BookMyLens has opted for QuickBooks online accounting software to set in place systems and processes to streamline accounting activities
By Mohd Ujaley
BookMyLens is a Bangalore based online photography equipment rental service. The company provides all kind of photography related equipments on rent to photography enthusiasts. Ranging from Pro DSLR lenses of 50 mm to 600 mm, video recording equipments, support rigs and lighting equipments—all are available for Rs 300 to over Rs 4000 per day.
The firm’s clientele include professional wild life photographers, short films makers and wedding photographers from across the country.
Since its inception, company had been handling day to day activities manually. However, as the customer based increased manifold, the task of keeping track of the equipments delivery & pick up and book keeping & accounting became very intensive and challenging. As a result the team at BookMyLens started to search out for a solution to set in place systems and processes to streamline accounting activities.
”When we started gaining popularity, keeping track of equipments along with handling day to day delivery and pick up became challenging and also everyday book keeping and accounting became a lot more complex, therefore we searched out for a solution that could have provided us ease of use, less dependency on external sources and ability to access from anywhere,” says Goutham Shankar, founder of BookMyLens.
Company did an evaluation of a few online and open source applications such as Tally and Gnucash before it narrowed down to QuickBooks Online, a subscription based online accounting software from Intuit Inc.
After using the trial version of QuickBooks for some time, company decided to deploy it at its Bangalore office. In over a year, BookMyLen has been able to smoothen out its processes of dispatching invoice to customers, managing inventory, adding vendors and managing complete payments.
“With little customisation to billing option to suit our requirement of managing rental products, we have been able to streamline the process such as dispatching invoices to customers, managing inventory, adding vendors and managing complete pay cheques and even linking bank accounts with the help of QuickBooks” informs Shankar.
QuickBooks Online accounting software basically provides almost all the necessary accounting features for small businesses, including freelancers, consultants, online merchants, store and restaurant owners, service providers etc. Traditionally the company has been offering on-premise accounting applications, however with cloud capturing the attention of accounting world, the American software company has come up with cloud based versions too.
“Our product is well priced and easy to use. It also has multiple user login along with features related to taxes, multi-currency options that empower users to compile report on the go,” says Intuit.
As far as deployment of software is concerned, BookMyLens did not face any difficulty, with little customisation and help of internal team, the firm was able to put system in place quickly. “We did it ourselves, it took a while since we had to figure out how exactly it works for us when it comes to invoicing, purchases, taxes etc,” points out Shankar.
He further explained that with QuickBooks providing a one-stop solution to our worries on financial management, our team has been able to now focus on further expansion of our business and devote more time to address our customer needs.
The business opportunities have grown both for QuickBooks Online and BookMyLens in recent past. Recently, BookMyLens has procured some of the latest photography lenses and added more top-end camera like Canon 1Dx, Nikon D4 to its kitty. Company is now looking to explore beyond its physical store in Koramangala to studios, production houses, and printing. Also, the firm is mulling to expand to other cities.
On the other hand, cloud technology has brought huge opportunity and challenge to the Intuit’s QuickBooks Online accounting software. Cloud offers a compelling economic case as it offers more profitable and more productive business model of product distribution for the software company. So far, QuickBooks has been by far the most popular on-premise accounting application for SMBs. But with cloudification of accounting software, the segment is now open for real test. And, Intuit expects huge traction for its cloud based solution too.