The last week was very stressful for our community with bushfires threatening many towns in our area. The upshot is that at least one of our clients has lost their home and many others have had substantial damage to their property.
For me there was a sense of déjà vu. I evacuated our home in the Black Saturday Fires in 2009. At that time we were living in Beveridge and quite possibly if the wind change hadn’t occurred the fire would have come through our property. I evacuated again this time around with the fire approaching from the south I was concerned about ember attack and decided it was better to have the kids out.
So what has any of this got to do with accounting? Not a lot really. This is more about the things I didn’t have to evacuate this time around.
I didn’t have to worry about a heap of photos, as all my more recent ones are stored in icloud and dropbox. I didn’t have to worry about insurance papers as I have copies stored in dropbox. Even our passports I have copies stored electronically.
Most importantly I didn’t have to worry about our financial records as they are all stored in the cloud in Xero, Receipt Bank and Dropbox. Even tax receipts for our own personal returns are stored in the cloud. Our office information was also secure. Wherever possible we scan all our clients’ source documents when they come in. We work to a remote server based in the CBD so while cloud based it is a private cloud and very secure. There is virtually no information stored locally that can’t be replaced with electronic copies stored offsite.
We use Xero for all our client ledgers. This means that while I was at home with the kids due to the school closures I could still do some work since we had power and internet. My email is accessible from home and even our office phone system is cloud based meaning that if necessary we can relocate almost instantly.
For our booking and calendar system we use Timely, which is also cloud based, so clients can make appointments even when we are closed and using the integrated two way SMS function we can communicate with our clients as long as they have phone service.
From a personal point of view most of my friends and family checked in on Facebook, yet another cloud app. It helped us all feel connected and cared about. One of the things I find most stressful about these situations is worrying that other people are OK.
Even the Emergency Services use the cloud with the CFA posting updates on Facebook and having a Fire Ready app available for mobiles. The work of the CFA, MFB, SES and Vic Police was invaluable during this emergency and all of us send out a huge thank you to them.
The fires this time around where still stressful but because of the ease and variety of cloud based products some things I had to worry about in 2009 weren’t an issue this time around. It’s amazing when you stop and think just how much our life has changed by the internet and cloud apps.
Feel free to drop us a line if you want to find out more about what cloud apps can do to make your life less stressful.
