Cloud computing, or cloud software, has become of the key trends in IT and business over the last couple of years. Cloud computing has been around for a while but with decent internet access now available nearly everywhere in the UK it is starting to come into its own. The basic principle is simple. Rather than buying expensive software, installing it on your computer and then having to back it up and update it regularly you simply pay a small fee to connect to a central server. The company providing the software will make sure it is up to date and backed up properly and you don’t need to install anything on your PC. This makes the whole process much easier.

One of the areas where we have seen a real benefit for new businesses is cloud based accountancy software. Traditional accountancy and bookkeeping software that you could install on your PC ran into hundreds of pounds. The new cloud-based programs, such as Sage One, run from a standard internet browser and cost £10 per month. However, the cost savings are not just in the cost of the software.

Most new businesses used to start out by recording their sales and expenses on an Excel spreadsheet. This works OK but it is relatively hard to run reports based on the Excel figures. Software such as Sage One allows you instantly see who owes you money and email them statements and invoices at the click of a button. This means you can easily stay on top of your cashflow and make sure your business is not losing money.

Most cloud based accountancy software also allows you to give you accountant access to your figures. They can log in to your accounts from their office and check what you are doing. In most cases they will be able to correct mistakes or, if necessary, download your numbers into their own software to prepare the end of year accounts. This saves a lot of time and has the potential to massively reduce your accountancy bills.

There are lots of benefits to using cloud-based software but the top 5 are:

Top 5 Reasons to Use Cloud Software

Author – Michael Summers

Website – https://www.thecompanywarehouse.co.uk/blog/2014/08/15/top-5-reasons-to-use-cloud-software-for-your-business/ 

What is ‘Backing up data’?

Data backup is one of the most important areas of business IT and yet is also one of the most ignored. Backing up data making a copy of your most important and needed files; this can then be used if the original is lost or becomes corrupt.

Why you should backup?

Losing your business files can happen in a variety of ways, the common causes include your IT system failing physically, errors, theft or disasters like fire, flood and dropped mugs full of liquids! People also commonly save data to just one place, like ‘My Documents’ on your PC’s hard drive. Which means that if this data were to be changed or deleted it would take considerable time for IT support to restore it.

What should you backup?

Choosing which files is a good start to ensuring you have a copy of all your business’s important information. To help choose which files you should backup try thinking about what you would need to continue working if your PC were to be stolen/damaged. For example clients address/telephone details, your account information, important documents.

Another question to ask yourself when choosing which data to backup is “How long has it taken me to collate all this information and what would happen to the business if I couldn’t get it back once lost?” These are the key things that you should be thinking about.

What type of backup should I run?

There are many options to choose from, but the two moat popular options are an online or physical backup though a hard drive. Both have their advantages and are explained in detail in our most recent post, which you can read by clicking here.

If you have any more questions about backups or just IT in general, feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to provide you with our IT support advice.

Website – http://www.pinfieldsit.co.uk/blog/Backing%20up%20Data

When it comes to upgrading your operating system on your laptop or PC the majority of organisations are happy to keep the system or application on the version they know and love. Most of us don’t like change as was seen with Microsoft’s removal of the Start Menu in Windows 8.

However, in the case of Content Management System (CMS) applications, there is a far greater risk to the business if it is not upgraded.

Let’s take Sitecore’s CMS as an example where a customer is still using Sitecore version 6.2; here are some of the risks associated with staying with this older version.

Internet Browsers:

Browsers like Firefox, Chrome and IE/Edge are constantly being updated, usually to remove security loopholes or unpopular abilities.  This is great but it does mean your website will also require updating and tested with the latest versions.  Quite often the CMS editor software will stop working with new browser versions or develop intermittent faults.

Sitecore support:

There is a Product Support Lifecycle that people should be aware of, for example, Mainstream Support for Version 6.6 ends December 31, 2015.

Underlying systems:

Sitecore and other CMS’s rely on underlying systems such as the Windows Server itself, SQL Server and the .NET Framework. These will also have support withdrawn from Microsoft;  Windows 2003 server is a good example.

Migrating to newer versions of these underlying systems also means you will have no choice but to move to a newer version of your CMS as your old version may not run on Windows 2012, SQL 2014 etc.

Opportunities that come with upgrading your CMS to the latest version of Sitecore:

  • Faster interface and improved search technology used throughout the editor
  • Greater independence for the marketing team; more marketing features allows for the configuration and publication of personalised rules, content tests and engagement plans without the need for developer support
  • Greater Cloud deployment efficiencies
  • ‘Item Buckets’ (used to store large amounts of unstructured content) allows you to create any number of items in that bucket without being concerned about the underlying structure
  • Keep up to date with online channels ensures faster and better ways of testing website and campaigns across numerous devices
  • Keep up to date with developer tools
  • Bulk actions on multiple items in Sitecore mean there is no longer the need to manually delete items one at a time.

Essentially, the longer an upgrade is left the longer and more painful it will be in the future.  Moving from Sitecore 6.2 to Sitecore 7.2 currently needs many step upgrades – sometimes it’s better to install a new Sitecore instance and simply migrate the config and content.  And, don’t forget third party modules and interfaces may no longer work on older versions.

The decision to upgrade your current CMS to the latest version may prove difficult, especially if it’s stable and running smoothly.  However, there’s no getting away from the fact that moving to newer versions brings greater efficiencies and functional improvements – you’ll have to do it one day!

Author – Nigel King

Website – http://www.unified.co.uk/Blogs/September-2015-(1)/The-Risks-of-not-upgrading-your-CMS.aspx 

Not so long ago, hardware-centric solutions seemed to be the only answer to storage-related issues. If additional storage was needed or performance had to be improved, there was only one option – throw more hardware at the problem and hope it helped. In most cases, it worked, but in general it created vendor lock and silos of storage that needed special skills to manage. Is solving today’s storage problems by hoarding hardware solutions still the best approach in the modern world?

Previously, the server market was purely hardware driven with applications sitting on expensive, discrete physical servers in a scale-up architecture. But the emergence of server virtualisation and scale-out technologies has given traditional storage vendors a real problem. Storage vendors may acknowledge new technologies and even market them, but their revenue streams are mostly built on legacy traditional storage arrays.

As we are seeing in today’s declining hardware-centric environment, the industry’s move away from legacy hardware arrays and the support and services that go with them are pushing their revenues to a consistent decline. Ultimately it is not in their interests to allow existing customers to move away from traditional branded storage.

Protecting the bottom line

The truth is that the pressure of delivering shareholders’ profits and meeting revenue commitments is dictating the product strategy of traditional storage vendors. New storage technologies like software-defined storage (SDS) offer flexibility and scalability at lower pricing on commodity components. However, advocating a completely hardware-agnostic SDS option to their existing customers would result in lower revenue and profits for traditional storage vendors. They have financial incentives to keep customers locked in to traditional storage for as long as possible or provide a SDS solutions with a new licensing models that favor their own underlying hardware.

Time to break free?

The challenge with blindly throwing more hardware at a variety of IT problems limits organisations flexibility and leaves the customer with the only option of buying even more of the same solution. In terms of storage, IT teams are led to believe that if they want their data to move freely around on internal servers, it will need to be on the same branded hardware that they already have. However, the right software can offer other alternative solutions to this problem. An horizontal SDS layer hands power back to the organisations by sitting above various hardware resources and managing it all, no matter what brand it is.

 A storage software solution can easily abstract the storage hardware in a brown field implementation, enabling coexistence of legacy and new architectures and support use cases such as migration and seamless upgrades. A properly thought out software defined storage solution not only provides customers total freedom to choose the underlying hardware components at a fraction of the cost, but also can scale up as well as scale out depending on the targeted use cases.

Companies that have implemented massive scale-out data centres built on white box hardware solutions have quickly embraced the SDS model as it gives them scalability at a low cost, along with other benefits such as lower management and maintenance overheads. It is common to see this approach in large organisations where the amount of data being stored is high and likely to involve numerous disparate storage platforms.

Change of focus

As SDS platforms mature and provide more robust data services, it is getting harder to justify just buying more of the same from a hardware vendor. Organisations that take the plunge and opt for a software-first approach will benefit from greater choices when making their next purchasing decision as well as the freedom to pick the most suitable product, rather than be restricted to what is compatible.

As well as improving the bottom line of an organisation, software can be an intelligent layer that brings other benefits, such as data recovery, migration and optimisation of the data being stored. When organisations see the benefits and low costs of SDS, it will be hard for traditional vendors to justify their legacy hardware. A fully automated, remotely managed data centre that drives appropriate total cost of ownership (TCO) targets for profitability, can only be achieved through software management and hardware abstraction at every layer of the infrastructure from servers, to network to storage. Converting to a software abstracted storage ecosystem is the only way to truly drive TCO, lowering costs and providing visibility into performance and usage statistics of the storage transactions throughout the data centre.

Author – Farid Yavari

Website – http://www.itproportal.com/2016/07/26/sds-to-spell-an-end-to-a-hardware-focused-industry/

As charities contend with a drop in donations and remaining financially viable, they’re increasingly looking to technology to help. In fact, eight out of ten chief executives say they would be “investing in IT/new technology and online solutions”.

Getting the right accounting software can help charities to manage gift aid, understand the most successful sources of funding and get more detailed data to show their impact. We offer some advice about how charities can choose the right software and get the most of their investment.

Investing in software

Charities are always under pressure to keep infrastructure and administration costs low and any purchases need to be carefully considered.

However, a lack of investment can be equally problematic, as charities miss out on valuable data that could help secure new funding sources or provide information to help show their supporters how their donations are helping.

Accounting software can also help to minimise the impact of some of the key challenges facing charities today:

  • Financial sustainability: accounting software can help you to understand the financial status of your charity and to make better informed decisions thanks to the data it provides.
  • Drop in public and government donations: while the software can’t create more donations, it can help you to analyse your most successful sources of funding, so you can focus on areas that are working well and minimise your costs in acquiring new donors.
  • Administration time and costs: many tasks that need to be handled manually can be automated with the right software, freeing up your team for income generation or managing services.
  • Measuring impact: with the increased focus on demonstrating the positive effect that charities make, having access to the right data is essential. The Charity Finance Group said that “public trust and confidence are essential for an effective and successful charity sector, and high standards of financial management and performance reporting are an important part of maintaining this.”
  • Legislation: keeping up to date with the volume of charity regulations takes time. The right accounting software ensures you’re compliant and helps you report your figures correctly.

Choose the right software

With so many advantages, it’s clear that the right software can make a big difference. But there are a growing number of packages available, so it’s important that charities follow the right process in choosing one that suits them.

From developing a specification through shortlisting and trials to making the purchase, it pays to be clear about what you are looking for. Each charity’s needs will be different but here are the key things that will apply in most cases.

Designed with charities in mind

Charities have different needs from general businesses and need to be able to track donations, gift aid declarations and ensure their accounts comply with Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), including providing a Statement of Financial Activities (SoFA), which replaces the Profit and Loss statement used by companies.

Choosing software that has been optimised for charities ensures you’re complying with legislation and have the information you need.

The right data

It’s important that you understand the data and reports you need for your organisation. Any software you choose should be flexible enough to fit your requirements, and simple to use.

Available anywhere

With many fundraisers out at events or with supporters, choosing charity software that lets them stay connected is really helpful. Choosing software that is available through the cloud means they can update information from anywhere with an internet connection.

Other employees can make use of this feature too. From your finance director to your chief exec, everyone can be assured that they will always have access to the figures they need.

Trusted provider

You need to know that your data is safe and your software provider can ensure that you stay compliant as new legislation is introduced. Choosing an established charity software company means they’ll be there to support you, now and in the future.

Website – http://blog.sage.co.uk/index.php/2015/06/charities-and-accounting-software-figuring-out-the-best-approach/#.V6CrKLgrKM-

Many times we have found ourselves wanting to ‘test’ entering transactions, running reports and adding new accounts without using our ‘real’ data but not implementing it on our live Sage 200 company.

This is where a Test Company comes into play! 

What you need to know…

This is essentially a company where we are able to test, play, amend and delete data that we have entered into Sage.

Whether you are:

  • Questioning the end result from a transaction
  • Unsure of the result from changing a setting
  • Carrying out training with new employees
  • Experimenting with a new process
  • Trying to improve on your Sage knowledge

A test company is a great resource that enables you to cover all of these and more.

Setting up a test company is easy. If you don’t already have one, we highly advise that you set one up.

Fortunately, we will be covering that today.

How to set up a Test Company

Prior to setting this up , a few key pieces of information are required.

You will need:

  1. Access to System Admin
  2. Access to the SQL Server
  3. The current live company database name.

Firstly: Head to System Admin > Select Companies from the columns on the left hand side.

From here you will need to make a note of the database name assigned to your current live company.

With this then you need to head to the SQL Server and create a backup of that database.

Once the backup is complete you need to restore this as a new database.

Once this is completed, you will need to create a new company within system admin.

We would suggest that you call the company name the same as your live company, only with test at the end like so:

  • Live company name = Small Soldiers LTD
  • Test company name = Small Soldiers LTD Test

This ensures the two companies are never selected in error.

You should now open Sage and select the test company from the list of companies, then that is your test company all set up.

Getting the most out of your Test Company

To ensure you are getting the most out of your test company, we suggest you regularly update it.

Similar to the installation of the test company, updating it is simply taking a backup of the live data. The only difference is we are going to restore the backup over the existing test company’s database.

When the process is complete and you have successfully completed your backup and restore, it will be fully up to date.

So, there we have it. I hope you were able to follow all steps easily… Until the next time!

Author – Jade

Website – http://itassolutions.co.uk/benefits-setting-test-company/

It’s undeniable that we live in an age where data is the new currency. Everything is connected to some sort of data management mechanism and delivered to a specific audience, whether that’s a group of specific web users or customers looking for a specific product. Increasingly, how we manage that data, or information, can drastically affect our business for better or worse.

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Excel is a powerful digital tool but many people find it challenging to use. However, according to Newcastle upon Tyne-based IT company Bowe Digital, using a few handy hints can make all the difference.

Bowe Digital Ltd are a fully accredited Sage Business Partner and Sage Developer in Kingston Park, Newcastle, just off the A1.

As a North East Sage Business Partner, specialising in the provision and installation of Accounting, Manufacturing and CRM software, Bowe Digital Ltd provides IT solutions tailored to clients’ precise needs.

Bowe Digital can supply, support and install Hardware, Software and Peripheral Equipment that a business might require, from a simple PC workstation to complex Wide Area Networks. They also provide tailored training, consultancy and continued support from experienced IT professionals.

BoweDigital-ExcelTips