The accounting industry has dramatically changed in the past five years. Cloud based technology has eliminated a majority of the time consuming tasks previously associated with bookkeeping. When I started my own business, I made the decision to be entirely cloud based which has saved me time and money. The automation of bookkeeping services has allowed me to focus on providing value added services to my clients such as budgeting, forecasting, and advisory services. Below is a list of my favorite cloud based services that have saved me and my clients from hours of manual data entry:

Quickbooks Online is completing changing the face of bookkeeping. In less than five minutes per day, you can download all your bank and credit card transactions and assign accounts to transactions. Invoices can be set up to automatically be sent on a certain day and payables can be paid electronically to vendors. At the click of a button, Quickbooks produces reports to show profitability in addition to summarizing performance in a dashboard for quick reference.
Bill.com replaces paper checks to pay vendors by automating accounts payable. Users can take a picture or forward a bill received through email to Bill.com which then reads the information in the bill and creates a bill in Quickbooks Online. You can specify which users must approve bills before payment is made.
Quickbooks Online Full Service Payroll is a must for any small business with employees. It integrates directly in Quickbooks and takes care of all the Federal and State tax filings by the due date so the business owner has one less to do on their list of things to remember.
ReceiptBank is a platform used to manage the receipts, invoices, and other documents that businesses depend on to keep accurate, useful financial records. Users can take a picture of a receipt and ReceiptBank creates a transaction from the information, attaches a copy to the Quickbooks transactions, and stores the receipt for 7 years. No more mailing receipts or driving around town to pick up receipts from clients.
Track1099 is an online W-2 and 1099 processing program that is completely online. Paper W-9s and 1099-MISC are a thing of the past. Users are able to request W-9 information electronically from contractors through this service. Completed W-9s are available for download into PDF format and transfer over onto Form 1099-MISC at year end. Form 1099-MISC are also emailed to contractors and submitted electronically to the IRS. The best part is that if you need to revise a 1099, you are able to update the information online and Track1099 takes care of notifying the contractor and resubmitting the 1099 to the IRS.