Small Businesses Switch to Cloud Accounting in Singapore

By Ali Shahid, Country Leader for Intuit in Singapore.

If you’re a Singapore-based company, you should read this.

Image: Dan4th

Shoeboxes filled with receipts, a haphazard stack of invoices from suppliers, and a bloated Excel workbook bordering on a gigabyte – these are commonly sighted when I visit small business owners in Singapore. With such clutter and disorganisation, it’s difficult to see what’s coming in and going out of their business, and where they’re making money. Sure, they could be more organized with their finances, but where would they find the time while running a business? Outsourcing to a bookkeeper or accountant is a solution, but not all businesses can justify the cost. Instead, savvy business owners will turn to software to manage their business finances.

In the past, small business owners looking for financial management software would be offered expensive desktop accounting packages with archaic user interfaces and costly support services. Complex and unwieldy, they would be purchased more out of necessity for record-keeping and complicated tax calculations, than for making sound business decisions and monitoring business health.

The downsides to such desktop software soon became apparent. It was complicated to answer simple financial questions like, where does my revenue come from, what do I spend on, who owes me money, and who do I owe? Large “company files” created by these software had to be emailed back and forth between business owners, employees, and accountants. Only one person at a time could work on the accounts.

The emergence of cloud software introduced solutions which transformed the lives of small businesses. Cloud computing offered attractive benefits in terms of increased storage, flexibility and cost reduction. Today, many small businesses are reliant on DropBox for digital storage, Evernote for to-do lists, Expensify for expense reports, and QuickBooks Online for financial management and accounting.

Intuit, the makers of QuickBooks Online, introduced an IRAS-compliant solution in Singapore two years ago, in partnership with SingTel. The market needed an easy-to-use financial management solution that could adapt to the workflows of local small businesses. Technology and media-related businesses were early adopters. Consulting, engineering, and logistics companies soon followed suit. Two years on, QuickBooks Online is used by thousands of small businesses in Singapore, across the spectrum of industries, and it’s easy to see why.

Intuit ensured that QuickBooks Online worked on all major browsers and was accessible anytime, anywhere, offering a viable alternative to the shuttling of company files between business owners and their accountants. Small businesses liked the flexibility of using their preferred operating system and mobile device to access their financial data (as long as they were connected to the internet). Multiple users could be given permission to access data to varying access levels, so business owners could manage what other users see. Invaluably, the reports function offers up great reports, each customisable, to report on various aspects of the business’s health.

QuickBooks Online has little competition in Singapore. Its rivals Freshbooks and Xero do not have localized software for Singapore and cannot address local tax reporting and regulation needs.

Small businesses do have a wish list of additional features they would like to see in QuickBooks Online. Payroll functionality and integrations with payments and point-of-sale solutions top the list of requests . Intuit is currently working on releasing an API that allows third party applications to integrate with QuickBooks Online.

So watch this space; we’ll continue to bring you stories on great small business technology that simplifies the business of life.

Visit www.intuit.com.sg for a free 30 day trial of QuickBooks Online.