Are you a business owner or the one in charge of making changes around your organization? If yes, then I assume it must be getting cumbersome to manage your accounts! Normally, a small business owner can think about making a transition to the cloud to make things easier, suppose from a desktop QB to QuickBooks hosting. But, then again, you must be finding it difficult, having to narrow down on to the best QuickBooks hosting provider.

Well, if the answer to both of those questions is a YES, then rejoice, you’re at the right place on the internet. I am sure you hopped on to know what things should you keep in mind when you hire a QB hosting provider for your company, or should you even hire one. I know it can be a daunting task to make such critical decisions when there are a ton of options to choose from and many standards to keep up to. I am going to talk about all the vitality that needs to be kept in mind when choosing a hosting company for your favorite accounting software. Oh yes! That’s the word around here, QuickBooks indeed is the best accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses.

Now, don’t all of us love having everything at the click of a button and a tap of a screen? So, why not our accounts? With QuickBooks hosting, this is exactly what you get. Having access to centralized data on the QuickBooks cloud platform gives the privilege of multi-user collaboration along with easy data accessibility. Having QuickBooks hosted on the cloud gives you access to your accounting files from, literally, any place at any given point of time. You can get access to QuickBooks at home or while you’re traveling, and on the device of your choice. You’ll have full business control, access to files, and data round the clock with impeccable security, which is always a plus.

Table of content

  1. Pricing-Hosting Tariff
  2. Security
  3.  Customer support efficiency
  4. Scalability
  5. Server Up-time

Food For Thought

Well, I think that after having told you enough as in what is QuickBooks and why you should have it hosted on the cloud, I guess now is the time for me to tell you what are the things you should keep in mind when choosing a hosting provider. Isn’t that what you came here for in the first place?

1. Pricing-HostingTariff 

Now when it comes to buying any commodity or hiring any service, what is the first and foremost thing that comes to mind? I am sure it’s the cost of that service. It is by default that pricing is what we compare the options on, primarily. There are several hosting providers out there, but you got to choose the one that gives you the best services and most numbers of features at the best possible price, by which I mean the lowest possible price because we do love a good deal.

Given the current market trend, you can get a QB hosting provider for as low as $27 per month. Now, that’s just a round figure that I gave you. One thing to be always kept in mind is that QB on the cloud is known and preferred for its affordability. Always compare options and competitors and see which one is giving you the best bang for your buck. It’s not only about a certain amount, but its also about the number of features being included in that particular amount.

2. Security

When you decide to host your data on the cloud, you end up sharing the most vulnerable aspect of your business- your financial data. Thus, security is not a factor that you could even remotely think of compromising upon. Data security is of prime importance when giving third party access to the most critical and sensitive data of your organization. Apart from pricing and cost, security is what shouldn’t be overlooked. You must always keep in mind that the hosting provider you choose is equipped with defense mechanisms, such as a network anti-virus, state of the art Cisco firewalls, and intrusion detection systems. The data center of your hosting provider should always be armored with an enterprise facility with multiple generators and best-in-class UPS and HVAC. This is very important to know, as this is what decides how immune is your hosting provider to environmental failures.

3. Customer support efficiency

What do you understand by the fact when I say “hosting your data on the cloud”? It means that you have all of your data and information stored miles away from you on servers that you can access via the internet. Now, as you can perceive that there are chances and instances when some technological glitch might pop up, and you can’t run to a corner of your office and ask for in-person help. What you look for here is an efficient and attentive customer support system. Customer support that is available 24*7 is what’s desired here. The tech staff should be well equipped and quick with solving all your queries and problems, that are bound to arise with regular usage. So, the quality of customer support is a question that you should not forget to ask your hosting provider before entering into business with them.

4. Scalability

It is quite a well known and understood fact that no business or work has a constant growth dynamic. With time, the needs and requirements of businesses keep on changing and owners have to mold the resources accordingly. This is precisely why the cloud service provider you choose, should offer scalability in the service. What this does is, it allows you as the user to scale up or scale down the cloud service at any point of time pertaining to the need of your organization at that instance, without any hassle. This scalability also allows you to opt-out of the cloud service in an effortless manner. So, when zeroing down on the final decision regarding the cloud hosting provider, never forget to check their scalability.

5. Server Up-time

All this while, we have been talking about round the clock access and being able to access your data anywhere via any device. Ever wondered, what makes this possible? The one thing that is solely responsible for letting you have access to your data whenever you want is the server uptime i.e. the time that the server is up and running flawless allowing you to have access and work on the data. Server up-time is what acts as the deciding factor for how much productivity you’re going to get out of your daily tasks and time. 99.9% uptime and strive to give you the ultimate breezy experience should be the driving factor of your chosen QuickBooks provider.

Food For Thought

We are aware of how meticulously and incessantly do our accountants work, prioritizing the refine production of the company beyond anything else, including their social and family lives. However, the need for accountants to maintain a healthy work-life balance cannot be ignored, and there are a ton of ways to do it.  Getting a worthy QuickBooks hosting provider, to catalyze and help ease the work of your accountants is a highly beneficial step to consider. I hope that reading this would have helped you make up your mind as to what to consider when getting into business with any QB hosting provider.