Smoothing Your Path With Online50

More practices continue to take advantage of our online accounting platform - along with the AVN Firm of the Year, we have members of the MRI, Jeffreys Henry, Horwarth Clark Whitehill and Alliotts networks to name but some.

In This Issue:

Online50 Partner wins AVN Accountant of Year Award

Robert J Hart are known in the region as a progressive practice, and are constantly seeking to use new business tools to help clients and build strong relationships.

Peter McLean, Senior Partner at Robert J Hart said “Our firm has always provided the range of services you would expect from a good firm of chartered accountants. However, we don’t believe that this is enough and we have made a positive commitment to changing the typical relationship between client and accountant”

Peter highlights one particular client, Irvine-based Amperor Europe where Online50 has helped both parties get the most out of the relationship.

“Initially Amperor needed help with all their accounting functions, but we were able to get them started with basic bookkeeping on Sage Line 50 running on the Online50 platform. This gave them a greater sense of ownership of their accounts, but we didn’t lose our ability to control the quality of the bookkeeping work. As time progressed they added a second Online50 user in Hull to record stock changes online – meaning that the Irvine office could see changes in stock levels in real time.”

Peter says: “Our philosophy is based on a focus on ‘Compliance, Control and Consulting’. We take the compliance burden off the client, give them control of their management data, under our realtime supervision, and then help them to grow using our suite of consulting tools.

Underpinning all of this is the quality of the accounts data – Online50 means we and they know exactly how Amperor is performing – based on that we can confidently sell them the AVN consulting tools. Amperor is one of the lead clients of Ignite Scotland, our sister consultancy company, using tools such as the AVN Profit Measurement Improvement System.”

Peter concludes: “We have seen the future for Robert J Hart and are confident that by using all the tools at our disposal we can grow the level and quality of our business with clients, providing a reliable fee income stream for many years to come”.

Avoid Microsoft Vista Upgrade Pain - Run Your Software With Online50

It’s a long-standing joke that Microsoft is in cahoots with the PC manufacturers – that each new version of Windows is designed to drive sales of new PCs as older machines can’t cope with the demands placed on them by the new software. The reality is less conspiracy theory, more a reflection of the fact that PC architecture is being stretched to cope with ever wider range of demands such as supporting digital cameras and playing computer games with movie-quality graphics.

All this means that the humble Sage Line 50 user is being dragged along an upgrade path which is largely irrelevant to them. However help is at hand - by having us host your business-essential applications such as Sage Line 50. Instead of replacing every PC in your office in one go, we can deliver those applications to your internet browser on your existing PC (or Mac) at a scalable, pay-as-you-go monthly rate.

The recommended minimum requirements for a PC capable of running the version of Vista don’t appear demanding for a brand-new PC. However we don’t yet know the “real” requirements as opposed to the nominal which can be found by checking out Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Advisor using the link below.

ISO9001 Certification Achieved

The ISO Certification project has been ongoing for some time, and was completed with a final inspection of our quality systems by an external auditor. Jim Kelly, who headed up the project within the Online50 team comments: "The certification we have achieved is a result of the whole team at ITIO co-operating to ensure that we can accurately track and audit our customer facing processes. We look forward to welcoming many more customers onto the Online50 service as we continue to make improvements to our systems."

Has Your Laptop Been Stolen? So Has Your Data. . .

A moment's forgetfulness can jeopardise years of relationship building - so the question is why take the risk? People have different reasons why they choose to use a laptop. The convenience of being able to work whenever you want to is one - for instance when you are traveling. If you don’t work from the same location on a week to week basis, for instance if you’re a consultant working from a client site, using a laptop cuts out the headache of trying to log into your corporate network.

The solution to the problem is simple – if you don’t have to, don’t keep data on your laptop! This may seem illogical, but the Online50 platform lets you keep business-critical customer data securely in our datacentre, and access this data as you need, instead of carrying it around with you.

Instead of struggling with a VPN, internet access is all you require to get “back to base”. Thanks to the ever wider availability of high-speed wireless data networks based on WiFi or 3G you can even consider using the laptop as a portable internet terminal.

We don’t just host Sage Line 50 – you can also rent hosted MS Office and access all your business documents online, or your accounts production data if we host your back-office software. If laptop security is a headache you’d rather not have, give us a call on 0800 195 0835 and we can discuss options.