1. Business Accounting Goes Mobile
According to research firm Strategy Analytics, the number of active smartphones topped
one billion in 2012, and they estimate that this number will double by 2015. Mobile devices
arecompact and convenient, and users increasingly rely on them for the majority of basic
tasks, including professional usage. The most effective accounting software offers
accessible, real-time reporting of
employee work and related costs.
But the definition of “accessible” is
changing; soon it won’t be enough
for users to access information
only on company desktops.
Information has to be available
on-demand – by which I mean, on
mobile devices.
Several top companies already
offer mobile applications for
smartphones and tablets.
QuickBooks, the top accounting
software solution among small
businesses, offers QuickBooks
Mobile for the iPad, iPhone, and Android. This application allows users to easily view
customer information, send professional invoices, and mark invoices as paid. The data on
Mobile QuickBooks syncs back with QuickBooks on the desktop, and visa versa.
Microsoft Office offers a similar application for the Windows Phone, allowing users to
create, open, and edit Excel workbooks. And Microsoft Dynamics offers a mobile
application forDynamics CRM.
So, how useful are these applications? First of all, it has become clear that mobile
integration has its limitations. For example, Excel Mobile doesn’t support all of the
functions of Microsoft Excel. Unsupported content cannot be displayed or edited,
potentially limiting the application’s usability. There’s also the intrinsic limitations
imposed by the smartphone’s smaller screen size, which makes viewing and editing large
documents difficult and unwieldy.
To minimize these problems, companies can center their application building on the most
popular features. Most users don’t need smartphones to do complex configurations of their
accounting software. Instead, the vast majority of user activity is devoted to entering
employee time, approving time entered, and running reports. These basic activities can be
specifically tailored for smartphones.
Reference Link: http://technorati.com/technology/article/business-accounting-goes-
mobile/