Historically, firms were required to buy, build, and maintain their IT infrastructures despite exorbitant and exponentially-rising costs. This presented a definite disadvantage to small or startup firms with limited financial resources. The cloud gives firms and companies of all sizes a revolutionary alternative. With the cloud, users can plug in and subscribe to services built on shared infrastructure via the Internet. The benefits are plentiful, and all you need to access QBO (QuickBooks Online) is one of the supported browsers.

Few of the benefits of QuickBooks Online are listed below:
As the business owner, you can manage your books from anywhere. For business owners who travel regularly or business owners doing their books at night at home (like so many of us), this is a real benefit.

It’s Affordable – You’ll experience cost efficiencies. Since it is subscription-based, there are no license fees, meaning lower initial costs. You pay a lower recurring monthly payment, instead of paying a software license fee up front. QBO’s support is free, included in the cost of the subscription. In addition, having a them manage all your IT infrastructure means lower IT costs for hardware, software, and the people needed to manage it all.

QuickBooks Online is especially good for businesses with a distributed workforce. If you have employees or independent contractors working from home or from remote locations they can have access to the software as needed (up to 3 simultaneous users, plus your accountant or up to 20 users for an additional fee). For instance, you or your employees can create estimates directly at a customer’s site using a laptop.

You can even give hourly employees or independent contractors the authority to log in for the limited purpose of filling out timesheets. Then you can process payroll or contractor payments easily.

QuickBooks Online makes it easy to share data with an outside accountant. For instance, if your accountant helps you close or balance your books each month or quarter; you don’t have to hassle with exchanging data. Your accountant logs in from his or her office and can nip errors in the bud by following an activity log. Your accountant can even log on simultaneously with you to show you how to do something.

Automatic Backup and Upgrades – You and your clients will save enormous amounts of time not worrying about backing up data, taking it off-site, or upgrading the data and software to the latest version or release. It’s all done for you with QuickBooks Online.
You do not have to install software on your hard drive.

You get support included in the monthly fee. The website says that if you submit a question via email, they usually get back to you within 30 minutes.

Another helpful feature: when you log on to QuickBooks Online, there is a small widget that appears on your screen with the latest QuickBooks forums discussion. You can see questions from others (questions you also may have) and be able to get answers. Or you can ask your own questions of the community.
http://otnconsultinglimited.com/index.php/premium/80-quickbooks