Frequently Asked Questions
Bookkeeping vs Accounting?
Bookkeeping is a transactional and administrative role that handles the day-to-day task of recording financial transactions, including purchases, receipts, sales, and payments.
An accountant analyzes the financial data recorded by the bookkeeper and provides business owners with important business insights and financial advice based on that information.
Own Finance Function vs Outsource?
It all depends.
If you want to stay traditional in your approach (computer on site with accounting software, manual processes with lots of paper being handed off between people) then definitely DO NOT OUTSOURCE.
If you want to modernize and get with the trends, digitalise and virtualise your business, give your people work-from-anywhere capability, have a 24x7 function, have access to world-class skills processing on your behalf (at a fraction of full-time cost), and continually extend the capabilities of your business at the click of a button - then DEFINITELY YES - OUTSOURCE and partner smartly.
Cloud vs Internet?
The internet is a worldwide network of interconnected computers located across the world. It offers services and resources like email and the “world wide web”. The World Wide Web provides users access to infinite hyperlinked documents. Increasingly, the focus is towards offering every kind of resource (traditionally provided locally) over the internet. The Cloud is a direct outcome of this attempt and offers resources like software, infrastructure, and platforms as services.
Following are 4 examples of Cloud computing services:
- “Software as a Service” or SaaS is that category of Cloud computing where the principal resources available as a service are “software applications”.
- “Platform as a Service” or PaaS is the application or category of Cloud computing where the service provider delivers a solution stack or a computing platform to the subscribers over the internet.
- “Infrastructure as a Service” or IaaS is a category of Cloud computing where hardware infrastructure are the principal resources available as a service.
- “Desktop as a Service” or DaaS, an emerging -aaS service, aims to provide a complete desktop experience over the internet.
Back-office levarages best-in-class SaaS services such as Xero, DEXT, SimplePay, DEAR Systems, FathomHQ and many more.
Paperless Processing - is it really possible?
Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a technology that enables you to convert different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital camera into editable and searchable data.
Todays OCR capabilities are very advanced. It means we can use computers and software to do the processing that people in the past have done. It eliminates human error which is significant.
Nothing falls through the cracks. All images are stored and accessible with a click of the button. If they are bills, they can be automatically posted into your financial platform. Any level of information can be digitized and stored. If you want to see all the documents from a particular supplier - no problem ... it is all stored in one place and summarised. If you want to see all your employee expense claims with original documents - no problem ... you can access it with full history. If you need a sophisticated authorisations capability ensuring anything entered into your accounting platform is approved by the right people - no problem ... it is one application and one click of the button away.
This transparency and visibility will build a culture of accountability like very few other things can. Your people will own their expenditure, their purchase orders and their invoicing. Their digital footprint is always available, accessible and analyzeable.