I am attracted by much of what I've seen about Google Apps but as an Accountant I have some concerns including: Most clients will continue to be using MS office and we would regularily be sent excel files; With MS office we file things in a folder structure but with Google Apps it seems to be based on file names; The functionality of the Google spreadsheet seems to be very limited or may at least involve a good bit of re-learning.
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Try office 365
Many of the weaknesses you highlight are genuine concerns. If you want a cloud based solution why not look at Office 365?
Captain.
I've not tried it...
... but there is another option. See https://www.rollapp.com/libreoffice
365 for me
I use 365 as it is a proven & established product, and virtually industry standard used by most clients as you state. the current pricing of it is also very attractive compared to the old days when office suite used to cost you £400 per machine. Google Apps are good but come a poor third to apple and android based products. I was also put off by other accountants who had been using them but were changing back as there was talk of introducing extra costs which were likely to be quite high once they have hooked enough people onto using them.
Google Apps V Office 365
I have helped people with both Google Apps and Office 365 and both have their pros and cons.
There are quite a lot of factors that may be relevant in individual cases but essentially I think it comes down to this:
Go with Office 365 unless:
- cheapness is a major factor
- you need multiple users to be able to simultaneously edit files (Google is better at this for now although I fully expect Microsoft to catch up eventually)
- you want to take advantage of the many relatively low cost Google Marketplace Apps that integrate with Google Apps for things such as CRM and Project/Task Management