use it on your computer, back up to the same computer and then copy the backup to your hard drive reversing the process at the other end. Sage will not allow you to back up their Tax software to an external drive which is crazy and I actually crashed my computer and damaged the hard drive trying to override that. The Sage Accounts software will backup to external drives but you may find you have to do something similar with some of your software. Sorry but I am not familiar with any of them. Either way it is not a big deal to do what I said and it will only take minutes if not seconds to do the transfer.

The one thing you do not want to do is end up with one version of client's records on one computer and another version on the other one. It takes forever to sort out. Been there, got the Tshirt when I was a lot less techie than I am now.  

All programs can be hosted online

Since clarification was sought above, can I please add that pretty much any software you currently run from your own PC (laptop desktop or whatever) can be run from an online server instead - usually using something called XenApp by Citrix.

So that covers things like Sage 50, IRIS, Word, Excel, VT Accounts, TaxCalc or whatever.

Let me know if you would like me to provide links to hosted desktop providers.

Adrian Pearson
Business Technology Adviser

Have you considered using Microsoft Online ?

Have you thought about setting yourself up with a Microsoft Online account?

You can benefit from a full blown Exchange server with up to 25Gb of storage space for only £6.71 per month.
It can include a "Sharepoint" area where you can store documents/files so that you can access them anywhere you have an Internet connection.
There are none of the security risks of leaving PCs switched on or logged in when you're not there.

It's a brilliant service and has a gauranteed up-time of 99.9% (if it goes down for more than .1% of the time in a month you get that month for free).

See/hear more about it at http://www.microsoft.com/online/demo/demo.aspx 
To start with, just click the "User Experience" tab and then look at "Exchange" and "Sharepoint" sections first.  Some of the stuff on the other buttons is a bit vague and could put you off but you can look if you want to.

If you have a domain name for your company, you can point the email at the Microsoft Online account and use your own email address instead of the [email protected] one that you get when you sign up.

All you need to sign up is a valid Microsoft WindowsLive-ID, which you can get using your existing email address or sign up for a new one with Hotmail or Googlemail or whatever you prefer.

If you want to have a free 30 day trial you can get it and try it by going to the www.microsoft.com/online.

If you need any help setting up the trial, just ask. 
There's even a "Support" section within the system where you can get support (included in the cost) from Microsoft.

It's definitely worth considering.

If you get stuck, feel free to give me a call.

Roger Neale
07714 670789

Happy to help

Hi FirstTab,

I would be happy to assist you with this and, to be honest, you probably just need a little hand-holding through the process.

Please let me have your contact details using the form here http://adrianpearson.com/contact/ and I will give you a call.

I'll second that

to both the Team Viewer and especially Dropbox.  No good for the apps, but ace for data storage and file synchronisation. You set up a dropbox directory on each computer when you load it, save all your work there then whenever you are online it synchs with the cloud and when you use a different computer resynchs that one off the cloud.  Can password protect different bits with different passwords.  Which? mag did a review of all online storage facilities and it came out trumps.  Free for first chunk of data - more free space if you recommend it and load it on extra PCs and inexpensive to upgrade. 

A word of warning though - I work frequently from clients' offices and when I tried downloading it onto a client PC it dumped data from all my clients on that clients PC when it did the synch.  So quickly uninstalled it and now just use local PC and upload/download the relevant files I'm working on via internet logon.  Didn't have time to investigate if I could synch just a sub-directory of the dropbox but at quick glance it didn't appear so.

Tracy

Screenshot for anyone interested.

I have posted up a screenshot of how our available applications are presented for use when we log into the server, in case this helps anyone understand the concept better.

Adrian

Why an office?

I think whatever you choose you will have problems.

Speed over the internet

Buying two licences of software

Managing the data

Security of premises

This is the fundamental problem with having two places of work.

It would make much more sense to have one place of work.

I have an office at home.

I've yet to understand why having an office elsewhere is better. The cost of a shop front office must outweigh any marketing advantage. The cost of any other office must outweigh any "looking professional" advantage.

The only reason I can understand to work somewhere else than home is if you cannot create a reasonable office at home. This can easily be overcome by moving to a place that is suitable. I moved and built an office.

Setting up as an accountant is such a big step that you want to do everything that makes it easy for you.

Remote Access v Synchronisation

If you use remote-access software (I love LogMeIn) you will only need one copy of your office software, but will have to leave the the PC with all the software on it switched on.

If you use file-synchronisation software (eg Dropbox), you can switch off one PC but you will need all your software on both machines.

If you rely on the cloud you obviously do not have access when your internet connection is down, and latency (time between pressing a key and the signal getting to the remote server and back) can be irritating.

I used to have a desktop and a laptop and accessed the desktop with LogMeIn from the laptop. Now I just have everything on the laptop, and don't know why I ever did it any other way.

Too late with the office advice

It's a bit late for the advice on the office Peter. FirstTab has already got one.

Still time

He's only got a short contract. He still has time to see sense!

Why?

What didn't you like about working from home?

Blog

Where is your blog FirstTab (or where will it be?) I look forward to reading it. 

Surprise visit

I've visited FirstTab's office today.

Very nice location and seems to have everything he needs.

I hope he doesn't steal all my clients!

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