From collecting and organizing bills and accounting data to maintaining the accuracy of data, there are many things you work on while running a small business. You have selected Sage 50 as the preferred desktop accounting software. You have hired more accounting professionals in your team to streamline work-related tasks. However, there might be one area you are overlooking. Any idea what we’re referring to?
It adopts cloud technology to host your accounting software on a remote server.
Whether you have realized it or not, the way you choose to host your Sage 50 accounting software can make all the difference between following a business growth trajectory or continuing with stagnant operations.
You will find it quite obvious when you think more about and research it. The computing resources used to host Sage 50 software determine its performance and, ultimately, your accounting team’s performance. Like any other software, Sage 50 desktop software requires a local system having certain specifications to function optimally. If it is not there or used by other programs installed in the system, the overall performance will most likely suffer.
Wondering how Sage 50 cloud hosting can make things better for you? Let’s find out more.
Why Sage 50 on Cloud is Quite Important for Your Business?
Once you decide to switch to Sage application hosting, you must select a cloud solution provider carefully. This selection plays a critical role in determining your team’s efficiency when they start using cloud-hosted Sage 50 software.
Before we get into the details of the importance of cloud hosting, let’s just consider what your clients expect from you:
- Timely delivery of accurate accounting data and tax filing
- Security of confidential financial information they share with you
- Availability of your accounting team to handle urgent tasks
- Expertise in the field of accounting
- Facility to recover data if lost in any worst-case scenario
- A dedicated account manager helping them with their business-specific accounting decisions
As we talk about cloud hosting, you, as a business owner, would ultimately want to focus on usability. Basically, the more accessible Sage 50 software is, the more you can use it to work for your business and your clients. The decision to switch to Sage 50 cloud hosting influences most of these aspects, which is why you must understand how cloud hosting works carefully.
What to Look for When It Comes to Sage 50 Application Hosting?
When it is to cloud hosting for Sage 50, you should consider a few things as standard while comparing the benefits of hosting plans available. These include:
- Server uptime and reliability
For a business that depends on data and software access, even a few minutes of downtime can cost thousands of dollars or even more. If you have given a few of your clients’ access to cloud-based data for cross-checking, it would be frustrating for them if they cannot access the accounting files or if there is an issue with server configuration leading to performance issues. Besides this, downtime is equally damaging to your reputation among existing clients and prospects.
While no hosting provider can guarantee 100% uptime, the most reliable ones now provide a 99.999% server uptime guarantee. The more nines in this uptime parameter, the lesser the downtime will be, and that too for maintenance or upgrades. If you look at the exact conversion of uptime percentage to downtime, 99.999% uptime implies a downtime of just a few minutes in a year.
What else would you need?
- Server performance
Have you ever heard the saying that keeps speed as the essence of all the growth around you? The same is true when you wish to migrate your locally-hosted Sage 50 to a cloud environment. Your clients also agree with this saying, which is why they expect you to keep an eye on every accounting file and get the data in use timely.
A slow server often causes the users to waste time instead of increasing their productivity, hence increasing the time it would take to get things done. Despite the importance of server performance and speed, too many technical glitches come to the surface. This can be because of either shared hosting in which multiple clients use the same server or excessive data on the server beyond the optimum mark.
To hear that the average time it takes to access a cloud server ranges in a few minutes may sound pretty swift, but it won’t put you into the best situations.
With Sage 50 on cloud, you can reduce this average time to a few seconds.
- Hosting support
When selecting a Sage application hosting provider, some key areas are particularly related to customer service, such as:
- The size of the company
A medium to a larger company is more likely to have better solutions and resources to help with customer service issues. They may also have more money to invest in providing customer support training to their team.
- The overall reputation of the cloud provider
These days, you need not look too far to find what a service provider actually stands for. With the help of the Internet, you can easily check client reviews about Sage hosting service quality and follow them as guidance to narrow down the available options.
- Modes of communication
Is the hosting provider’s support team available on a phone call or do you have to write an email to report an issue? Each of the popular modes of communication has its own pros and cons. Hence, look for companies like Ace Cloud Hosting, whose support team is accessible via chat, phone call, and even email.
- Data security
Would you opt for services that do not ensure the security of your data? If not, you cannot expect your potential clients to hire you, knowing the fact that no significant investment has been made for data protection at your end. In the life of an accounting professional, accounting and tax data that originally belong to different clients is similar to handling others’ money. You lose it, and the liability will fall upon you.
While you can continue to work on desktop-hosted Sage 50 software, you can go the other way around and hire a Sage 50 cloud hosting provider. Start with a free trial and see how things unfold. If the services benefit your business, pay for a suitable hosting plan. With Sage hosting, you can also avail the flexibility to upgrade or downgrade the hosting plan, like in the case of tax season, and only pay for what you use.
- Data center tier
By now, you must have understood that your Sage 50 software and data will be migrated to a cloud server when you select Sage hosting services. Ever wondered where that cloud server will be?
Technically, most cloud servers owned by a hosting service provider are located in a data center – which is a well-kept facility designed to accommodate thousands of such servers in one place. Even data centers are of multiple types, ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 4.
Which type of data center is chosen will ultimately reflect the performance of your cloud-hosted accounting software. It is recommended that the cloud provider you select should have its servers installed in Tier 3 or Tier 4 data centers.
