syncing up your life

what mobile accountants need to know to stay in touch

by rick telberg

one of the big problems with being a mobile accountant is that you aren’t in the office. that seems pretty obvious, but it’s less obvious what some of the disadvantages are in not being at your desk.

it’s hard enough worrying about what you’re missing back at the office without also forgetting the documents and files you need. the possible disparity between what’s on your desktop pc and what’s on your laptop can be maddening. it’s not an unusual occurrence to look for something on one computer, only to find that it’s actually located on another, or possibly on the office network.

if you’ve tried windows briefcase, you know that it’s not difficult to forget where the latest version of a file is stored, and accidentally overwrite the newer file with an older version.

the four solutions

there are solutions to this problem. the simplest one might be to use only one pc, your laptop, whether you are at your desk in your office or at a client site thousands of miles away. with today’s laptops offering fast cpus, massive hard disk drives and optical disc drives, and screens of up to 19 inches having only a single pc to worry about makes sense to a growing number of accountants.

another approach is to consider using an office server (or setting one up if you don’t already have one) and keeping all of your work on the server. set up a vpn (virtual private network) and when you are on the road, you can access all of your office files on the go. with wireless broadband so common these days, it’s possible to connect to the internet from almost anywhere.

this approach is becoming more and more common, but requires that the office server be backed up on a continuous basis so that a server crash doesn’t result in a catastrophic loss of mission-critical data. but setting up a vpn isn’t very difficult, and is explained quite well in different articles available on the internet, microsoft’s knowledgebase, and at the hp wireless and mobility solution center.

yet another way to get “central office” file storage along with easy mobile access is to use one of the remote access services. services such as hp partner gotomypc and mionet let you run your desktop pc remotely, so if you can access files stored on an office file server through the pc sitting on your desk, you can, by operating the desktop pc remotely through your laptop, access them from your laptop as well. one additional benefit is that you can also run applications on your desktop remotely, which is great if you find that you need an application that isn’t installed on your laptop, but is installed on your office pc.

these services aren’t overly expensive, costing between $7 and $20 a month. the files themselves are stored on your server or desktop. the remote access service just lets you operate your office pc from wherever you can get internet access.

with the surge in smartphone usage, you may be able carry around all the files and access you need in your shirt pocket. the latest generation of smartphone synchronizes all your email, contact, to-dos, and calendar entries in real time using the edge network. you can even run presentations from it by connecting to a digital projector.

with this kind of horsepower in hand, does an accountant really need an office anymore?

[first published by hewlett packard]