Quick Books Hosting – How to Chose the Right Hosted Quick Books Application Service Provider

Small and medium business, as well as CPA’s, are increasingly recognizing the benefits of Quick Books Hosting, though many among them do not have a perfect idea about the exact nature of benefit that this hosting service bring to them. More than ever there is a lot of confusion regarding the offerings made by various Application Service providers.

Hence a look at the nature of benefits that Quick Books Hosting services providers brings with regards to your Bookkeeping efforts, and also variations in the offerings made by a number of Hosted service Providers is worthwhile. I have been beset with the question of analyzing how exactly we should approach the decision making process of choosing an Application Service Provider particularly in the context of Quick Books hosting.

Now, first thing first. You must be well conversant with the likely benefits accruing to you, if you are going for Quick Books Hosting. Hosted Quick Books are much faster than other local network access, as here the facility of terminal servers is available. Here the local PC or the terminal runs a exact copy of your Quick Books version stored on the servers and this allows your application to run at a much faster speed that otherwise. One thing that has to be noted is that terminal speed is proportional to the server speed and hence maximum server speed is desirable.

Quick Books Hosting also allows you to have the same copy of the software for different users instead of customizing individually for all of them. Also Quick Books Hosting allows you a multi user mode wherein various users of the program can access the program at the same time and make necessary changes. This saves a lot of their time as now they don’t have to meet personally to exchange files.

But still the most important aspect of the hosted environment must be the terminal support provided by the Application Service Provider. An efficient and prompt support requires that the support team is not only well qualified but also have a vast experience in dealing with the nature of problems arising during the process. Besides there should be a constant monitoring of the servers for possible troubles.

It is also important to identify which programs are supported at the terminal servers. If a provider runs a limited number of these, difficulties for the clients definitely arise. Further there are a number of Add-on that helps customizing the software for specific bookkeeping purposes. You must know the types of add on supported by a particular Application Service provider.

Lastly one of the most import ant factors is the cost of the service . Many service providers charges depending upon number of users of the hosted service per month. Some charge installation charges as well and one important thing before hiring a services provider is to ask them whether they are charging for troubleshooting. This way you will end up paying a lot more than what you had intended or what the provider had promised. So we must be wary of this cost escalation. Besides some hosting service providers charge you less if you have requirement for more users and this may save lot of your money.

So the important consideration in hiring Hosted Quick Books Provider is speed, cost, number of add- on support, technical expertise for support services and the programs supported at the terminal server. Now I will analyze the service offering by Quick Books Hosting market players to help you choose the right one.

As far as the per user charges are considered The average market rate comes at with . 99 /month and it comes with various conditionality with extra charges for additional services. But the same services is available at lower prices of per month. Not only this initial price variants, the charges may dramatically decrease if you subscribe for more number of users. Thus if you go for large number of user subscriptions , some market leaders in Hosted Quick Books domain can charge as low as per user per month. Further there may be available free trials starting from 7 days to as much as one month.

Now something about the Add- on that can be integrated with Quick Books. The user must ascertain whether their requirement is being met by the service provider. Some Hosted Quick Books providers do not support Add-on while others may host it free for you . Add-on hosting along with Quick Books hosting makes the work of Bookkeeping for specific purposes really easy. In a nutshell it saves you the trouble of multiple entries to your book keeping process as the data in Quick Books can be integrated with other software, say, preparing online Billing.

CPA’s work becomes more easy if, not only Quick Books, but also many other related applications, such as Tax Software hosting can also be provided by the same service provider. But not many Hosted service providers do so. This can really make your work easy as you have now to deal with only one service provider.

The kind of support provided by these hosting Service providers is of crucial importance. Support is available either through telephone or mail. But one thing to note is that whether this support is available on week days and also the time it takes to provide you the support once you have intimated them. Also you have to see if you are being charged extra for the support services. Normally the support services comes included with the Quick Books Hosting.

I have studied the services of many Hosted Quick Books providers and it will be a better idea to visit one of the sites to know everything about their offerings and prices. Better still call their support team and get a first hand idea about their whole service.

As a long time technology consultant, I would suggest that you to make a detailed inquiry about these service providers before choosing them. Best way for this is to interact with Quick books Hosting Service provider directly and clearly ask about all the issues I have raised ,specially whether there are any hidden cost involved or not.