What is the key area of dispute? Incomplete Records. The relationship usually starts off with an agreement like this: Business Owner: “If I do my own bookkeeping what will you charge me to do my taxes?” Accountant: “If you submit complete books and records the charge to file your taxes will be X” Unfortunately this almost never leads onto a thorough discussion about what constitutes  a complete set of books. It’s like when your mom says ‘I thought you were going to clean your room!’ and you say indignantly ‘But I did clean my room!’ Both are feeling maligned and misunderstood.

Honesty and Transparency are key in most relationships, and the accountant / business owner relationship is no exception. You can have both with Cloud Accounting.

The business owner’s ‘I will do my own bookkeeping’ promise is easily monitored by a quick login by the accountant who never has to leave their desk. A simple phone call to the business owner, “You seem to be having trouble keeping up to date with your bookkeeping. Would you like me to recommend a bookkeeper to help you catch up?” combined with a gentle reminder that the fees agreed will change if the records are not complete by the year end.

It’s really not that complicated.

For those business owners willing to read through the list below outlining what constitutes a complete set of books, you will gain more insight into the mind of your accountant. And maybe next year you won’t have to say, “Bring It On”. Also there is a special offer at the end as incentive!

Credit for this pic to: http://sluggerotoole.com/2012/08/09/taylor-wins-gold-for-ireland-next-up-belfasts-barnes/katie-taylor/

Sales

How do I know its complete?

If you have a complete list of Sales Invoices showing Customer, Date, Gross, Net and Vat amounts, whether or not they were paid, how they were paid, and what account the money received went into. You must be able to show the exact bank transaction showing the money received.  Also see the VAT headline.

Purchases

How do I know it’s complete?

If you have a complete list of Purchase Invoices showing Supplier, Date, Gross, Net and Vat amounts, whether or not they were paid, how they were paid, and what account the money was paid out from. You must be able to show the exact bank transaction showing the money paid out. Also see the VAT headline.

Common bone of contention: Money paid out to suppliers from owner’s pocket, leaving no record of payment.

A list of each customer showing how much they each owed you at the year end.

How do I know it’s complete?

Common bone of contention: Debtors showing negative balances due to messy bookkeeping.

Creditors

A list of each supplier showing how much you owed to each at year end. Best backed up with a statement from the supplier at year end verifying your claim.

How do I know it’s complete?

Common bone of contention: Creditors lists showing balances outstanding when they have actually all been paid. Again, messy bookkeeping, or amounts paid out of the business owners pockets.

Bank Reconciliations

A process where each and every transaction showing in a bank account must be identified and matched with the bookkeeping records. This is a very important part of the final accounts process and takes alot of time if left to the year end.

How do I know it’s complete?

A full description of the procedure can be found here: http://sortmybooks.com/wordpress/the-age-old-practice-of-bank-reconciliations/

Common bone of contention: Bank recs not done by business owner. Accountant’s office does them. Has to charge for time it takes. And it takes a long time.

Payroll details

If you use payroll software to print your payslips, you have to make sure the net payments, PAYE and PRSI are matching in your bookkeeping.

VAT

If you are filing your own bimonthly VAT, the sales and purchase details of these returns will need to match up with the list of Sales and Purchase Invoices shown above.

Common bone of contention: Actual VAT filings reported to the Revenue do not match what is shown in the bookkeeping. This costs time and money for the accountant’s office to investigate resulting in higher fees.

Trial Balance

This is a kind of summary of all the above items as they were at the year end. ie a list of Sales, Purchases by category (advertising, office costs, resale items etc), Fixed Assets, Debtors, Creditors, Bank Accounts Payroll. If this is correct and proveable, your tax filing will take less time and less money to prepare.

Common bone of contention: The Trial Balance is printed off an accounting system which has an incomplete set of books. Even if looks right to the business owner, it is not provable by the accountant due to having no bank reconcilations or having obvious problems in Debtors or Creditors.

NOTE: If you are unsure about how complete / correct your bookkeeping is, contact us about a one free bookkeeping audit. We will let you know how you are doing and if you are likely to incur extra accounting fees at year end. 

We have made the multicurrency feature as easy as flexible as possible with realtime conversions using the XE.com service .

Simply set up your customers with their national currency code, and create invoices. The current exchange rate will be pulled from XE.com, so that the transactions for your P&L and Balance sheet will be in the base currency for your accounts, while you can create invoices and send statements to your clients in their own currency.

But what happens when the currency fluctuates between the time you raised the invoice and the time you received the payment? Well, this is not a problem, because SortMyBooks will again pull the realtime rate from XE.com,  and record any currency differences into your accounts. This way your accounts are always up to date no matter how far your customer reach is.

What about importing goods? You can also use the multi currency feature on the supplier side. Let’s say you buy goods from the US. If your supplier invoices you in US dollars, you can simply record it as such in the dollar amount. SortMyBooks will fetch the going currency rate and record it to your accounts. When you pay the supplier, you simply enter the amount you paid, and any currency exchange difference will be logged into your accounts.

So whether you trade in Euros, Dollars, Sterling or RAI stones. your accounts will be up to date and accurate, with no year end conversion headaches to worry about.

Ask us about enabling multi-currency on your account today!

Outsourcing is a wonderful thing when handled in a controlled manner and we are strong advocates of the practice. But anything you delegate is subject to being done differently to how you would do it yourself. When it comes to your accounts, this can cause inconsistency and inaccuracies, and general headaches at year end time.

Twelve years of experience with business owners, bookkeepers and accountants has gone into creating SortMyBooks Online Accounting, and here is what we have done to make your outsourcing experience a gratifying one.

Default Settings

When you are starting to use SortMyBooks Online Accounting software, it pays to take some time to set up some defaults and associations in the following areas:

Purchases

There are some expenses that come up each month in any business, such as electricity, telephone, petrol/diesel. What can happen in an outsourcing situation is that the business owner may have been entering electricity bills and tagging them with a nominal code of ‘electricity’, but once the activity is outsourced to a bookkeeper, he/she might categorise the same type of expense as ‘Light and Heat’. Nitpicky you might say, but when your accountant is preparing your figures to file, these two expenses need to merged into one. This takes time and costs the business money.  There is an easy way to prevent this in SortMyBooks Online.

Go to Tools / Services

Set up a service called ‘Electricity’ and set the Vat rate and nominal code to be consistently used for it.

This way, when anyone has an electricity bill to enter, they just need to select the item ‘electricity’ in the dropdown, end the VAT rate and nominal gets filled in automatically.

You can follow the same steps for many commonly used items.  Some good ones to set up are Petrol and Diesel. By setting the correct VAT rate on each of these, it prevents people from making the common mistake of claiming VAT back on their petrol expenses.

Suppliers

You can actually go a step further and associate products and services directly to suppliers. This means as soon as you select the supplier name when entering a purchase invoice, the Vat Rate and Nominal will automatically fill in. As the Supplier name is usually on the invoice, this greatly reduces the chance of inconsistent data entry.

Click on Purchases, Suppliers, select your supplier, and click the Details tab. Click the dropdown on Default Item to select the product/service you want to associate with this supplier.

By doing this, whenever you enter a purchase invoice for a supplier, as soon as you select the supplier name, the service, vat rate and nominal code will be defaulted for you. This makes for quicker and more accurate data entry.

 So now you can make your own data entry quicker, or you can outsource with confidence!

Why? Because it’s a third party validation of your claims of profit and loss, assets and liabilities.

What does that mean exactly? It means that each transaction shown on a bank statement has to be identified as to its purpose in your business ulitmately building the full financial picture of your business in the form of Profit & Loss and Balance sheet. Each transaction MUST be explained and slotted into the correct bucket.

Example: On your bank statement is a lodgment for 5000 euros. In your accounting system, this is shown a money received from a customer for payment of an invoice. This validates your claim of having sales of at least 5000 euros reflected in your Profit and Loss, and an asset of at least 5000 euros in the bank on your Balance Sheet.

Nobody is going to take your word for it that your bank statements match your accounts, and so the reconciliation process is required. It is basically matching up the bank statements with your accounts. Either the business does it themselves, or their accountant or bookkeeper does it. But someone must do it to prove the accuracy of your accounts.  Luckily this practice which has been around for 7,000 years or more is alot easier to accomplish today, as long as a few simple guidelines are adhered to. For some reason it’s heard to get people to listen to the few simple guidelines, but I am willing to try again. And again. So here we go.

The process:

Your Accounting System transactions

As you go through your daily business, you or your bookkeeper or both will be using your accounting system for creating invoices, recording money received, paying suppliers and recording their invoices and payments, and recording other outgogins such as Vat payments or payroll costs.

Bank Reconciliation

Each month, receive in the post or download from online a statement from the bank.

Log into your accounting system and click Accounts, Reconciliation.

Set the Account, Ending Balance and Ending Date to match the statement from your bank. Click update.

On the right hand side will be a list of all the transactions from your accounting system which you have tagged as being applied to selected account and which you have tagged with a date prior to or equal to the ending date from your bank statement. Now the fun begins.

GOLDEN RULE 1: The statement from your bank is the control document. Your mission is to use your mouse to tick off and rearrange the transactions on the right to be all present and in the SAME EXACT ORDER as the statement from the bank.

GOLDEN RULE 2: Do not deviate from Golden Rule 1. In fact go back and read it again, now.

 Troubleshooting

So I have my bank statement in front of me and the transactions over on the right. But the two lists are not exactly the same. What could be wrong?

1. There is a transaction on the bank statement that is not listed on the screen.

Possible reasons:

The transaction was not entered yet into your accounts. Enter it now, now return to your bank rec. It will now appear on the screen.

The transaction was entered but with the wrong date or applied to the wrong account. Find the transaction, fix it, return to your bank rec. It will now appear on the screen.

2. There is a transaction listed on the screen that is not showing in my bank statement.

This may be a cheque that you have written and recorded in your accounts, but your payee has not yet cashed it at the bank. Simply leave this unticked, it will appear again on next months reconciliation.

It may be a duplicate transaction in your accounts entered in error. Find it and delete it if that is the case, return to your reconciliation screen. It will be gone.

It may be a valid transaction but have the wrong date or assigned to the wrong account. Fix the date, and return to your reconciliation screen, it will be gone.

More help here: https://sortmybooks.zendesk.com/entries/21760128-how-do-i-do-a-bank-reconciliation

Some conversations I’ve had regarding bank recs:

“It’s too hard.”  You get to click with a mouse instead of kneeling down between several stone tablets carving out tick marks with a hammer and chisel.

“I don’t fancy doing it myself.” Great – neither do I. That’s why I pay someone once a month to deal with it. Life is too short and there are people who love to do that so let them.

The future

We are currently working on a ‘Reverse Bank Reconciliation’.

This is where you can import your bank transactions if you have online banking with the facility to export to CSV or Excel format.

The difference between this and the traditional bank reconciliation is that the bank balance is already reconciled when you import it.
All you need to do is make sure each transaction is identified correctly in the following categories:

• Supplier Payment
• Money received from a Customer
• Lease Repayment
• Refund
• Account Transfer
• Payroll
• Revenue Payment / Refund
• Other

The system will learn repetitive transactions over time and identify them automatically.
Watch this space. In the meantime, get it done the old fashioned way!

Screenshot – Easy to use Bank Rec in SortMyBooks Online Cloud Accounting Software

Invoicing

When I started to count all the pieces of paper not to mention labour involved in sending out an invoice to a customer the old way my head started to hurt.

Old way

1. Do up an invoice in Microsoft Word.

2. Print out 2 copies one for the customer, one for your accounts.

3. Buy envelopes. File receipt for buying envelopes for your accounts.

4. Buy stamps. Save receipt for buying stamps for your accounts.

5. Post invoice.

6. Wait for payment.

7. Wait for payment.

8. Wait for payment.

9. Call customer who asks for a statement.

10. Look through papers for invoice.

11. Do up statement in Microsoft Word

12. Print out statement

Envelopes, stamps, etc.

Environmentally friendly way

1. Log onto SortMyBooks Online Accounting.

2. Create invoice, click email , click add a payment link.

3. Customer opens email, clicks convenient payment link and pays with credit card.

Reward for being environmentally friendly

Cost of SortMyBooks Online Accounting subscription 29 per month

Cost of posting 100 pieces of paper (statements and invoices) 55 per month

Reward for going green: 26 euros per month! That’s not even factoring in paper, ink cartridges, and time spent managing paper.

Click here for an example of how smoothly this can go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFZ5YHrchjY&feature=plcp

Purchase Invoices, Receipts, Expenses

They help us claw back VAT and they reduce our tax liabilities. But they also cause us pain to manage, file, and retrieve.

Let he or she who hasn’t had their desk or kitchen table covered in papers of all shapes and sizes and degrees of crumpledness at Vat or year and time cast the first wastepaper basket.

Old way

1. Buy a printer cartridge. Stuff receipt in wallet or van visor.

2. Buy stamps. Stuff receipt in wallet or van visor.

3. Buy diesel and a sandwich. Stuff receipt in wallet or van visor.

4. Open post. A. Divide into supplier invoices, revenue letters, statements, other. OR B. Guess which ones are overdue. Throw others in breadbin.

5. At Vat time /  Supplier ringing for payment time / Year end tax time:  Find all papers in wallet, van visor, breadbin, smart filing cabinet bought but rarely used.

6. Spend hours unwrinkling paper and trying to place some order on the pile.

7. Forget what it was you were looking for. Go back to work / go to the pub.

Environmentally friendly way

1. Buy a printer cartridge online. Forward emailed invoice to your SortMyBooks account. Vat now sorted.

2. Buy stamps. Use camera phone or iPhone app to take picture of receipt. Forward pic to your SortMyBooks account. Expense sorted. Crumple receipt and toss in nearest recycle bin.

3. Buy diesel and a sandwich. Use camera phone or iPhone app to take picture of receipt. Forward pic to your SortMyBooks account. Expense sorted. Crumple receipt and toss in nearest recycle bin.

4. Ask as many of your supplier as you can to invoice you by email. Forward emailed invoices to your SortMyBooks account. Vat and Expenses sorted, Supplier accounts bang up to date.

5. At Vat time /  Supplier ringing for payment time / Year end tax time:  Click on VAT3 to file your VAT. Click on your Supplier Account to see what you need to pay, review all invoices already logged in your SortMyBooks system without you touching a piece of paper. Give your accountant their own access to your accounts so they can get what they need for your year end filing.

6. Spend hours looking at your business charts and reports with up to date figures and making smart decisions to increase your profitability.

7. Go back to work / go to the pub as happy as a clam.

Reward for being environmentally friendly

NO MORE PAPER in wallet / van visor / actual healthy bread in bread bin. Remove filing cabinet to make space for vibrating massage chair.

VAT time is a breeze, no clutter on desk or kitchen table.

Year end is hassle free, discussions with accountant and about your businesses profitability and direction, not about where is this receipt and why is that supplier account wrong.

Instead of the clutter of drag you down questions in your head such as who owes me money and do I have enough in the bank to pay the VAT and how much VAT do I owe anyway, your head can be calculating important things like if I introduce this new product line or that new service how much extra profit will I have? Like a boss.

Numbers at a glance

What are you waiting for?

I don’t want to hear that you don’t have time to implement these things. We have experienced implementation consultants to help you set it all up and headed in the right direction. In many cases you can make a good start in one half day session. Contact us today about this service and see if you are in a position to eliminate your paper woes and streamline your business. And then you can look Al Gore right in the eye and tell him you are doing your part for the environment.

So what is an API?

API or application programming interface makes it easy for developers to add their own layer of innovation on top of our accounting platform.

What kind of innovation can I add?

Starting from commercially available application like Receipt-Bank or a bespoke development project like Greenfeet LawnCare or simply a script to help automate your business processes our API will help you get the job done.

We also welcome integration with expertise software like CRM, Payroll, Account Production, Business Intelligence or anything else that we have missed from the list.

What will the API allow me to do?   

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to work with our API irrespective of the technology. The API allows you to add/edit/delete invoices, purchases, payments, lodgements or even customers and suppliers. The list is more extensive so if in doubt contact us.

Ready to get started!

Get the API Key – Login into SortMyBooks account under Home/Settings you will see tab: “API”.

There you will be able to generate yourself a hash key as well as enable API use for your account. Hash is a substitute for both username and password therefore must be kept in secret.

Other Considerations

When accessing company through API, you need a couple of things.

• Your user id should have access to API feature. This is by default available to the owner of the company if not the owner of the company can grant you this permission.
• You will need to generate your API key. This key is used for identification when you are connecting through API. You must protect your key and if you think it’s compromised, generate new one.

Where is the documentation?

Full Documentation of the API is available in our knowledge base. Click Here!

Is there Support Available?

Yes there is support all the way. Email us your questions on support@sortmybooks.com or better still log your ticket using Helpdesk and we will get back to you withen 24 hours with a response.

Ah yes if want to practice your skills in our sandbox do let us know.

What do we want in return?

A little bit of PR will do us just fine and we would more than welcome a joint campaign if you think it will be more profitable for you, so let us know and we would be more than happy to do one.

It was a basic introduction to SortMyBooks, covering only the following items:

1. Uploading your company logo
2. Creating and emailing a sales invoice
3. Speeding up data entry of Sales and purchase invoices by setting up products and adding defaults to suppliers and customer.
4. Sharing your file with your accountant or employees
5. Seeing the audit log so you can see who did what on your file|
6. VAT Report, Profit and Loss Report and how to drill down on each to see transactions.
7. How to use the knowledge base
8. Introducing the new SortMyBooks iPhone app

Following the demo, we took questions from participants.

Good points:

• We covered what we intended to cover.
• We started and finished on time.
• Good turnout, and 75% registration to attendee rate.

Bad points:

• While there were no shortage of public questions, I realise some people are shy and I forgot to instruct particpants how to ask a private question.
• When I watched the playback (link is here), I realised my voice was moving faster than the screens, despite me having an ‘audience view’ screen to check on. I am not sure participants were able to follow what I was doing, epecially with point 3.

What’s next

Conclusion: We will do this again, week after next.

The next webinar will be on setting your Paypal account and integrating it with your email invoices. This will be useful for both triallists and customers.

It will be hands on, step by step tutorial for people who want to set themselves up with this labour saving function.

Questions

Here is a summary of questions and answers on the day:

Q. Where is your data stored?:
A. http://sortmybooks.com/wordpress/is-online-accounting-software-data-really-safe/

Q. Can we put our own text on the email when emailing invoices form the system?
A. Yes, in fact this was just released this morning!

Q. Can we import data from other systems?
A. Yes. https://sortmybooks.zendesk.com/categories/search?query=import&for_search=1&commit=Search

Q. Can we accept credit card payments from our customers?
A. Yes. http://sortmybooks.com/wordpress/paypal-sortmybooks-integration-is-here-get-paid-by-email/

Also look out for the next webinar which will be a hands on how to set this up. 

Here is a link to the recorded webinar should you wish to play it back:

Click here to play back the webinar

Thanks to all who participated, hope to see you again!

Money from your cloud accounting software

I do not want you to pay for your subscription to SortMyBooks Online.

That’s right. I want your subscription to be free. How is this possible? Well, all you need to do is get your SortMyBooks affiliate link, and place it on your website or email it to other businesses whom you feel would benefit from using SortMyBooks Online Accounting Software  for their business.  If they sign up for a trial and then later buy SortMyBooks, after 30 days or even six months, your affiliate account will be credited each month with ten per cent of their subscription payment.

But Aileen, isn’t this like a Ponzi scheme?

Well, no.  No one gets duped. Other businesses just get a great online accounting software to help run their business from your recommendation. You are not likely to retire to the South of France off your profit from this.  But I’d really like you to be able to offset the cost of your subscription. Example – if 10 people buy from your link, you will get your subscription money back every month. If 20 people buy, you will get double your money back. If 100 people buy, well then maybe you can start putting it towards that villa in the South of France. Whatever happens, you still have great software and now so do your friends and associates.

Ok, I’ll try it, what do I do now?

We have selected Vendexo as our affiliate partner.  Stephen Brooks is our contact there  s.brooks@vendexo.com. It does not cost a thing on your part, and once you set it up, the rest is completely automated.

All the instructions are here:

Click here to see how to sign up as a SortMyBooks affiliate

One thing I will suggest to speed up the process, please send an email to me, aileen@sortmybooks.com when you have signed up with Vendexo. This way I can approve you immediately.

So sign up today, and start earning money from the cloud!

SortMyBooks iPhone App

Over the past year we have vigilantly  kept our commitment to monthly releases of new features to streamline your business and keep you out there making money. We’ve added the ability for you to email invoices and statements to save you money on postage. We’ve added the ability for you to accept credit card payments via our PayPal integration to help you get paid more quickly. We’ve added special screens for retailers and many other little tweaks and enhancements as a result of your suggestions.

This latest enhancement is my personal favourite. You see, I have object placement disorder. I lose keys, wallets, shoes, computers, phones, jackets, hats, scarves, passports, you name it, I’ve lost it.

As a business owner, I am keenly aware that the paper that makes up my accounts is the raw material for the dashboard charts I so love to glance at during the day or study at 3am when I can’t sleep. However, due to the aforementioned disorder, paper is at peril in my hands. And that’s why I absolutely love the latest innovation to come from our development team.

Now when I get a get piece of paper, in the post, by email, or while I am out getting petrol or gadgets, all I have to do is take a picture of the paper and it starts on an amazing journey to my accounts, slotting into perfect place on my dashboards, in my VAT reports, creditors ledger, P&L. And I didn’t have to touch it since I first snapped it!

All this has been made possible through our new iPhone app (search SortMyBooks in the appstore)  and partnership with UK based data processing company Receipt Bank. Michael Wood from Receipt Bank says, “We are proud to welcome our latest integration partner – SortMyBooks. SortMyBooks makes smart and simple accounting software for small and medium businesses. Their mission is to make accounting quick, easy and informative, common goals with Receipt Bank.” Yes they are Michael! And we are thrilled to find a way to make managing the paper easier.

Here is a sampling of options to avail of this stress relieving feature:

More details can be found here

DIY option Individual – cost: free

The SortMyBooks iPhone app is free to download on iTunes. You can also set up your receipt bank account and link it to your SortMyBooks account for free. You can direct paper to you receipt bank through you iPhone app or by forwarding emailed receipts and invoices to receipts@receipt-bank.com from the email address registered to your account. Yes it’s that simple!

With the free option, you will have to logon to receipt bank regularly to push your data to your SortMyBooks accounts. But at least you will not be fumbling for lost paper, it is all there on the screen waiting patiently until you come to deal with it.

Digital Option Individual -  Cost: £6.99 (€8.38) per month

With this option, the data entry is done for you, all you have to do is keep taking pictures and/or emailing paperwork to your receipt bank account and, as I said before, it appears magically on your dashboards, VAT reports and ledgers in SortMyBooks. You can try this option free for thirty days after which you can decide to pay the monthly fee for it or go back to the free version.

Full Service Option Individual - Cost: £10.99 (€13.18) per month

With this option, the data entry is also done for you, all you have to do is keep taking pictures and/or emailing paperwork to your receipt bank account and, as I said before, it appears magically on your dashboards, VAT reports and ledgers in SortMyBooks.

Furthermore this option has what I call a magic box. Remember when you used to throw your dirty clothes in a basket and they would somehow end up clean and fresh in your cupboards?

Well this is something like that, you drop any receipts and invoices that came to you in paper form in the envelope sent to you by Receipt Bank and it all ends up clean and fresh in your SortMyBooks dashboards.

I’m betting any of the three options is better than what you have now!

Incentive to get you started

Have you heard about the woodsman who could have saved time cutting down trees if he only had time to stop and sharpen the saw? We are all guilty of that from time to time, so here is some incentive to get you to stop and sharpen your saw.

Sign up for the service. Write about your experience.

Whichever SortMyBooks customer writes the most thorough review will get a free one year subscription to the Individual Full Service plan. That’s one year of free data entry!

Top of Mind

One thing I like about the app is that as I go about my business, each time I look at my phone, I catch sight of the app, reminding me to keep track of that paper so my business information is always up to date.

So download the app and sign up for your free Receipt Bank Account and sharpen that saw!

Security is a fundamental part of any enterprise application and especially so for online accounting software like SortMyBooks which holds your accounting information. There are three parts to security: physical, application and human.

Physical Security

Your data is only as secure as your weakest link.

People’s fears around security are often focussed on a hacker out there try to break into our data. I’m not trying to downplay that risk but the truth is that the least secure item most people own is their own laptop or desktop computer. Think about the high level government security breaches that have been reported in recent years like the one involving the records of 380,000 social welfare and pension recipients. This was not the result of cyber crime but of employees having sensitive data stored on laptops that were then stolen! If your data is stored on your laptop or desktop computer the moment it’s lost, stolen or broken your data is gone.  Frequent back ups can retrieve your data but if it falls into the wrong hands then it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

But thankfully the same doesn’t apply to data stored on the cloud. To begin with SortMyBooks production servers are hosted in Ireland in partnership with Amazon AWS. Amazon has a very good track record in managing servers and invested a lot in the physical security of the data.

Excerpt from:  http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1697?_encoding=UTF8&jiveRedirect=1

“AWS data centres are housed in nondescript facilities, and critical facilities have extensive setback and military grade perimeter control berms as well as other natural boundary protection. Physical access is strictly controlled both at the perimeter and at building ingress points by professional security staff utilizing video surveillance, state of the art intrusion detection systems, and other electronic means. Authorized staff must pass two-factor authentication no fewer than three times to access data centre floors. All visitors and contractors are required to present identification and are signed in and continually escorted by authorized staff.”

So as you can see your Physical security is in good hands.

Application Level Security

What does this mean? Application layer security keeps SortMyBooks protected against unauthorized access and attacks from hackers.

SortMyBooks Online is a secured product and has a secured sockets layer (SSL) certificate. With password-protected login, firewall protected servers, and 128 bit SSL we are on par security wise with online banking.

Backup

Sometimes we get questions about what would happen in the event of our system crashing, if all the data would  be lost.

The answer to the above question is absolutely not, the data is automatically backed up every second using snapshot technology i.e. every time you add a customer or supplier or an invoice or record a payment the data is automatically backed up to our separate backup server. We also do a full backup of your data overnight.

Human Responsibly for Security

Sharing

This is where your responsibility comes in. Firstly when you are buying any online software and not just cloud accounting software make sure that you can set up each user individually.  In other words never, ever share your username and password with someone else. We talked about sharing in our last blog but I didn’t touch on the security aspects of it. SortMyBooks has Permission Based Sharing i.e. you can choose what screens to share with your Employees, Accountant and Business Partners.  It’s also very easy to delete and modify sharing as and when you need to. Be vigilant about revoking access as soon as its no longer required, for example from a temporary employee or bookkeeper.  So then lesson here is please set up each person that needs to access your accounts as a user in their own right and the next paragraph tells you even more about why this is important.

Audit Logs

The software also has a full audit log of all the activities performed by users in the system. You can see what they’ve added, edited, deleted, locked, unlocked etc. This not only helps in tracking activities but is also a helpful tool to rectify user mistakes.

I hope this article has given you some peace of mind. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. Do you hate the idea of having your data stored in the cloud or does it make you sleep better at night knowing that you don’t have to worry about backups?