What CCH Central hosting is
CCH Central is used by accountancy and tax practices across the UK to run tax returns, accounts production, practice management and client records. In many firms it still runs on a server in the office. That works until the server gets old, someone needs to work from home during a busy deadline, or a backup turns out not to have run.
Hosting moves CCH Central into a secure environment managed by us. Your team connects from the office or from home and sees the same software and the same data, while we look after the servers, database, backups, security and performance behind it.
It's a specialist service. Most local IT providers don't offer CCH Central hosting at all, and general cloud providers rarely understand how a practice uses it day to day.
Who it is for
- Accountancy and tax practices with an ageing server that is due for replacement.
- Practices with hybrid teams, where staff need the same access at home as in the office, especially around the January self-assessment deadline.
- Multi-office practices that want every office working from one live system.
- Small firms without in-house IT who want their practice software looked after properly.
- Practices focused on security and compliance, who want client data held in a professionally managed environment.
Built for deadline season
The months before 31 January are when practice software matters most and when an office server is most likely to struggle. More staff are logged in, more returns are being prepared and more people want to work late or from home. A hosted environment is sized to cope with your busiest periods, and because it lives in a professionally managed data centre, a failed disk or a power cut at the office doesn't stop your team filing.
What's included
- Hosted servers and database sized for your users and data, with room to grow.
- Secure access from anywhere, usually through a hosted desktop that also runs Office and your other practice applications. See cloud desktops.
- Backups and recovery of your CCH Central data and documents, held securely off-site. See backup and disaster recovery.
- Security, including strong authentication, patching, endpoint protection and monitoring. See cyber security.
- Updates and performance management, with product updates applied in a planned way that avoids your busiest periods.
- Support from our in-house team for access, printing and the hosted environment.
How we deliver it
1. Review
We look at your current CCH Central installation, the products and modules you use, your users, document storage, integrations and printing, and how your team works through the year.
2. Design and build
We design a hosted environment around your practice, then build and configure it, including access for each user and connections to the other applications you rely on.
3. Migration and testing
We move a copy of your data and ask key users to test the hosted system. When everyone is happy, we schedule the final switch for a quiet period, never in the middle of a filing deadline.
4. Ongoing management
After go-live we manage the environment day to day. Your team contacts us for access and environment issues, while the software vendor continues to support the CCH products themselves.
Why practices choose Seabeck
- Specialist experience hosting CCH Central, a service very few local IT providers offer.
- Built around the accounting year, so changes are scheduled away from your busiest periods.
- One provider for voice, data and IT, including managed IT support, phones and connectivity.
- An in-house team based in Elstree, Hertfordshire, supporting practices across the UK.
CCH and CCH Central are trademarks of Wolters Kluwer.