Migrating from desktop to hosted?

Hi reckon team.

We have Reckon Accounts Enterprise: Manufacturing and Wholesale Edition and desktop.

We have company files for AU, NZ & UK

I am not an accountant or book keeper and our terrific staff are quite busy with regular work so I am wondering about what's involved and the level of "disruption", if any, we'd expect migrating to online versions.

Accepted answers

Acctd4

Yes, users just log in to the platform via any web browser 😊

All comments

Alexis McKeown

Dear @JBRangakoo ,

There'd be very minor disruptions.

The process is as follows:

You create your Hosted license with the sales team (or licenses, if you have multiple users accessing the company files daily);
Once the license(s) are created, you'd cease activity on Reckon Accounts Desktop;
You'd login to Hosted and upload your company file to Hosted;
Optional: You'd share your company file to your other licenses/accountants/bookkeepers;
You'd resume normal operation on your company file.

Depending on the amount and size of the file, this can take a 2-3 days maximum.

To see how you can upload files, you can review our guide here:

#TipTuesday - Reckon Accounts Hosted - Top Troubleshooting Tips (It's Tip 7)

And you can find out how to share files here:

#TipTuesday - How to Share and Unshare Company Files

Kind regards,

Alexis McKeown

Reckon Senior Technical Support

JBRangakoo

Thanks, Alexis, for your prompt reply.

We have 5 users, our "wholesale & Manufacturing" is for our AU head office, the other licences handle our UK (GBP & EUR) and NZ (NZD) businesses.

I am trying to find out more to reassure our team that the changeover would be straightforward.

So we can just upload our Reckon company file from our Reckon server in our office, to the hosted service?

Cheers

John

Alexis McKeown

Dear @JBRangakoo ,

That's correct - you can directly upload your company file from Desktop to Hosted and use it within the span of an hour (at most, depending on size of the file/speed of your internet).

If multiple people access it, you can share it between them as mentioned.

Kind regards,

Alexis McKeown

Reckon Senior Technical Support

Acctd4

That's correct @JBRangakoo 😀

The process is fairly simple as - unlike with desktop - there's no installation required. Once you upload the file to the platform, you just "share" it to your other users. This prompts the platform to create a unique shared folder - that all users then have access to - where the company file resides 😊

Feel free to get in touch direct if you need assistance.

JBRangakoo

Thanks Alexis,

That sounds encouraging, I'll discuss with our team.

Cheers

John

Alexis McKeown

Dear @JBRangakoo ,

It's never a problem at all - and thank you @Acctd4 for weighing in. 🙂

If you need any further information, you're always welcome to ask us here on the community, or reach out to our Sales Team.

Kind regards,

Alexis McKeown

Reckon Senior Technical Support

JBRangakoo

Oh, and just a clarification. This hosted service has a web interface for the user and no special software (like the desktop app) is required on the computer ?

Acctd4

Yes, users just log in to the platform via any web browser 😊

Alexis McKeown

Dear @JBRangakoo ,

Reckon Accounts Hosted only requires the internet - we handle all the heavy lifting of the application-related stress for you.

Kind regards,

Alexis McKeown

Reckon Senior Technical Support

Alex_10836088

Around 18 months ago we migrated our 5 company files from desktop (server shared) to hosted, agree with comments that the file migration process was straight forward. I'd signed up for a trial account prior and uploaded a copy of our company file there to be comfortable with the process and as well as see how some other things work (still using the original desktop version in production as normal, the uploaded file just became a throw away test file)

Some snags i found to watch for and test/try with the sample account - none are show stoppers but really wish someone had made this clearer BEFORE hand so we could test/plan/train properly instead of the Reckon spin of "just upload the file"

Backups are no longer automated. To me this is the single largest risk and issue with hosted - esp. for software so susceptible to corruption and especially when using with multiple users as you can't backup while other users are logged in! Additionally, backups are on the same Reckon server so you need a second step process to locate and download the backup files.
Not all fonts are on the remote server - check your templates (invoices etc) display correctly
Emails are sent from Reckon (but with your return email address). In some ways this is better than pushing through a mail server/account - but you no longer have the same level of control or visibility of sent items, the email log is VERY limited and can only be accessed by the user account that initiated the emails (ie an admin cannot review logs at all!)
Users need to be shown/trained on how to send files to and get files from the Reckon server - this is much slower than working with desktop version, especially when doing this alot (ie file imports and exporting reports/data. Additionally the process for working with remote files is unwieldy. Want to delete a file from the Reckon server? Click the floating present icon, click the Download to open the file download dialog, don't click anything! instead mouse over the file and press delete - only keyboard shortcuts work (F2 to rename, CTRL C to Copy, CTRL V to paste etc) - so, def takes some training of end users unless you're happy with an ever growing mess of files
Printers & PDFs can be tricky (can't remember exactly why/how!) - as part of your testing, check that users can print as normal and export to PDF
User/licence management is cumbersome - each user gets a Reckon Hosted account (different to the user/pass to open the company file. Think of it as a windows user for logging on to the remote server) - you need to map permissions for each user to the company file/folder so they can access it which is not an intuitive process. You also can't delete users, instead you have to revoke all the old user details (password/MFA etc) and rename them for the next user - or rename them as a "spare" if you're not allocating them straight away. Users will be prompted for MFA every 24 hours so may take some setup/training on this process if not otherwise used to that.
Learn how to identify users who are logged in and the process for logging them off in the event of screen timeouts, hang/freezing etc - ensure you users are shown how to properly logoff or their sessions aren't properly terminate and you need to manually log them off (or wait a period of time for it to clean up by itself) - with 12 users, we need to log someone off nearly every day.

There's def some upsides

Upgrades are much easier - once the new annual version if released, you will see links to open last year and new year. Open the new year, respond YES to wanting to upgrade the company file and away you go (possibly a few extra steps if considering super rate changes etc but that's same for desk and hosted anyway)
Users can access from any browser and technically without limitations on computer or operating system (no issues on our part with Edge or Chrome) - note this COULD present security/privacy issues however if you don't want to allow staff access from outside the office or from other countries. There is no way to restrict/permit access to locations, IP addresses etc
Integration becomes possible - not easy, but possible!

Alex_10836088

Oh - and check if you need different accounts for AU and NZ (not sure about UK). In our case, we use AUS and NZ which are different URLs so have to duplicate users (ie i have 1 account for AU and 1 for NZ) so doubles our licence costs.

Possibly this is just because how we setup though - Reckon may be able to confirm?

JBRangakoo

Thanks for the comprehensive rundown, Alex.

We have two subscriptions, the previous years for AU & UK (just open desired company file) and the latest version for AU.

There's always a "hassle" at update/tax table time as our IT contractor is not quite as experienced with Reckon as some.

Great suggestion to do a trial by uploading the company file to the hosted trial.

Anyway, bit busy at the moment but hope to review your post in more detail over the weekend. Thanks again for the comments.

Datarec

Here are some related help articles to the valid points raised by @Alex_10836088

1. How to download a backup file (QBB) from Reckon Accounts Hosted to the local computer

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/7822979/how-to-download-a-backup-file-qbb-from-reckon-accounts-hosted-to-your-local-computer

2. Fonts in Reckon Accounts Hosted

https://help.reckon.com/article/rq0sys2o5f-how-to-modify-your-fonts-on-different-forms-in-reckon-accounts-hosted

Changes to the fonts available in custom templates in Reckon Accounts Hosted 📄 — Reckon Community

3. Emails in Reckon Accounts Hosted

https://help.reckon.com/article/zany0shsjx-kba-5187-how-emails-work-on-reckon-accounts-hosted

4. How to upload and delete files on the Reckon Accounts Hosted platform

https://help.reckon.com/article/1oorzsp8ae-kba-5594-uploading-or-downloading-the-files-to-and-from-reckon-accounts-hosted

https://help.reckon.com/article/k2d8o6k9s6-kba-5645-deleting-a-file-in-reckon-accounts-hosted

5. Printers and PDF's

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/8031528/how-to-print-invoices-etc-to-pdf

https://help.reckon.com/article/ivjue2b08a-kba-5676-when-i-try-to-print-in-hosted-nothing-happens-the-print-window-doesn

6. Manage Hosted User Accounts

https://www.reckon.com/reckon-blog/tips-for-managing-your-reckon-hosted-account/

7. Hosted user sessions

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/8035189/how-do-sessions-work-in-reckon-accounts-hosted

https://help.reckon.com/article/audni1yrhc-kba-5370-how-to-log-off-a-reckon-accounts-hosted-session-that-was-closed-abnormally