Online bookkeeping is to your benefit

Doing your bookkeeping on the net? What a novel thought! What would get people to do that?
In an increasing mobile society where being in touch is more important than where you are, online bookkeeping does make sense and is in fact filling a gap.

Having access to your records regardless of where you happen to be can save you getting in trouble if you default on a payment because you couldn't recall the date or the amount.

If you run a venture or a club there might be a need for several persons to update receipts and expenses from different locations in an orderly fashion. Setting up a virtual network and deploying some elaborate software can be time wasting and expensive. These features are taken for granted with an internet-based application.

Wise Accounts does away with several levels of threats like hard disk breakdown, a stolen laptop, PC viruses and so on. If you use the web for internet banking the next logical step is to use the web to reach your accounting details even from an iPhone.

This concept relates to the grand idea of cloud computing where users no longer want maintaining their own PC resources. The shift is to use farms of hosting systems with fail-safe storage and redundant power supplies.

Curiously for folks who have been using computers in the 1970's that's where it all came from! In those days all you had was a terminal hooked up to a mainframe. Then in the 1980s the IBM PC appeared everywhere. People asked for extra flexibility in their reports. Frustration ended when they could re-massage their data in a Lotus 123 spreadsheet. It looks like after 40 years we have gone full circle... Fashions do come in recurring waves.

Aside from what the pundits are trying to tell us the marketing motto is this: "just like instant coffee and microwave ovens - It's all to do convenience." If you use cyberspace to check the news, download music, check your email, apply for jobs and anything else, the next natural step is to use it to also keep your financial records.

What about privacy? Many systems use your email address as your username. They dispatch your password to that address to ensure it is not a dummy token but indeed does reach you. Apart from that connection they know nexto to nothing about you - neither would they want to. You can also change your email address at will.