A Day in the Life of an Internet Accountant

I had an interesting meeting with a contact the other day discussing all things Cloud, gadgets and generally putting the world to rights. I happened to mention my new Kindle and that my wife, who is a self-confessed bookaholic, said she would never use one.

I have just upgraded my Laptop to Windows 7. Not an exercise for the faint hearted, but after a few failed attempts I succeeded. I had previously been using XP and over the years I had downloaded so much rubbish and deleted loads more, the whole system was getting decidedly dodgy. And when it took over 30 minutes to boot up the other day I decided I had to act!

This is a true story (only the names and a few of the facts have been changed to protect the innocent!)

A client rings me the other day .."I have a bit of a problem. I need to get my accounts done very urgently... problems with the bank etc. Can you turn them round quickly for me?"

"No worries" I say (always helpful) "send me the records and we can get started on it."

"It should be a lot easier this year" he says, " I am using Sage and I can send you the back up file by email and you can get going"

Continuing my research into Gadgets new (that's my excuse!), I have acquired the new Kindle ebook reader from Amazon - and I am very impressed.

This is not my first foray into the world of ebooks as I have been using a Sony PRS 505 for a year now but the advantages of the Kindle are immediately apparent. The main one is its own 3G wireless network which enables books, newspapers and magazines to be downloaded directly onto the Kindle without the need of a PC connection. It is, in fact, an Ipod for books which is a pretty neat concept.

As I look out at the wintery scene from my home office window and suffer pangs of guilt at not making it into the office for the second day running (did I really try hard enough?) my conscience is somewhat lightened by the fact that I have easily completed two days work and that I had to do it from home rather than the office was academic.

This is, of course, one of the principal advantages to the Cloud and one that seems to get lost in the various discussions and arguments – Business Continuity and the ease of working from anywhere as circumstances demand.

It is hard to believe that we are almost at the close of the first decade of the new millenium - it seemed like yesterday that we were panicking about the millenium bug and preparing for the armageddon that would surely follow.

The Web, came into its own and with it the dot com boom - and bust - and the internet pioneers who became billionaires. The Internet and all of its good and bad points became an essential part of everyday living and to do without it now would be like not having a television or a telephone (an attractive proposition to some, no doubt!).

I had intended to attend the AccountingWeb Cloud Computing forum, but urgent client matters intervened and unfortunately I couldn't make it. From all accounts it was a pretty successful day and well attended.

A lot has already been written about the fringe event where accountants sat on a panel (that's a sobering thought for a start!) and an audience of software professionals attempted to convince them of the strengths ofSaaS and Cloud Computing. David Terrar's excellent blog provides a full report on this.

I gave an online demonstration to a potential new client the other day of e-conomic our preferred online accounting system. As well as the client, one of my partners from another office was also joining in on the conference.

At the commencement of the millennium (doesn't that seem a long time ago!),my practice handled a large number of IT contractors who were notoriously poor in sending in their accounting information.

With the rapidly increasing maturity of the Cloud, the ever growing advantages of the concept become more obvious. There are now so many Cloud based applications available that if required a business could be run without ever needing to resort to the basic Windows type PC software.