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MBA Software and Consulting specializes in accounting software for small business as its role in assisting growing small and medium businesses become more competitive. MBA Software and Consulting’s accounting software for small business, known as Series 3, is especially designed for growing businesses as it helps makes the financial process simple by tracking all facets of the client’s business and automating complex tasks. The Series 3 is a powerful business management software that provides growing and midsize companies with a completely scalable solution that adds financial and operational functionality. MBA customers enjoy features like robust business intelligence, extensive reporting, advanced consolidation, forecasting, budgeting, etc. and at a very attractive price relative to the competition.

MBA Software and Consulting accounting software for small business does all the basic functions important to a small business including basic accounting, distribution, and payroll as well as the more advanced accounting functions to accommodate the growing and more complex needs of the company as it grows and/or diversify. Thus, MBA accounting software for small business is versatile and an ideal solution for the long term needs of the growing company.

MBA Software and Consulting accounting software for small business is powerful and robust in its applications to actual industry conditions. MBA Series 3 is distinctive as 100% of version 8.3 upgrade was based on features that were required by its clients. Its focus on the specific needs of its customers makes MBA Software and Consulting the expert in accounting software for small business. MBA accounting software for small business can tailor fit existing reports or create additional reports to meet specific and changing requirements.

MBA Software and Consulting became the industry expert by developing itself the accounting software for small business. While the customer specifies its customization requirements, any customization request is non obligatory if the client company does not accept the bid. MBA can consider the requested feature as a future upgrade to its accounting software for small business.

MBA has an impressive industry track record. It has numerous and satisfied clientele across a wide range of industries from retail, manufacturing and consumer goods to government, printing, healthcare and others and some of them had been customers since the founding of the company in 1979.

MBA is also well known for providing excellent customer support for all its accounting software for small business installations. MBA”s unrivaled commitment to customer service, its affordability, and its scalability makes Series 3 the ultimate accounting software for small business.

The current customer interested in getting a custom modification bid can write down their custom modification needs and FAX them to [612] 825-3245 or email to sales@mbasoft.com.

A non current customer interested in MBA’s accounting software for small business can contact the Sales Department at [800] 431-1416., or email sales@mbasoft.com.

For general inquiries, the public may contact MBA Software Forms Division – P.O. Box 681, Tarrytown, NY 10591 – Phone: 800-544-3427 – Fax: [800] 261-1499 and/or visit MBAsoft.

Fortune 500 companies have been off shoring the financial and accounting business processes (BPO) to countries like India, Philippians, China, etc. These companies have big budgets and a big team of consultants who analyzes the total cost and ROI of sending their financial and accounting work to the service providers in offshore locations. Though smaller companies have started off shoring their financial and accounting work to offshore locations but like big corporations small businesses do not have huge budget to hire consultants to identify the total cost of off shoring their financial and accounting work to offshore locations. But small businesses can still perform their due diligence in calculating total cost of their offshore engagement and gain critical knowledge in finding ROI of sending their financial and accounting work to offshore locations. In this report we will go through all of the hidden costs of offshoring financial and accounting business processes.

1. Different Costs of Offshoring Financial & Accounting Work

Small businesses mainly consider offshoring their work, they will consider only the hourly rate they need to pay to the offshore vendor for various accounting works like bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. There are several other additional hidden costs small business have to face in their offshore outsourcing engagement. Typically a small business goes through following offshore accounting work cycle in their offshore engagement:

• Selecting an offshore accounting vendor

• Sending the work to the offshore vendor

• Answering questions for the offshore vendor

• Receiving the finished work from the offshore vendor

• Verifying the finished work from the offshore vendor

• Monitoring the quality of the finished work from the offshore vendor

2. Cost of Selecting offshore accounting vendor

The cost associated with selecting an offshore accounting vendor will be small compared to other costs. Most of the time small businesses can find a qualified offshore accounting vendor simply by searching in Google or by contacting other small businesses those who are already using an offshore vendor, for detailed discussion on this topic read Offshore Accounting Success. This cost is the one time cost and it will be similar to selecting an onshore vendor.

3. Cost of sending the work to an offshore vendor

Small businesses must consider various types of cost like Scanner, High speed Internet, Backup Server, etc, to send their financial and account documents to an offshore vendor, but the good news is that it will be a one time investment and most of the small businesses will have these in place already. There are three different offshore accounting models you can use to send your accounting and financial work to the offshore vendors and for these you will incur following one time cost.

3.1. Scanner & Scanning software

Most of the accounting and financial data will be in your accounting software like QuickBooks, Peachtree etc, but there will be other documents like Bills, Checks, Invoices, Goods received notes, etc will be on paper and these should be digitized using a scanner and a scanning software to convert it into PDF documents which will be stored in your computer. Once the documents are in your computer then you can give access to the offshore vendor to view the PDF documents or they can retrieve it from your computer to perform their work in the offshore location.

Most of small businesses already have a scanner, if not a scanner (scanning software comes with the scanner) can be purchased for less than $1000.00. The cost of the scanner will go up based on the volume of accounting and financial documents to be scanned in a given day. It will be a one time cost for the small business and also by scanning all their paper based accounting documents; you can improve the efficiency of overall accounting process.

3.2. High speed Internet Connection Cost

You need to have high-speed Internet connection to send and receive the work to and from offshore location. Again all most all small businesses already have DSL/T1 Internet connection if not they can get a DSL Internet connection for $60-100/month.

3.3. Secure FTP software

If small businesses are using Application Service Provider (ASP) like Quickbooks online, cpaasp.com, etc, then it is possible for offshore vendors to directly access your accounting data directly from the ASP vendor. In this case there is no need to use secure FTP software.

3.4. Backup Server

Once small businesses start digitizing their accounting documents for their offshore vendors, they need to start planning for the backup server to backup all their accounting documents. Most of the small businesses will have this feature already, if not it is a good investment to have a backup server to backup all their accounting and financial data from their main computer to the backup server. For any business “Business continuity” is a vital task and the backup server will help the small businesses to recover all the accounting data in case of main computer failure.

3.5. Additional Accounting software License cost

Small businesses use various accounting software packages like QuickBooks, MYOB, Microsoft Office Accounting etc, for doing all their accounting and financial work. When they offshore the work the offshore vendor will use the same accounting software to do the work. It is very difficult for the small businesses to find an offshore vendor who already owns the licenses for all the accounting software. As described in the offshore accounting models if small businesses decides to use Remote Server or ASP then there is no additional cost for small businesses. On the other hand if the small businesses decided to use Secure File Transfer then small businesses needs to buy additional accounting software license for the offshore vendor to use. Small businesses will incur this cost even if they outsource the work to onshore vendors. This cost is truly soley based on the accounting software package used by the small businesses. Accounting software packages comes with various flavors types of software licenses like concurrent users, fixed number of users, CPU based, Network based etc., Some times small businesses can completely avoid this cost altogether.

4. Managing Financial & Accounting offshore vendor

Once you send your accounting and financial work to the offshore vendor, you need to constantly mange and monitor the quality of finished work that comes back from the vendor. Initially you may need a full-time person educating the offshore accountants and bookkeepers about your accounting process and preparing proper instructions for them to follow in their work. Once you and the offshore team are comfortable in the working relationship then all you need is to verify the work periodically. Basically you need to consider the offshore team as your virtual team and educate them in your accounting processes and procedures, once you are comfortable with their work your own employee(s) will spend less time with the offshore vendors.

5. Offshore vendor wage

For the accounting and financial work performed by the offshore vendor, small businesses will pay either an hourly rate or a monthly rate to the offshore vendor. This will be the actual direct cost small businesses will pay to the offshore vendor and all other costs are indirect cost of sending the work to offshore vendor. Typically the wage cost will be 50-70% less than the cost paid to the onshore accounting and financial vendor. For small businesses this cost savings is one of the major reasons to use the offshore vendor for their financial and accounting work.

Small businesses need to consider several costs in their financial and accounting offshore engagement. As shown in the table Small business F&A offshore outsourcing – Fixed Cost Vs Monthly Cost some of the costs are fixed and some of them are monthly expanses incurred by the small businesses. Among the monthly cost only the offshore vendor wage is the direct cost paid to the offshore vendor. While performing ROI analysis small businesses must consider all these costs to find the Total Cost of doing business with offshore vendors. As shown in the table, for certain items finding out the exact cost may not be possible and it is highly based on the individual small businesses and the type of accounting and financial work that has been sent to offshore locations. The total cost may not be a fixed amount and it can change from month to month. For example in some months there will be more questions from the offshore vendor in clarifications and in other months there will be less questions, this cost will vary from month to month.

Every business functions through a range of disciplines, sales and marketing, operational skills, purchasing and management. Small business accounting software is an essential tool to bring financial control to the business. No matter how skilled and well trained the business every small business needs a full range of functions to reach the highest levels of success.

Liquidity is a first lesson in business to ensure that business has sufficient cash to trade the next day. Failing to meet this target and the business is finished which is why financial control which can be provided by accounting software should be regarded by the small business management as an essential piece of kit.

Suitable small business software is available to suit every type of business and can vary from a simple spreadsheet arrangement to sophisticated databases. The choice to adopt a solid financial control system is vital to ensure sales are high enough to generate profits, gross margins are sufficient, expenses are controlled, net profits are generated, cash flow is under control and losses can be identified and reversed or halted. No large business would survive without a sophisticated system of financial control and small businesses have the same requirements albeit on a different scale but usually with more devastating effects.

Operating the finance function of a small business may seem to be an administrative burden but is actually a vital tool to assist the generation of safer stronger profits growth and the early warning system of dealing with problems if the business does not perform.

Use the small business accounting software to update the financial records at least once each month. With sales recorded every month peaks and troughs in performance are obvious and can then be examined to replicate those actions that produced higher sales levels and cut out those actions which produced lesser results. The result hopefully being sustained sales growth.

Record all the costs each month and as with sales the trend to higher costs or more efficient cost control will be evident from the financial accounts. Also of importance will be the profit margin being achieved and this can be viewed against the level of sales and justified. Statistically small businesses run by born salesmen achieve high sales but at the cost of lower margins while businesses run by accountants tend to achieve higher profit margins but with lower sales.

This statistical fact is true as is also the fact that most small businesses are run by neither accountants nor salesmen but by the skilled worker applying their trade or area of expertise. By using a small business accounting software the entrepreneur can judge what he would like the figures to show against what they actually show and take the necessary action to change the future and produce the desired result. Without financial control the entrepreneur works in the dark depending on hunches more than financial facts.

No matter how good or bad a business is the cash flow or lack of it might well determine future growth or in the worst case scenario, poor liquidity can affect survival. Many small businesses that do not use a small business accounting solution package and run into difficulties have often been in financial problems for many months before it is obvious as reductions in profitability are hidden by extended credit from suppliers or tightening credit lines with customers.

Small business accounting software can indicate which parts of the business are doing well, where action is needed if underperforming and may also indicate where action needs to be taken. Accurate control of money owed in and money owed out is extremely difficult without the information to know how significant these figures are. Underperformance can be critical and the earliest warning provided by a small business accounting package can alert the management to make corrective changes and improve financial performance.

A disadvantage of small business accounting software is that it may sound like a foreign language to non accountants but it does not have to be difficult to use. Accounting software using a database can require some bookkeeping skills but there are other alternatives. A small business accounting software solution written on excel spreadsheets that produces all the main requirements with all transactions visible can be an ideal solution for the small businesses with little or no bookkeeping or accounting knowledge and experience.

The popularity of online degree is growing each year, especially among professionals, since it allows them to earn their degree even with their tight daily schedules. It probably can be said as the best alternatives to the old class-based education, which is not really fit for the busy people due to the class-attending requirement. With online degree it is possible for them to earn the degree without the need to arrive to the class themselves, so they don’t have to ’sacrifice’ their daily schedules.

There are several advantages of online degree, as follows.

1. We Can Study Anywhere
This online degree program allows us, the students, to study from anywhere it can be from the home, office, or anywhere, as long as they have internet connection. I can say that this is probably the main advantage of online degree compared to the traditional learning program. We are living in a really busy world, there are simply too many things to do, jobs, home, family, kids, that simply make it really hard for us to back to the school to get the degree. And online degree program provides us this opportunity.

2. Flexibility
Beside the tight daily schedule, sometime our job requires us to travel to other city or state. It will be a really hard situation for students on class-based program. This is where online degree can give you the opportunity to keep doing your job without leaving your online ‘class’. You can also plan your learning schedule to fit it with your other plans, whether it is job plan, or family plan.

3. Saving Money
With online degree, you will not need to commute since you can study from your comfort home. It can be a great saving of your money since you don’t have to worry about the gas prices, for example. The materials of the program will be presented in electronic way, think of PDF ebooks for example. It will really cut the cost of high priced printed books used in most traditional education programs.

It is obvious that online degree can give us many advantages when compared to the traditional learning program. If you are busy people with tight schedule but want to earn your degree to support your career advancement, maybe online degree can be the great option for you. If you don’t have any idea where to start your research for this subject, you can start it by browse and search on Google or other search engine for online schools and degrees from accredited colleges and universities.

There are also certain websites that can provide you information on specific subjects that I believe will be really helpful for anyone who need information about it. For example, if you want to earn your degree on accounting subject, you can visit this online accounting degree information site to find all the available info you probably need.