I'm potentially taking the step of moving from a home office into a rental and taking on my first employee.
Specifically I'm looking for advice from fellow practitioners who use TaxCalc Accounts Production (and tax return) across multiple devices.
I will continue to have a PC at home, plus a PC at the office and also my employee will have her own PC. She is qualified and able to work on accs pro and tax returns so we will be working on the one database of customers across devices.
For example I want to be able to start a set of accounts at home, go to the office and continue there, while my colleague is working on a separate set of accounts on her PC.
I've emailed TaxCalc who came straight back to me with a couple of workarounds but not a solution that allows me to work as above.
I'm heavily into Dropbox, which is effectively my server and gives me seamless working across platforms with just about everything else I do.
Any real world examples of this - or other ideas?
Replies (9)
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VPS
Set up a VPS between home & office. All the Software you need is already built into Windows.
@RedFive - if you are happy with Taxcalc and want to stick with it then you could try running it on a hosted desktop. I've no experience myself but I know that a lot of aweb members use hosted desktop uk for various tax software and rate it highly. Another option is to look at using cloud software as an alternative to TaxCalc.
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Taxcalc needs to be "hosted" somewhere and can then be linked into other machines on the network.
This could presumably be your office machine linked to your assistant's machine where you spend most of your time.
Then you dial in using "logmein" or similar from home, and your assistant can do the same to her work PC to operate the work PC's remotely. Its slightly slower than working on a desktop, but OK for short spells. Not good all day.
OR you go the other way with hosted desktops, which is more suitable if your time is more evenly split. It is however quite expensive as you pay each month but dont have to worry so much about your IT.
OR get tax filer and VT and remove the problem and keep working with dropbox as you do now.
We use Taxcalc on a network.
We use Taxcalc on a network, but all PCs in same room. Does seem that there needs to be one main PC with the database held on it, that other PCs connect in to. I'd imagine as long as you can find a way to connect your remote PC into that network, it'll be able to access the database too.
From my perspective, I do look forward to the day Taxcalc goes full cloud (if it does).
hosted desktop
we use a hosted desktop to run BTC, works lovely, 3 users access it no probs.
we use hosted accountants who have been great, but others are available.
one of the benefits is that I can use a Mac :-)
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The database needs to be on, you can set your PC to go on/off on a schedule and even wake it up remotely, but it will still be on a lot if you work 'broad' hours.
Quite frankly if you do the nomad thing, then go hosted.