SME Times News Bureau | 16 Jan, 2019
In an exclusive interview with SME Times, Kapil
Rana, President & Founder, HostBooks Ltd, said that the integrated
All-in-One cloud-based application they offer enables a seamless filing of
their GST returns from HostBooks platform .
Excerpts of the interview â¦
Tell us about HostBooks. What is the
goal of HostBooks in India?
Kapil
Rana: Hostbooks is an integrated All-in-One
cloud-based application, which enables users to maintain Accounting, Tax, GST,
TDS, E-Way Bill and Payroll records providing statutory compliance and single
click filing service for small and medium businesses. Hostbooks is been
developed using automation techniques with the latest technology.
In India with the changes in the economy
and tax structures, statutory compliance has become more complex and cumbersome
and SMEâs have to invest their valuable resources/time/money in complying with
various recurring (monthly/quarterly/annually) compliances rather than focusing
on their core business. In India,
Hostbooks envisages making the whole process of accounting and compliance
automated, easy to understand and hassle-free.
Which are your target industries?
Kapil
Rana: Hostbooks is a versatile platform catering
to all industries focusing on medium and small enterprise (SMEâs) in India. It
also showcases its expertise to cater needs of the professionals like CAâs,
Accountants, Cost Accountants, and Tax Practitioners.
How is HostBooks different from other
accounting software companies in India?
Kapil
Rana: Automation of accounting and compliance
function is the unique offering of Hostbooks. Moreover, a person does not have
to be an accountant to use our software unlike other accounting software
programs available in the market. In order to start managing your finances with
HostBooks, all you need to have computer knowledge and minimal or limited
accounting knowledge.
Accounting Professionals and Accountants
can manage their clients and their records with Hostbooks Single-Sign-On (SSO)
platform anytime anywhere on the cloud as well as on desktop application. The
user-based roles and permission on the Single-Sign-On (SSO) dashboard give the advantages
of managing the business data security needs on the go.
The automation of the process reduces the
time spends on accounting and compliance at least by 70% and thus save the cost
and mitigate the burden on accountants and business owners enabling them to
focus on their business.
HostBooks is a one-stop solution for all
the accounting and compliance needs. Its integrated applications are craftily
designed to fulfill the need of maintenance of books of accounts, reporting,
filing and other compliances of GST, TDS, TAX, TDS, Payroll & E-way Bill
returns on a single platform. HostBooks applications are designed on structured
data flow design which enables it to manage the whole accounting and compliance
process with minimal data input points.
What are the major challenges that
HostBooks solve for its customers?
Kapil
Rana: Apart from harnessing the beauty of a true
sense hosted model of accounting, HostBooks also allows its users to file and
manage their compliance-related returns seamlessly without moving away from the
application. Our accreditation to NSDL has made it possible for us. We also
help our customers to collaborate the real-time data on the go. Comparing to a
larger set of existing vendors of accounting software in the market, our Research
& Development team has managed to give our users an experience of using the
application at a faster speed. This is become possible with the use of the
latest and updated technologies to build Hostbooks application.
HostBooks has recently launched new
all-in-one software for all accounting needs. Tell us more about it.
Kapil
Rana: HostBooks All-in-One software is designed
with a purpose to provide convenience to the user by eliminating
multi-application, multi-login, multi-data input for different accounting and
compliance needs. Here is the grand arrival of All-in-One software to fulfill
every aspect of accounting and compliance needs. With HostBooks, our customer's login to the
suite of our platform and can easily move from one application to another
application. Not only this, we have managed to address the challenge of the
duplicity of data entry with the launch of All-in-One software application.
Moreover, the all-in-one application is a
compilation of Accounts, GST, TDS, Tax, e-Waybill, and Payroll and it
automatically manage accounting, reporting and compliance (filing) process from
the source of the transaction to the end.
How are you solving the GST needs of
customers in India?
Kapil
Rana: Apart from helping our customer to
experience seamless filing of their GST returns from HostBooks platform, we
also address few identified challenges like the mismatch of return data and
GSTN server connectivity issues. HostBooks has addressed both the challenge of
pre-filing reconciliation of sales and purchase including returns through our
inbuilt feature and as we are accredited ASP of NSDL, so we are authorized to
use APIs provided by NIC for seamless filing.
The competitive landscape for GST
software in India is getting bigger. How is HostBooks going to react to the
increasing threat?
Kapil
Rana: GST in India is at an evolving stage, in
coming days the regulations related to tax compliance are supposed to become
smoother, and the automation is going to play a major role in addressing the
growing needs of compliances. We have been in the USA markets for the last 8
years, experienced competitive market behavior and we are well equipped to
mitigate those factors.
HostBooks employs a combination of
technologies and accounting expertise and our expert is always just a
call/click away to help our subscribers with any technical or know-how issues.
In coming days, we will see a larger chunk
of businesses would be brought in the net of GST by the Government of India and
this would need software companies to provide a cost-effective yet affordable
GST filing application to small & medium businesses. HostBooks team is
committed to helping the SMEs in addressing their growing accounting and
compliance needs and we have set up a large infrastructure in place to cater to
this growing demand.
Which three factors do you think will
influence the accounting industry most in 2019?
Kapil
Rana: The Accounting industry has been into the
center of discussion since July 2017 after the introduction of GST in India.
The year 2019 will see points like syncing with GSTâs quick changes, equip with
deeper knowledge of GSTN, accommodate the growing requirements, and timely
solution to the user requirements are the challenges which will influence the
accounting industry in coming days.
Whatâs your immediate growth plans and
3 priorities for 2019?
Kapil
Rana: Our plan is to focus on the huge untapped
potential out there which is estimated to be of a size of more than 10 million
registered and unregistered potential GST users through both direct and channel
partnerships PAN India. Few of the top
priorities of HostBooks for 2019 are:
· Robust product development
syncing with GST, GSTN and Government policy and user requirements
· Focusing our efforts on the
core competencies of product innovation, brand building, and distribution
· Increase the user base eyeing
100,000 subscribers in 2019
How do you plan to position HostBooks in India over the next 5 years?
Kapil
Rana: Our plan is to become leader in the space
of single platform based accounting & compliance application in India. As
studies suggest, Indiaâs current state of market potential is immensely
promising, GST has played a big role in this and it is a serious market
disruptor. We are determined to grow our user base to 1.5 million subscribers
by the end of 5th year of our operations in India and we already have a plan in
place to achieve this target.
