I am a Simply Accounting by Sage Certified Consultant and Development Partner. Besides providing Simply Training and Support to a wide range of clients, I develop reporting solutions utilizing Simply and the Microsoft Office© suite. I have been a user of Simply since its Bedford days in the ‘80s.
As well as being a partner in a bookkeeping practice, managing partner of a real estate investment group and providing controller services to a number of clients, I am also an active contributor to the Simply Forum.
I look forward to the opportunity to provide my thoughts on life and technology in the accounting community. If you have questions or ideas let’s hear about them and we’ll discuss them.
June 2008 - Posts
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Remote Access - all about saving time and costs
Many of us live and work in smaller urban centres and often our clients are in the next town or city making travel costs a notable expenditure. Today we'll take a look remote access which allows us to use the power of the Internet to enable us to remotely control our desktop, or a client's, as if we were working right in front of the remote machine. Higher fuel prices are forcing everyone to find ways to be more cost effective while delivering the same level of work or service. All of us still need to get to work and/or service our clients competitively. This technology is proving to be a great tool in helping us accomplish this.
A couple of years ago when our clients began to upgrade their internet connections to higher speeds we saw an opportunity to save both them and ourselves time and money. We started to remotely access their computers to help them with various support services and month-ends. This process provided a win-win for everyone. The clients saw an immediate savings in billings that included travel time as well as receiving faster service as they did not have to wait until I was ‘in their area the next time'. We realized savings in vehicle operating expenses as well as having more productive time available. Other uses of remote access can include accessing your files at the office from home or while you are at a client's site, helping a client install Simply or retrieving some contact info, to mention a few.
There are a few different ways to access your computer or your clients' systems. These include options that are free such as Windows XP Remote Desktop to paid services such as GoToMyPC by Citrix. This link on cnet has reviews for various remote products.
If you need to have file transfer to get copies of large Simply databases from your client's machine to yours and remote printing capabilities, you generally have to buy a program like LogMeIn Pro rather than using the free version. The better offerings will (and should) have 128 bit encryption so that your connection is secure. I personally use GoToMyPC Pro because I need the file transfer and remote printing capabilities.
When using a remote connection there is some lag time although this is barely noticeable when both the host and guest are on high-speed. I have connected to dialups and it is painfully slow, it is usually better to ‘just drive there' if you are trying to resolve an issue that take more than a few keystrokes and screen updates. Depending on the distance and frequency of service that is required, it can be more economical to have the host site upgrade to a higher internet speed if possible.
There are many useful applications of this technology that can benefit our clients, co-workers and ourselves. I would invite you to share your thoughts and ideas on this subject.
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