Benefits Of Going With An Intuit Authorized Hosting Provider

As QuickBooks hosting becomes the industry norm for implementing accounting software, it is important to understand the technology and know who you are trusting to host your QuickBooks. With so many businesses trying to save money, and so many providers offering service, you need to know where your money is going and what you’re getting for it. Whether you’re goal is to connect geographically separated offices and employees, or improve your security and disaster recovery capabilities, going with an Intuit authorized QuickBooks hosting provider can take the guess work out of application hosting.

Much like building a house, technology suffers when corners are cut for the sake of saving money. Sure it’s cheaper to go with a sub-par foundation or have pipes fitted by an non-certified plumber, but would you want to live in that house? The cost savings would be good at first, but you’ll most likely end up with major problems down the road that will require you to shell out more money for repairs that could have been avoided in the first place. The technology that powers the cloud is similar.

Think of Intuit like a building inspector or a business that fully vets it’s licensed tradesman. They make sure that authorized application hosting providers have the footprint, technology and support capabilities to ensure that there products are hosted in the most secure way possible. They weed out companies that have the potential for putting your business at risk with technology that can corrupt your data or leave your applications open to security threats.

Another important thing to consider is that if you choose to go with an unauthorized company to host your software, it may void the service and support options that come with it. Authorized QuickBooks hosting providers work together with Intuit, and therefor can offer their clients the same level of Intuit support that they would receive if they were using QuickBooks on their desktop.

Licensing is also a factor that unauthorized providers take advantage of. Be weary if a budget hosting provider says you don’t need a license or that they can get you one for a low price that is included in their service. It may mean that they are stealing licenses or using fake ones that can cause you as a user to encounter problems. Intuit authorized providers register QuickBooks users with Intuit. This is what allows Intuits recommended hosting providers to help you upgrade your version of QuickBooks, or even rent licenses when needed.

Renting QuickBooks Enterprise Is Now An Option In The Cloud

Save money by leasing licenses from an Intuit authorized hosting provider.

One of the biggest changes to Intuit’s hosting provider program this year has been the addition of the QuickBooks Enterprise rental option. With providers previously only having the option to rent/lease QuickBooks Pro and Premier, this change gives professionals the ability to rent QuickBooks Enterprise on a month-to-month basis.

As an alternative licensing option with the potential to reduce the cost of using QuickBooks Enterprise, renting is perfect for large and growing businesses. Renting allows you to add or remove users as needed, so you are only paying for the software that you use. It also reduces the time and energy involved with upgrading software, since all you need to do is place an order with your hosting provider. The ease and flexibility of renting licenses is especially handy for those that upgrade annually.

Another notable change to the program was the inclusion of the $5 Intuit hosting surcharge into the rental fee. Although professionals moving currently owned licenses to the cloud will still be required to pay this fee, people renting the software will not see a separate surcharge on their monthly hosting bill.

Leasing an Enterprise license also eliminates the large up-front cost typically associated with enterprise level accounting software, opening up the door for more people to take advantage of the popular Intuit application. For accountants, bookkeepers and other financial professionals looking for a better way to work, the QuickBooks rental option for Enterprise is another step towards being able to do more online.

Get the complete information on QuickBooks hosting…. don’t believe everything you hear.

With the inception of the Authorized Commercial Hosting program for Intuit QuickBooks, a great deal of competitive messaging was introduced to the market.  Various hosts and providers are marketing for your business, and the same caveats that exist elsewhere in the market exist here in no lesser degree: let the buyer beware.  Due diligence is key to getting the service you really want, and you should listen carefully for the clues that may reveal the underlying truth about the service or provider you’re looking at.

At the Intuit ISP Summit, for example, there was a lot of information floating about regarding “the one and only host for QuickBooks Enterprise”.  Generally, this type of obfuscation by the provider’s marketing department wouldn’t bother me (I see it all the time), but in this case, it is not good information and leaves a lot of channel participants wondering what their realistic options are.  ISPs in particular need to understand their options for delivering QBES products, because that’s the lifeblood and revenue opportunity for the channel.  Selling the solution direct-to-market competes with the channel, and reduces options for implementation and long-term product support.  The hosting community can be a valuable partner in the business model, but it’s important to partner with a provider who understands your motivations and concerns, and who has aligned their service model to your greatest benefit.

My suggestion would be to vet out your potential providers, and ask them about their position or placement in the market and in the Intuit hosting program, as well as doing the necessary investigation into their delivery model, protections, and application and support offerings.  If they tell you that they’re the only ones who can do this… be wary.  You don’t want to start off an important business relationship based on half-truths.  It doesn’t bode well for the long-term.

Truth Number One:  NO Intuit-authorized provider has allowances or grants beyond any other.  This means that each and every hosting company authorized by Intuit as a Commercial Host for QuickBooks can lawfully offer:

1. hosting for QuickBooks Pro and Premier Editions, supported versions only
2. hosting for QuickBooks Enterprise Edition, supported versions only
3. subscription rental (some call it lease) licensing for QuickBooks Pro and Premier editions

Truth Number Two:  Intuit’s website lists the authorized providers and the program general guidelines.

1. The listing can be found at http://www.quickbooks.com/franchisesolutions  and then linking to the “Intuit Hosting Program” tab
2. Authorized QuickBooks hosts, as listed by Intuit, are:

• Right Networks. Telephone: (888) 417 4448
• InsynQ, Inc. Telephone: (866) 206 1781
• Uni-Data & Communications, Inc. Telephone: (718) 445-5600 x3180
• Xcentric Telephone: (678) 297-0190
• Cloud9 Real Time Telephone: (888) 869-0076
• Coaxis International, Inc. Telephone: (850) 391-1022
• myownasp. Telephone: (800) 521-7322
• NovelAspect.com. Telephone: (888) 228-0143
• Swizznet. Telephone: (888) 794-9948
• HarborCloud.  Telephone: (877) 294-2909

Truth Number Three: Intuit has selected a “private label or co-brand” partner to offer limited QBES hosting services under Intuit’s brand.

1. The partner, Right Networks, offers QBES hosting direct to market as a service branded and priced by Intuit… many say in direct competition with the ISP network and reseller channels.
2. Hosting of QuickBooks Enterprise editions is NOT limited to this provider.
   (view additional option for hosting QuickBooks Enterprise)

Challenges to the QuickBooks Accountant “self-hosting”model: There’s more to hosting than just having a server.

Sure, any good IT guy can build you a network.  And any quality IT services company can offer to manage your network and systems for you.  But, can just any IT company help make your business a QuickBooks hosting company for other businesses?  Maybe, maybe not.   I’ve always said that there is a fine art to delivering quality application services (especially involving QuickBooks) to a largely non-technical audience, and if the details aren’t covered up front, they will end up causing you a great deal of pain later.

Almost every IT consultant I’ve worked with believes that they have what it takes to help accountants create an in-house capability to host QuickBooks and provide remote access for client businesses.  While there is likely no argument that the consultant understands how to set up a network for a single organization, the rules change a bit when you begin talking about having many different businesses – most of them not related in any way – sharing systems, software, and data storage facilities.  This is often referred to as “multitenant” architecture, and QuickBooks, like many other desktop applications, was never designed for this type of implementation.  For these and other reasons, it takes quite a bit of technical understanding as well as recognition of the necessary controlling elements in the business model to create a hosted delivery that can actually work well, and deliver the security and confidentiality of data required and an online “experience” your clients will enjoy.

While many of the issues to be addressed are technical in nature, a lot of them also speak to the details of the business model and exactly what services are being offered.  Decisions must be made in terms of what applications to support, how users will access the applications, how users and data will be organized, and how the entire system will be supported, managed and maintained over time.  Experience has taught us that the business that expects their costs to be largely experienced with  initial equipment purchases and implementations will be unhappily surprised by the investments in time and materials required to create the client hosting environment, and then to support users and maintain systems post-launch.

The key is to not minimize the needs of the client, and to fully recognize and address the issues that the client will face when working from your environment.  Without the relevant experience to know what these challenges are and how to overcome them, the firm may find themselves at a significant operational disadvantage.  The result is that they are unable to fully meet the client demands, and could possibly lose the entire IT investment because of an inability to reasonably compete with commercial hosting offerings.

If your company is looking to offer QuickBooks hosting services to your clients, contact InsynQ today to get the information you need to make the best, most informed decisions possible.  After all, an unsatisfactory online experience could damage the trust and working relationship with the client, and that just isn’t worth the risk.

Authorized QuickBooks Host Delivers from US and Canada

InsynQ expands authorized hosting service to Canada; delivers cloud based solutions for businesses in Canada with new datacenter.

It seems that the Canadian market is quite cautious about using cloud computing services, with fears of poor security and the legality of storing personal information on servers “somewhere out there”.  For many Canadian and other non-US-based businesses, the Patriot Act has almost become synonymous for “we can’t use the cloud”, and represents a large barrier to using US-based cloud service providers.   Even though Canada has its own Anti-Terrorism Act, enacted after Sept 11, 2001, many Canadian-based businesses still see the US legislation as the primary reason for not working with providers located in the US.   Read more …

Running QuickBooks in the Cloud: Information from those who know

QBCloud consultants have been involved in virtually every aspect of the popular QuickBooks hosting service from the very beginning – all the way back to 1997, before the Internet was a hugely big deal, and prior to DSL broadband even being invented.

Back in those days, hosting of QuickBooks software seemed more like a license enforcement issue to Intuit than anything, because it was demonstrated that hosting business software might also a really great way to steal it.  Well, to provide lots of people with unauthorized use, anyway.  This is one of the main reasons why we worked for so long to try to get Intuit to recognize not only the business benefits of hosted applications, but to also recognize how the provider community could help protect the Intuit QuickBooks licensing.  After all, QuickBooks desktop editions are the bread and butter of the product line, and the after-market of developers, consultants, trainers, writers, and everyone else within the QuickBooks “sphere of influence”, will keep the QuickBooks solutions earning market share for some time.  Why not extend the lifespan of the solution by bringing it to the clouds?

After many years of exploration, testing, and proving the value of the business model, the Intuit Authorized QuickBooks Hosting program was finally launched, with only a few core providers initially participating.  The Authorized QuickBooks Hosting program represents a way for Intuit to provide at least a basic review and authorization for providers who wish to validate their hosted deliveries of QuickBooks applications, and provides a number of guidelines relating to treatment of the customer, the software, and the associated data.

Two of the most important elements of the Authorized QuickBooks Hosting program center around software licensing options and support availability.  The Authorized Commercial Hosts for QuickBooks are the only entities allowed to lawfully offer rental (subscription) licensing for QuickBooks Pro and Premier desktop editions.  Being able to provide QuickBooks licenses as a subscription service provides businesses with a simple and affordable means to keep their QuickBooks software up to date at all times, without the annual expense of upgrades and software installations.  Further, rental licensing programs allow providers to offer “turnkey” subscription services which include both the platform, the service delivery, and the application software license.  With this model, hosted QuickBooks acts more like a true SaaS (software as a service) offering.

The second element is support availability – support for end-users of the software as well as the service providers delivering the hosted apps.  Because Intuit does not support the Pro and Premier editions of QuickBooks in any sort of multi-tenant hosting environment, businesses electing to use these QuickBooks products in hosted infrastructure are on their own as far as support goes.  The commercial providers, at least those that were there from the beginning, paved the way for running QuickBooks in the clouds, developing the methodology and knowledge to implement and support the solution for many different and unrelated businesses from a central infrastructure. While the authorized commercial providers get a bit higher level of software support from Intuit than the average solution provider, the essentials of the architecture and implementation are completely up to the host. The hope is that the commercial providers will step in and assist the self-host and other businesses attempting to develop their own hosting to support client accounting and related processes, but there are very few providers with the knowledge, resources, or willingness to assist others in these areas.

**As a side note, it’s worth mentioning here that the consulting team at InsynQ is a resource which Intuit uses to refer self-hosts and other businesses who wish to develop their own hosted QuickBooks capability, so self-hosts and new hosting providers are not totally without resources for assistance.**

The other issue relating to support is end-user support for the customer-owned QuickBooks license.  When a QuickBooks license is utilized in a manner which does not conform with Intuit’s EULA (end-user license agreement), Intuit may be under no obligation to support that license – by offering technical assistance or by supporting service and product integrations.  This means that users running their businesses from hosting infrastructure that is not “authorized” by Intuit risk losing the support and serviceability of their software licenses.  We are seeing more instances where QuickBooks users are not able to obtain software support for their licenses, because those licenses are either hosted by an authorized delivery or provider, or the licenses were obtained via a method not allowed under the Intuit hosting program rules.

The Intuit Authorized Hosting program for QuickBooks is a good thing, even if there are a few “gotchas” in it (like the $5 per user per month surcharge on hosted QuickBooks users).  It provides the necessary guidance and framework for those who wish to offer hosted QuickBooks in the right way, and creates enough of a barrier (financially and otherwise) to keep out those who either aren’t serious about providing a quality service, or who don’t have the necessary resources to do things the proper way.  Even within the provider community today, there are varying opinions on how to handle certain aspects of the delivery.  There are different classes of providers, as well, with each offering a different solution set and support options, as well as varying in expertise and capability.  Certainly, different technologies will deliver different “customer experiences” but at a gut level, QuickBooks is still just QuickBooks.  It’s all about how much you know, and what experience you have in dealing with the application, the platform, and the user market.

As with so many things in life, experience does matter.  In this case, aligning with a company that has experience running QuickBooks for thousands of users – experience running the software on industry standard technologies and platforms – is the best experience you can draw from.  There is truly a fine art to delivering what isn’t exactly the most robust and well-designed software, and delivering it to a largely non-technical audience complicates things just that much more.  Without the direct support of Intuit and/or an experienced provider, those who embark on a do-it-yourself path will likely have a hard time making it to the clouds.

QBCloud hopes to make things a little easier by providing information and guidance on how QuickBooks in the Cloud works, providers offering the service, proper licensing, and other topics relating to QuickBooks application hosting.  We hope you find it useful.