While Software-as-a-Service-based accounting offers the promise of cost savings, security and greater productivity compared to on-premise solutions, the reality is that no SaaS solutions currently live up to that promise, and switching to the cloud requires a great deal of scrutiny before doing so, CPA and tech consultant Geni Whitehouse told attendees at the AICPA Practitioners Symposium & Tech+ Information Technology Conference, here.

Whitehouse spoke during an information session titled "Calculating The True Cost of Ownership in a SaaS World: Is It Really Cheaper?"

"The fact is that it is hard to make accounting software as we know it work in the cloud; you just can't reconfigure an on-premise accounting solution and call it SaaS, and right now no solution is 100 percent SaaS for what CPAs need," said Whitehouse. "The guys that are making it work to any degree are native to the cloud, but there are still costs and other promises that need a closer look before you choose them."

Whitehouse noted that many accounting vendors' SaaS strategy is just to host their products, or have hosted versions of them and call them SaaS, but this neither delivers on the promise of cost savings or true cloud connectivity.

She stressed that there are good, cloud-based solutions that accountants can and do use, but they require close examination before selecting and "buying into the promise."

"SaaS is promised to us to save costs on hardware, usable anytime/anywhere, more secure than having it on premise, and eliminating the hassle of upgrades and training," said Whitehouse. "Taking a closer look, you will find this is not always the case."

As for costs, she claims the most significant savings currently are in infrastructure, mainly due to the reduced need for IT support or servers to maintain, but as firms cannot yet switch 100 percent of their activities to the cloud, there is still a need for these.

Whitehouse urged all attendees to carefully review a cloud vendor's service-level agreement, which should clearly address data storage, security, and downtime issues -- all of which are top concerns among firms considering moving services to the cloud.

"If you are a vendor in this space, you need to show accountants what the overall cost savings will really be to get them to move to the cloud, because right now it's only in a few areas and you are not going to have the savings that many of them currently promise until there are solutions that are 100 percent SaaS and can address everything accountants need to do," said Whitehouse. "I think it will take us a while as a profession to get over our data being somewhere else, but we have made great strides and at the end of the day, if you are going to change anything you do, it has to be a good time for you to do it, not just because there are solutions out there for you to use."