Dive Brief:

• QuickBooks Online is the most popular online solution for small companies to manage their accounting needs, according to an informal survey by CFO Selections, a CFO outsourcing company. 
• CFO Selections, which matches CFOs to small and midsize companies in Seattle, Portland and other Pacific Northwest areas, polled its consultants to learn which cloud-based software their client companies are using for accounting, with the vast majority choosing QuickBooks.
• Payroll processing at small companies has largely been moved to the cloud at this point. "With the complexities of understanding and complying with federal, state and local payroll taxes and the penalties associated with late payment of taxes, our associates have found this to be the application with the highest benefit for our clients," said poll author Tom Broetje, a practice manager at CFO Solutions.

Dive Insight:

Moving accounting systems to the cloud has become the de facto move for small companies. "No longer does someone question why they should move to the cloud. Now the question is, why not?" Broetje wrote.  

Here are results from the informal survey. The top number of companies that use the software, based on 82 survey responses, is in parentheses.

Accounting

For small companies, QuickBooks Online (73) was the most-used. For larger companies, which were not defined by any metric, preferred Intacct (13).

Broetje said he turned to Office 365 years ago when he first migrated his accounting operations to the cloud, later moving those operations to QuickBooks, using OneDrive to host files. "I found the cloud to be more reliable, secure and I can connect and use it from anywhere," he said. "It also made me much more efficient." 

Payroll processing

The top two are ADP (47) and QuickBooks (39).

"Payroll is both a cloud-based application and a service," Broetje said. "The application calculates payroll and prepares payroll reports for the company. The service component impounds money from the company to cover payroll and taxes. The payroll company then pays the employees, deposits funds with the various taxing agencies, and prepares and files the tax forms on the client’s behalf." 

Expense reporting

The two suites identified were Expensify (35) and Concur (23).

"It's not surprising there is wide adoption of expense reporting systems," Broetje said. "It's rare that someone will like to prepare expense reports. Time spent by employees preparing, approving, reconciling and paying expense reports is immense, not to mention the potential loss from paying fraudulent expenses."

Other applications

Bill paying (Bill.com), Cap table (Carta) and File management (Dropbox and Google Cloud) were also identified in the survey.

Broetje said Bill.com allows the bookkeeper to initiate a batch of invoices for payment but requires a separate authorized person to initiate payment.