How Cloud Computing Can Save Your Accounting Firm Money

A 6% growth rate per year in available jobs in any industry is a healthy rate. This is precisely what the Bureau of Labor Statistics cites as the rate of growth in jobs in the field of accounting and auditing. Plenty of people are attracted to the industry because they know that this type of work can pave the way to high earnings and a successful career. At the same time, many companies are hiring accountants to assist them with keeping up with the latest financial regulations and restrictions. The need for accountants is not going away anytime soon, and that is why all accounting firms must think about how they can reduce their overhead costs. If those firms want to remain competitive, they need to get as lean as possible immediately. This is where technology such as cloud computing comes in.

Adopting New Technology Can Save You Money

Plenty of accounting firms are hesitant to adopt new technologies. For one, many people that work for accounting firms often have reservations about taking on new technologies. In addition, it is not always easy to implement a new set of technologies. However, the widespread use of cloud computing by accounting firms and others shows that there may be something special and something particularly useful about cloud computing. Here are just some of its benefits for accounting firms:

Use Less Hardware

Companies that haven’t yet embraced the wave of the future and decided to use cloud computing often have rooms full of desktops where they run their entire technology infrastructure. Sadly, this may mean that they are losing out on some of the cost savings that they might have otherwise been able to enjoy. Instead of continuing to throw money out the window on these overly complex rooms, it’s worth looking at cloud computing to see how it can lower your costs on hardware, maintenance, and more. 

Netdepot.com explains why you will likely notice immediate advantages to using cloud computing to get things done:

With the cloud, you won’t have to deal with most of these hardware-related expenses. The on-site hardware will be less, meaning that you won’t have to worry about surging maintenance costs. Besides, the vendors are in charge of any equipment replacement or repair.

Your costs will immediately come down compared to the old way of doing things. You can also appreciate that you don’t have to dig through all of that hardware to find the information that you need.

Pay-As-You-Go

Small businesses often struggle with their finances as they are just starting out. In fact, as many as 20% of all small businesses fail in their first year, often because of capital mismanagement. To avoid becoming just another statistic, it is necessary to look at every way possible to save money. This is yet another reason why cloud computing is so popular with accounting firms.

When you use a cloud computing system within your accounting firm, you will note that it operates on a pay-as-you-go format. You only pay for what you truly consume, and that can help you create the best possible outcome for yourself. The charges that you incur from your cloud computing system are simply a per-user set of charges, and you always retain the option to cancel your subscription to the cloud computing service that you have set up if you decide to do so. Never again overpay for the services you require to store and manage your data.

Reduce Staffing Costs

It is quite common for labor costs to be one of the highest expenses that you take on when setting up your IT infrastructure. Although it is difficult to have to cut some jobs, it may be a necessity because you need to keep overall costs as low as possible. Besides that, cloud computing systems can often do much of the work that was previously handled by humans.

The difficulties with having an in-house IT staff are bountiful. These include:

• IT staff require highly competitive salaries and benefits
• They are highly sought after and may be picked off by a rival
• They are sometimes more reactive to problems rather than proactive against them
• Not everyone on the team may get along with one another very well

These are just some examples of issues you could run into with an in-house team. Again, it will be a challenge to hand someone in the IT department a pink slip, but failure to do so may mean that you have to lay off many more.

Lower Your Energy Consumption

Believe it or not, you can lower the amount of energy that your business consumes when you decide to invest in cloud computing systems. Electricity is expensive; it had an average price of 11.27 cents per kWh for commercial purposes in 2021. When you have an entire room or more dedicated to large banks of computers that are running your IT infrastructure, you will quickly discover that you are running up major bills for yourself based on all of that energy consumption. Instead, you could make the shift to using cloud computing services to reduce that cost.

Cloud computing consumes less electricity and contributes to savings as a result. Also, you get the added benefit of reducing your carbon footprint at the same time. Cloud computing can literally be more environmentally friendly than other options available to you. That is something that you can tout both to leaders within the accounting firm and to the public.

Cloud Computing Will Serve You Well

There is certainly a significant argument to be made that cloud computing is a money-saving choice to make. At the same time, it is true that cloud computing can serve an accounting firm by making work more productive. When you use cloud computing services, you are able to work from anywhere and access the critical information you require on the go. You can set up teams to work on specific projects, and you can monitor the progress that those individuals are making on their projects.

Having your finger on the pulse of what is going on with projects assigned to various employees is always a nice thing to be able to count on. Cloud computing systems are the way to reach that goal. Keep all of this in mind as you contemplate using cloud computing within your accounting firm. If you have questions about how it might impact your company specifically, contact us with those inquiries.