Solutions available on the web
“They need to be as efficient as their corporate counterparts but with less resources, because they need to focus their finances on getting the business going.”
He says accounting packages cost anything from R1000 to R10000 for a single-user system, plus implementation and annual licence fees, and most will only run on high-specification PCs that sell for R6000 to R10000 each.
The alternative is to use a web based solution, whereby a service provider invests in the hardware and software infrastructure and the user accesses the application online on a monthly rental basis. In this case, the service provider is responsible for providing a secure, reliable network connection and for carrying out regular, automatic data backups and updating the software, says Granville.
He says users can connect to a web-based accounting service, such as Web Accounting’s AccKnowledge, with a low-cost minimum configuration PC, and access the application over an ADSL line from a website using the web browser provided by the operating system.
By entering a password the user will be able to access a company’s accounting data over the internet from anywhere, capture the latest customer, supplier and stock information, and e-mail invoices and statements, says Granville.
“It provides an online, ondemand accounting system that can be accessed from the office, from home or from an internet café, at a monthly cost that does not break the bank.”
Once a small business that is using the service grows it can purchase the software to run in-house if it prefers to do this, and users can access the application from a web browser across an internal local area network (LAN). The underlying Web Accounting solution is locally developed and caters for English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, French and Portuguese, Granville says.
Loading ...