Accounting Done™

Outsourcing accounting services can be beneficial for businesses for myriad reasons, including offering cost savings, increased flexibility and access to expertise. However, you must carefully evaluate your specific needs, consider potential challenges and select a reputable outsourcing provider to ensure a fruitful partnership.

Outsourced accounting services is the practice of hiring a specialized external service provider to handle all or specific aspects of a firm’s accounting and financial needs. These services comprise a wide range of accounting tasks such as bookkeeping, financial statement preparation, payroll processing, tax compliance, accounts payable and receivable management, financial analysis, and a lot more. The scope of outsourced accounting services can be tailored to meet the specific needs of each client.

Given below are only a few advantages of outsourcing accounting services to a specialized service provider, to help you make an educated decision on whether outsourcing your accounting function is the right choice for your business:

• Significant cost savings.Outsourcing allows you to cut overhead costs because you don’t have to spend on salary and such benefits as retirement, vacation time and health insurance. In addition, you won’t need to spend money on software and the equipment essential for handling the accounting processes.
• Access to experts. Accounting mistakes can have disastrous repercussions on a business, such as penalties, cash flow issues and even an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Outsourcing the accounting functions gives you access to a team of highly qualified and trained professionals, who use the latest technology and processes to ensure that your data is accurate and secure.
  Since accounting provides a platform for improving cash flow, driving profits and growing your business, it can also have an effect on such things as the number of employees you need to — and can — hire, identifying the most and least profitable product lines to your future expansion plans, and so on.
• Improved internal control. One of the most common victims of fraud are small businesses. This is because most small businesses don’t have access to a controller or CFO who could spot abnormal activity in the transactional and billing data. Outsourcing accounting helps you reduce the possibility of fraud, as you’ll have a dedicated team of accounting experts who will accurately check your books and transaction reports. It also lowers the risk of having your books manipulated.
• Enhanced data security. Outsourcing accounting firms are aware of the serious data security threats that exist and usually have robust, impenetrable and expensive security systems in place. This takes care of issues that come with data breaches and security compromises.
• Security and confidentiality. Because finance and accounting are their core functions, outsourcing partners make sure that your information remains confidential and secure. You can ask them to sign a non-disclosure agreement for your peace of mind.
• Flexibility and scalability. By selecting an outsourcing company that specializes in finance and accounting, you can benefit from a solution that is tailor-made for you. You can also add or remove financial and accounting processes depending on your needs.
• Access to latest tech. A finance and accounting outsourcing firm invests in cutting-edge technology and software in order to be competitive. And if finance is not your core function, this type of investment does not make sense for you. With an outsourcing partner, you can benefit from having access to the latest technology at no additional cost.
• Protection in down economic times. As situations change economically, businesses tend to shift their workforces, which can be a challenging and resource-intensive process. But since the responsibility of managing the talent assigned to a project lies with the outsourcing company, you can scale up or down in terms of staffing with ease.
• Round-the-clock service. When you outsource your accounting services to a third party, you can operate 24/7 with a time-zone advantage. You can be assured that all important tasks will be taken care of in the scheduled manner and on time.

By outsourcing accounting tasks, businesses of all sizes can benefit from the expertise and resources of professional accountants without having to hire full-time accounting professionals. This approach can be particularly favorable for startups or small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that may not have the time, resources or expertise to manage complex accounting functions in-house.

Yes! A specialized finance and accounting outsourcing company will always stay updated with the latest compliance and financial policies and other accounting rules.

Outsourced finance and accounting services companies can put measures in place to handle the serious data security threats that exist, and they typically invest in robust, impenetrable and expensive security systems. This can help mitigate the odds of compromised security programs and data breaches.

Here are some strategies to evaluate the performance of an outsourced accounting firm:

• Set clear expectations. Set clear expectations with the outsourcing partner. This may include the services you need, the level of service you expect as well as the frequency of communication.
• Set KPIs. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics organizations use to track, quantify and study their business health. Some standard KPIs include accuracy and timeliness of financial statements and reporting, compliance with accounting standards and customer satisfaction levels.
• Collect data. After setting the KPIs, collect data to track the performance of the outsourced accounting firm. This data can come from a variety of sources, such as financial statements, internal reports and customer surveys.
• Analyze data. The next step is to analyze the data to identify any areas where the outsourced accounting partner is performing well or where there is room for improvement.
• Provide feedback. Once you have analyzed the data, ensure to provide feedback to the outsourced accounting company. Aside from being constructive, this feedback should be used to help the team improve their performance.
• Review performance regularly. Performance regular reviews of the outsourced accounting company to ensure that they are meeting your expectations. This review should include a discussion of the KPIs, the data that has been collected and any feedback that has been provided.

Yes! A specialized accounting outsourcing company can help you ensure compliance with changing financial and tax regulations when it comes to city, state and federal laws. It can help you avoid tax penalties and maximize tax benefits by complying with present federal, state and local laws. Thus, you’ll always be on top of the new tax or accounting requirements and potential changes on the horizon.