File sharing services and suitability reports

Ed Evans

I often get asked by financial advice companies if they can use Genovo to manage the storage and sharing of their suitability reports, so they can allow certain people within their organisation, wherever they might be, to view and edit them once they have been created. The simple answer is you can’t within Genovo, as Genovo is predominantly designed to help financial advisers write suitability reports in a fast and efficient manner, and only manages the ‘blueprints’ of the reports before they are downloaded to Word. There are however, many great file sharing services out there that can help you achieve this once they have been created and downloaded.

What are file sharing services?

File sharing services (or file sharing and syncing services to give them their full name) allow users to create special folders on each of their computers, which the service then syncs so that it appears to be the same folder regardless of which computer is used to view it. Files placed in this folder also are typically accessible through a website and mobile apps.

Some file sharing services allow folders to be created and managed centrally by an organisation and only individuals with the correct permissions can view, edit or collaborate on the documents within them. It’s real benefits like this that are making file sharing services and other cloud solutions ever more popular.

My top three file sharing services

Google Drive

• Enables real-time collaborative working.
• The free version includes 15 GB of storage.
• Google Drive for business costs £3.30 per month per user and includes 30 GB of storage.
• Google Apps for business includes Google Drive and costs £3.30 per user per month.

Microsoft OneDrive

• Enables real-time collaborative working.
• The free version includes 15 GB of storage.
• OneDrive for business costs £1.60 per month per user and includes 1 TB of storage.
• Microsoft Office 365 includes OneDrive and costs £8.00 per user per month.

Dropbox

• Enables version controlled collaborative working.
• Drop box is the easiest to use.
• The free version gives you 2 GB of storage.
• Dropbox for business costs £11.00 per user per month and includes unlimited storage.

So, which is the best?

In my opinion, all three are fantastic services.

Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive both have some great features and integrate very well with their other services, so if you are an avid Microsoft Office user then I’d recommend OneDrive. However, if you already use Google Apps or if you need to manage more than 1 TB of storage per user then I would recommend Google Drive.

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Image courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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