If you’re the type of person who likes to shake someone’s hand and look them in the eye, the remote nature of outsourced accounting may require some adjustment. Empowered by the knowledge in this guide, you can now confidently navigate the world of outsourced accounting and choose the best solution for your company’s growth. Here at Personiv, we understand the ins and outs of outsourcing and what it takes to succeed in today’s growing accounting landscape. With more than 35 years of experience across multiple time zones, we can help you find, hire, and retain top talent, all the while saving you money and time (a win-win solution).

Tax preparation

This ensures compliance with tax laws, financial reporting standards, and industry-specific regulations, reducing the risk of penalties and legal issues. By outsourcing, organizations can tap into this expertise, benefiting from accurate financial reporting, compliance with regulations, and strategic financial advice. It can be difficult to understand the benefits of partnering with an outsourced CFO before starting to work with one. Many times, businesses have all kinds of hidden opportunities hidden in their internal systems and accounts.

Outsourcing accounting services

While these don’t give you the full picture, checking reviews and testimonials is a great place to start. Read about the benefits and drawbacks people have faced when hiring a particular provider. Most businesses have a few exceptions and business rules in their accounts payable workflow. Outsourcing accounts payable takes most of this workload off of your AP team supervisor.

While outsourcing helps a company cut costs and improve its service levels, it can often limit their independence. As most outsourcing providers charge per invoice, duplication errors can be quite costly. And as these providers could be thousands of miles away, keeping track of these duplicates can be changes in working capital difficult.

1. By leveraging accounting firms’ specialized knowledge and resources, businesses can optimize their financial management and achieve long-term success.
2. You can be as involved as you prefer, and the right firm will be flexible to specific levels of engagement.
3. But with outsourced accounting, your financial statements and compliance tasks are all safe and secure, as providers are equipped to handle sensitive data and maintain work quality.
4. You may think that outsourcing is only a practice for large, well-established businesses that offshore basic operations.
5. Clean and accurate books give your accountant less work to do and, ultimately, save you money.
6. An outsourced accounting firm provides exactly that with real-time financial dashboards, monthly reports, support with long-term financial planning, and more.

Access to better tools

Beyond this, having a clean, organized financial infrastructure makes things significantly easier for your business come tax season. If you’re aiming to raise additional funding or are targeting a potential exit, well-organized financial record-keeping will significantly streamline the due diligence process. This gives you more time to focus on your vision and purpose, enabling you to fulfill your core duties better. For example, the learning curve can be steep, which could cause you to input information incorrectly and yield inaccurate financial insights. Not only could such errors land you in hot water with the IRS, but they could also contribute to bad business decisions that impact your financial future. These tools can be helpful for automatically importing transactions from your bank accounts and payment processors like Stripe.

Who needs outsourced accounting?

By leveraging the expertise and resources of accounting firms, businesses can streamline their financial operations, ensure compliance, and access professional accounting support. Outsourced CFO services are much more advisory in nature than outsourced bookkeeping or controller services. To make important business decisions, leaders need access to timely, precise financial data. An outsourced accounting firm provides exactly that with real-time financial dashboards, monthly reports, support with long-term financial planning, and more. You might also see outsourced accounting referred to using terms including Client Accounting Services (CAS) or fractional accounting. For the most part, these services what is the difference between depreciation and amortization are identical to outsourced accounting services, although it’s important to bear in mind that different providers will offer varying services.

Therefore, your decision will require some budgeting on your end to see what you can afford—whether it be an accounting partner or an alternative. They spend hours doing tutorials, chatting with support representatives, or double-checking their numbers. And every hour spent learning or managing accounting software is an hour not spent on generating revenue directly. If your business is growing steadily or you’re already spread thin, that may be time that you don’t have. If you’re outsourcing accounts payable data, you need to share your confidential financial data with the third-party provider. If the outsourcing provider goes bankrupt or has a security breach, your company will be affected too.

Set up restricted user accounts, and only provide access to the systems and data that are needed for the provider to perform their tasks. In this article, we’ll explain what exactly outsourced accounting is, what it covers, and how it can help your company. We’ll also give you some key tips and insights into finding a provider and ensuring the process goes smoothly. There are online/remote accounting firms, but based on their low insurance expense definition reviews, we can’t recommend any of them in good conscience.