IT Setup for SMEs of about 5 employees (Part 2)

IT Setup for SMEs of about 5 employees (Email & Web Hosting)

Email and Web hosting is the next essential thing to work on when you start up a business. Web and email hosting becomes essential because all corporate image starts from a nice website and easily remembered domain. Gone are the days of yellow pages advertising and greenbook advertising whereby most customers will flip directories to search for your service or products.

Domain selection determines how your customer look at you and therefore how your position your company is important. Names can be the services, brand or company. 

Domain name has 2 parts: 

• Part 1: Name: You can name your domain by companyname (eg asiahawk.com for Asia Hawk Pte Ltd), brandname (eg myob.com.sg for MYOB accounting software but company is Asian Business Software Solutions Pte Ltd), or servicename (eg. bookkeeper.asia for Bookkeepers-On-Wheels LLP). 
• Part 2: TLD: Top level domain which is after the name represents your market or industry. Most commonly used is .com (International market), .net (internet businesses), .com.sg (Singapore businesses), .sg (also Singapore businesses), .asia (Asia market). 

So you will need to select based on 2 simple conditions:

1. Easy to remember and communicate to your customer (eg. amc.com.sg instead of advancedmicrocontrol.com.sg)
2. TLD extension that tells customer we are dealing in which region (eg amc.sg which only deals with local market and bookkeepers.asia which handles Asia market)

Hosting of email and website is the next thing you have to consider carefully. Hosting can be very affordable on international or US service provider as the have the economy of scale to provide a very low cost service. Looking at Bluehost pricing, you will not know how to compare to Simplehost pricing which is much more expensive. However, it is important to know that Simplehost has a local number which you can call in the event of emergency compared to calling US number which you would likely avoid due to operation hours and IDD charges. Do note that both would have some differences especially coming from the point of storage and quality of hosting.

With affordable hosting, some of you might need local service provider to assist you as these hosting service may not provide you with on-site services or getting it done for you. Services to setup email accounts and configuring on your laptop, PC or mobile devices would be available by service company like ours (Advanced Micro Control Pte Ltd), however web design may need to look for web design company to assist you.

Please feel free to contact us for assistance or clarifications.

We seek to help making IT simple for SMEs.

William Tan
Advanced Micro Control Pte Ltd
Tel: +65 6347 7000
email: sales@amc.com.sg

IT Setup for SMEs of about 5 employees

IT Setup for SMEs of about 5 to 10 employees

Let's discuss on how an SMEs of about 5 to 10 employees leverage on IT technology in their operations. We are talking about either an engineering, trading and services industry who serve other businesses (Business-to-business operations).

We are going to look into 5 key areas:

1. Internet and IT infrastructure
2. Email and Web Hosting
3. Telephone Setup
4. Software for business operations
1. Accounting and Sales
2. HR management
5. Future possible expansion

We will break these 5 areas into 5 emails for easier discussion as our intention is to Simplify IT for you.

Starting from Internet and IT Infrastructure:

IT infrastructure is a jargon for bigger companies and normally would include a server room, server rack, cable management etc. However for an SMEs, we can consider simple setup with the following requirements:

• Connectivity: Running category 5e or 6 network cables (easily available and is about $95 to $120 per point) for connectivity. Alternatively, you can consider going for wireless, however, nothing is as stable as cable.
• Router: Usually provided by Internet Service Provider (Starhub, Singtel, M1 etc) when you sign up with a contractual plan of 24 months.
• Internet Plan: You can subscribe to a fibre plan typically below $100 for 30Mbps and above. Do compare with Singtel, Starhub and other smaller players (like MyRepublic) for best deals if available, but do not compromise on stability and reliability.
• Network Switch: You can go for 100 Mbps switch or 1 Gbps switch with either 8-port or 16 Port with POE (Power-Over-Ethernet) to compliment your telephony equipment and wireless Access Point for mobile devices.
• File Server: You can consider NAS which you will need to learn how to maintain or administer or get SMESUITE which covers the services to administer and maintain it for you.
• Backup: Buying a NAS with RAID is not equivalent to backup. You need a separate harddisk with similar capacity to backup your NAS. However if you choose to go for SMESUITE, all backup are taken care of.
• Printer: Multi-function laser printer which acts as laster printer, scanner and fax should be good enough for most us. However, avoid copiers unless there is necessity to do mass printing. Attempt to discourage physical print copy if possible as not only it cost more to print physical paper with expensive ink, but also take up storage. 

Simple example of network setup

* Note: You may subscribe to Dropbox or equivalent of cloud storage (monthly subscription applies).

Please feel free to contact us for assistance or clarifications.

We seek to help making IT simple for SMEs.

William Tan
Advanced Micro Control Pte Ltd
Tel: +65 6347 7000
email: sales@amc.com.sg

Moneyworks Professional Payment Voucher

Moneyworks Professional Payment Voucher

You might have seen or received bank's payment voucher with detachable cheque for you to tear out and bank in, while payment voucher is for your filing and reference. Banks do sell them for about S$1 per cheque.

Sample payment voucher with attached cheque

This desired format does have benefits:

• Automation in cheque printing without having separate cheque writer
• Professional and error free as all handwriting is eliminated
• Alignment of address ease you from writing on envelop
• Faster in processing payment without repeat writing in envelopment, voucher and cheque

However, to buy from bank at $1 per cheque, is not really practical for cost conscious SMEs.

If you are using Moneyworks, we are prepared to share this simple hack. All you need to is get your printing company to cut some slots and with perforated line for tearing as shown in the youtube video:

This method may cost you a fraction of the cost charge by bank and your free cheques (for some corporate bank account) can still be presented in a very professional way!

Want more information? Contact us at:

William Tan

http://www.amc.com.sg
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amcpro.asia/ 

email: sales@amc.com.sg

tel: +65 63477000

Comparing MYOB vs Moneyworks

Compare MYOB vs MoneyWorks

Both MYOB and MoneyWorks belongs to the category of on-premise accounting solution with many similarities for sales, purchasing, operations, inventory and accounting for small businesses.

While MYOB has almost dominated the on-premise accounting software solutions among the SMEs, let us take some time to compare MYOB to MoneyWorks. 

You may ask why MoneyWorks? Both MYOB and MoneyWorks has great feature similarities in which both run on flat single file without database application (like SQL), and both sells in the price range of around S$1,000 for 1 user (MYOB Premier 1 User sells at S$1,297.20 and MoneyWorks GOLD sells for S$895) and less than S$3,000 for 3 users (MYOB Premier 3 User sells at S$2,119.63 and Moneyworks Datacentre sells for S$2,995). 

However, our comparison here is based on the differences between both MYOB and MoneyWorks, so we will not touch on individual functionality for now.

Here is the table of comparison of difference:

	MYOB Premier	MoneyWORKS Gold/Datacentre
Recording	Realtime recording and editing	Post and Reverse Entry
Sharing Method	File and Folder sharing	File sharing through port (Datacentre)
Sharing Technology	Windows Workgroup Sharing	Bonjour technology
Network Type	Wired Networking only, slow on wireless (especially on bigger files)	Wired, wireless and internet capable
Interface	Workflow procedures	Workflow procedures
Forms Formatting	Form customizable with fixed data/field insertion	Form customizable with flexible data/field and formula insertion
Reports	Reports fixed and cannot be amended or customised	Reports are customizable with built-in report writer
Data Access	3 years report (Last year, this year and next year report)	7 years report and transactions
Transaction Access	Module Access for different transaction	One screen to view all transaction
Creating Transaction	New transaction through module section	All transactions can be selected within one screen
Upgrades Frequency	Upgrade almost every year	Upgrade almost every 3 years
Remote Access	Remote Access via terminal service	Direct connection
Companies Files	5 datafiles and pay extra for additional 5	Unlimited datafiles
Platform	Mac OR Windows only (via different version)	Both Window/Mac cross platform

We will not conclude which software is better based on this comparison difference, however, we can do some simple summary for each solution:

You will prefer MYOB because:

1. Common software, easier to get help via employment or outsource
2. Fixed software without much customisation and lesser functionality
3. Suitable for older generation workers so is easier to learn

You will prefer MoneyWorks if:

1. Need more functions and flexibility
2. Users both Mac or Windows within the company
3. Need to access remotely
4. Needs integration (now or future) to third party applications like e-commerce, warehousing and even POS which allows integration

Want to know more? Do feel free to contact us!

William Tan

Advanced Micro Control Pte Ltd

tel: +65 63477000

email: sales@amc.com.sg

Comparing MYOB Singapore Edition of Accounting and Premier

Compare between MYOB Accounting and MYOB Premier Singapore Edition

Many might have forgotten about MYOB Accounting, as over the last few years, we have been selling mostly MYOB Premier in Singapore due to government grants. Most popular reason being since it is supported, most people would want to maximise the grant by buying the highest value solution in the market. Another reason is that MYOB Accounting is not an IRAS compliance accounting solution.

IRAS does not endorse or enforce any company to buy GST compliance software, but it does make GST reporting breeze (just by using the GST F5 return report in MYOB Premier).

However, since all the grants are no longer available for accounting and payroll, can users consider MYOB Accounting edition instead as it is definitely a cheaper edition?

We attempt to simplify this comparison for you to decide if you should consider between MYOB Accounting or MYOB Premier Edition.

Comparison Component	MYOB Accounting v24 Singapore Edition	MYOB Premier v19 Singapore Edition
Price Difference (with GST)	$841.00	$1,388.00
Work collaboration	Single User ONLY	Single or Multi-user (can add-on user license later)
GST Compliance	NO	YES (with IAF and GST Return)
Currency	Single/Local ONLY	Multi-currency
Inventory (location)	Single location	Multi-warehouse location
Inventory (Price Level)	Single selling price	Multi-price level and quantity breaks
Time Billing	NO	YES

The above is a quick comparison for fast decision, and therefore is not a complete comparison for full features. For full comparision, please refer to MYOB official website.

To all you to decide which version, just ask youself these 4 questions:

1. Do you have multi-location warehouse?
2. Do you deal with foreign currency?
3. Do you bill customer based on time spent?
4. Do you have more than one user accessing MYOB?

If your answer to the all above 4 questions is "NO", you may just buy MYOB Accounting. The table gives you a more comprehensive comparison if you want to cover more ground checks to be sure.

Still in doubt? Contact us for further clarifications.

William Tan

Advanced Micro Control Pte Ltd

Tel: 6347 7000

Email: william@amc.com.sg

Click on Invoice to Allow Payment via PayPal

Clicking Invoice to Pay via PayPal

Online Payment is not new. We have been paying our bills and online purchases via credit card and merchant services like PayPal etc. As the adoption is increasingly getting popular, we would want to explore how our customers can pay for our services using online payment.

Many would have argued that in B2B businesses (business-to-business), companies would not want to pay via credit card or even debit card. How do online business solutions like Xero, Quickbooks Online and Salesforce CRM receive their subscriptions? Businesses has no choice but to pay via online facilities as these services does not accept off-line payment. So we do feel that acceptance of online payment has to take-off or has already taken off.

Benefits of Online Payment:

• Faster sales decision as online payment is using credit card (or future money)
• Better cash flow as money will come in first before your delivery
• Guaranteed payment compared to risk of bounce cheque
• Cut down the effort of chasing receivables which may eventually turn into bad debts
• No more credit terms! Let the merchant bank take the risk, while you take the money first
• No traveling to bank, look for parking or even engaging courier service to do banking

Therefore the benefits is beyond convenience. 

How do we do it:

Click-to-PayPal with Moneyworks

Above example is using Moneyworks Accounting Solution and PayPal Payment Services

Call us to show you now!

William Tan

email: websales@ampro.asia

web: amcpro.asiaamcpro.asia

tel: 6347 7870

Go Cloud or On-Premise?

Go Cloud or On-Premise?

As technology moves in massive wave, it does confuse and contradict our plan to grow the business. More and more solutions are already on Software-As-A-Service or cloud platform, some ended up with no choice but to jump into the cloud band wagon. 

Let's look at a typical business solution like MYOB which is the most adopted accounting solution in Singapore. More than 50% SMEs in Singapore adopted MYOB as their accounting solution. However, this solution is an On-Premise solution. Does this means there is no market for cloud accounting solution? Answer is NO, or at least adoption has yet to pick up. Online (or Cloud) solution like Xero and Quickbook-Online is coming in very aggressively.

Let us go through the pros and cons of cloud to help us decide better:

Pros:

• Access anywhere and anytime for mobile workforce or travelers
• Lower initial investment cost
• No hardware or infrastructure involve
• No long term commitment required
• Easy to adopt and scale with add-on

Cons:

• No asset ownership
• Total cutoff if internet access fails either on hosting server or your own internet fails
• Cloud server might face security issue (even some defense ministry also can get hack)
• Is easy to bring data up, but is never easy to bring it down (eg. you cannot migrate from Quickbook Online to Quickbook on-premise version)
• Cheap for inflexibility in features and functions, but it might add up to be more expensive if you need to add on more functions to scale up

Best of both world: Private Cloud - On-Premise yet accessible over internet

You can turn some of your solution to private cloud. How? You can deploy remote desktop solution to enable you to access from outside office all the application that are desktop based and being shared like MYOB. You host your Windows machine within office doing all necessary backup and allow access from public area can help you have full control and the best of both worlds:

• Access from anywhere and anytime
• When internet is down, you can access within your office (business goes on)
• When server or host computer is down, access your software from any other computer first, while trying to restore your server or host computer
• Not tied down to internet service provider or software vendor
• You can open or close the application from the internet world (means you choose if you want to access from out of office or not)
• Backup and restore is in your hands

Remote to office with Samsung S8

You are in control of how you want your business operations to be...

Please feel free to contact us at:

Advanced Micro Control Pte Ltd

Tel: +65 6347 7000

Email: sales@amc.com.sg