Business Accounting Goes Mobile

Curt Finch for Technorati writes: According to research firm Strategy Analytics, the number of active smartphones topped one billion in 2012, and they estimate that this number will double by 2015. Mobile devices are compact and convenient, and users increasingly rely on them for the majority of basic tasks, including professional usage. The most effective accounting software offers accessible, real-time reporting of employee work and related costs. But the definition of “accessible” is changing; soon it won’t be enough for users to access information only on company desktops. Information has to be available on-demand – by which I mean, on mobile devices.  

Several top companies already offer mobile applications for smartphones and tablets. QuickBooks, the top accounting software solution among small businesses, offers QuickBooks Mobile for the iPad, iPhone, and Android. This application allows users to easily view customer information, send professional invoices, and mark invoices as paid. The data on Mobile QuickBooks syncs back with QuickBooks on the desktop, and visa versa.  

Microsoft Office offers a similar application for the Windows Phone, allowing users to create, open, and edit Excel workbooks. And Microsoft Dynamics offers a mobile application for Dynamics CRM.  

So, how useful are these applications? First of all, it has become clear that mobile integration has its limitations. For example, Excel Mobile doesn’t support all of the functions of Microsoft Excel. Unsupported content cannot be displayed or edited, potentially limiting the application’s usability. There’s also the intrinsic limitations imposed by the smartphone’s smaller screen size, which makes viewing and editing large documents difficult and unwieldy.  

To minimize these problems, companies can center their application building on the most popular features. Most users don’t need smartphones to do complex configurations of their accounting software. Instead, the vast majority of user activity is devoted to entering employee time, approving time entered, and running reports. These basic activities can be specifically tailored for smartphones.  

Cross-platform integration is another area of consideration. For example, Microsoft Office is currently only available on the Windows Phone. Rumors have been circulating for years about Microsoft’s plans to release Office versions for other platforms, but they have yet to make an official announcement on this front. 

Similarly, QuickBooks Mobile is available on iOS and Android, but it discontinued its version for Blackberry in 2011. While QuickBooks might have thought that this was a practical decision, considering that the Android and iPhone currently make up nearly 90 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, they didn’t account for possible fluctuations in the market. With the recent debut of the Blackberry Z10 and the upcoming release of the Blackberry Q10, customers might just be returning to the platform in large numbers.  

Looking forward, it will most likely take these companies a while to work through the limitations and problems associated with mobile integration. For example, Microsoft Dynamics released its mobile application for CRM but has yet to offer mobile versions for GP, ERP, or AX. 

As the world becomes increasingly mobile, will accounting software companies that fail to release mobile applications be left behind?  

I don’t think so, at least not for the foreseeable future. Business software is usually extremely well integrated into a company’s systems, and switching to another software provider is a huge hassle. Mobile integration isn’t a looming issue for accounting software companies the way it is for other companies.  

But mobile integration cannot be ignored forever. Everyday, there are new and exciting innovations in the mobile sphere. In fact, mobile devices may soon replace wallets with “e-wallets” through NFC technology. Business accounting software companies would be well advised to start developing mobile innovations of their own.