Cloud accounting software for small business: what to weigh before you move

Cloud accounting software for small business solved a genuine problem: books that lived on one laptop, in one file, that the accountant could only see by email. Multi-device access and shared visibility are real gains. But the trade is also real — your ledger now lives somewhere you do not control, behind a subscription and a login.

Both models work. The decision is easier once you separate what actually changes from what the marketing says changes.

What the cloud genuinely changes

• Access. Books reachable from any device, and an accountant who can look without a file being sent anywhere.
• Shared state. Two people can work without emailing versions back and forth — the single biggest saving for anyone with a bookkeeper.
• Automatic backups, at least of the provider's copy, which is more than most local setups manage.
• Bank feeds, where supported, replacing manual statement import — the most-cited convenience, and the one most often limited by region and bank.
• Recurring updates for tax rules and formats, without a manual upgrade.

What it costs

• Rent, not ownership. Stop paying and access usually stops with it — while the legal obligation to produce those records does not.
• Data location. If you have obligations about where financial data is stored, that becomes a question you must actually answer.
• Feature gating by tier: multi-currency, extra users and reconciliation tools are common upgrade triggers, and you discover them mid-year.
• Dependence on a connection at exactly the wrong moments — month end, an audit, a plane.
• Migration cost later. It is low if exports are clean and high if they are not, which is why the export path is worth testing on day one.

The question that settles most of this: if this provider disappeared next month, what would I still have? The answer should be "every transaction, the chart of accounts, and the P&L, balance sheet and ledger for each closed period" — as files, on my own disk, updated on a schedule I control.

Choosing between cloud and local

Cloud makes obvious sense when more than one person touches the books, when your accountant expects to work in the system, or when bank feeds cover your bank and save real hours. Local makes sense when you are the only person entering transactions, when the volume is modest, when connectivity is unreliable, or when keeping the ledger physically in your possession matters to you.

There is a middle path that most small businesses actually want: books that live on your device but are shared and backed up deliberately, with exports that nothing prevents you from taking. Ettex Books takes that approach — a chart of accounts structured the way accountants expect, double-entry journal entries with full debit and credit control, categories and auto-categorisation rules, bank reconciliation, bank statement import from CSV or OFX, recurring entries, multi-currency with rate tracking, attachments on any entry, instant search across all periods, and P&L, balance sheet and ledger export as PDF, CSV or XLS. Your accountant can be invited with read or full access, and the books are local-first, so they keep working with no connection.

Moving without losing history

1. Cut over at the start of a financial period — mid-period migrations double the reconciliation work.
2. Export everything from the old system first, including reports for closed periods, and keep those files permanently.
3. Enter opening balances at the cutover date and reconcile them against the final statement before recording anything new.
4. Import statements rather than retyping, and set categorisation rules once.
5. Run one month in parallel if the numbers are material, comparing the P&L from both systems.
6. Schedule the export. A backup you take manually is a backup you will stop taking by March.

Choose cloud accounting software for the access it gives other people, not for the convenience it promises you — and set up the export before you need it. That one habit makes the choice reversible.