Tax Software Hosting through cloud computing

Why Hosted Tax Software

During the busy tax season do you find yourself spending days, nights, and weekends at the office away from your family? It can be a very stressful time.

Now you have an opportunity to relieve some of that stress by working from home, office, or anywhere with an Internet connection having your mission critical tax and accounting applications and data hosted online.

This is significant because now you and your staff have the freedom to work whenever and wherever. So you can see more of your family on nights and weekends. It makes for a happier and less stressful tax season.

Take the Pressure Off Tax Season and be more productive - Many CPA firms are currently evaluating their technology solutions for the upcoming tax season. Understanding that staffing and productivity issues are priority – many firms are seeking reliable and cost-effective hosting solution for their data and applications – often referred to as “Cloud Computing”

Tax application hosting provides significant benefits for any CPA firm allowing users to access mission critical data and applications from any location increasing productivity and profitability. Staff can work from any location including a client’s office, home office or directly from the corporate office location.

There are a number of online tax application hosting solutions. A primary distinction relates to if the online application is a true Software as a Service (SaaS) offering – a web based solution - or if the application is a Windows based application hosted in a Windows Terminal Server environment.

Many Windows based hosting solutions are deployed with the software of your choice installed on a dedicated server environment. This provides a fully dedicated Windows server environment unique to each firm. The server can normally be provisioned with any applications of your choice including all popular accounting and tax software applications. Often QuickBooks and other popular accounting applications can also be installed for remote access. Additionally, applications such as MS Office, Adobe and document management applications can often be installed.

A tax hosting Cloud Computing environment is also scalable to meet the ongoing requirements of the firm. A hosting vendor can provision the server with proper initial storage, bandwidth, and other performance related features which can be expanded as needed at any time allowing your costs to increase only as your resource requirements increase saving money for the firm.

Most leading hosting vendors can deploy a server environment within hours getting your staff online quickly and easily. User permissions can also be created allowing specific users access to only specific data or applications if required.  Some vendors provide flexibility in contract terms so a server can be used on a month-to-month basis if only needed for tax season.

Benefits of Tax Application Hosting Include:

1. Scale Your Firm at Peak Times - Take on extra staff (retired accountants, stay-at-home moms, offshore resources)
2. Use the Tax Software application(s) of your choice - Work online with ANY tax software application. Lacerte, ProSeries, ProSystem fx, UltraTax CS, TurboTax, ATX, Drake, TaxACT, TaxWorks, TaxWise, GoSystem
3.  Online Tax Software Hosting is Secure - You and your clients have the peace-of-mind in knowing that sensitive tax information is automatically backed up every day and protected from viruses.
4. The data is transmitted between client and server using the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Encryption Technology. The same security used by banks, stock brokerage firms, and the US Department of Defense.
5. Data is not stored locally and cannot be misplaced, lost or stolen.
6. Servers are housed in secure data centers with the highest levels of redundancy and physical security.

One important note is that most often monthly fees are predictable. Also, it is important that your hosting vendor of choice provides live 24x7 technical support. Tax season is busy and staff often work long hours and cannot afford to not have technical issues slow them down and decrease productivity when performing mission critical and time sensitive tasks.