7 Steps That Accounting Practices Must Follow While Outsourcing
During brainstorming sessions with your accounting team, you get acquainted with the issues they face, among them is the difficulty of maintaining track of vast volumes of transactions. Also, you cannot discount the influence of new technologies, regulations, talent shortages, and accounting methods that have made life difficult for you and your accounting team. To overcome such situations, you will need to make some critical decisions; among those decisions will be a suggestion to explore the option of accounting outsourcing.
It’s a good idea to outsource accounting, and as per multiple surveys, it has been a preferred option for accounting firms based in the UK. Sensing the demand and popularity of this option, multiple accounting outsourcing firms have cropped up to meet the demand. However, one must not get carried away by the many options available in the market. Getting the right outsourcing partner is very important, one that is dynamic enough to handle the changes in UK laws, regulations, and technologies and scale up services as per your requirements.
We are confident that you will select the best one for yourself, but you will need help sorting out the list. After all, you will come across multiple outsourcing service providers claiming to be the best. What you require is a set of steps that will enable you to close in on the right outsourced accounting service provider and avoid the common mistake made by practices while outsourcing. Let’s go through these steps in detail.
Set the Requirements of Your Accounting Practice
Start working on the requirements of your accounting practice and your clients. Ask yourself a question about which aspect of accounting you require help with, whether it’s bookkeeping, year-end or payroll outsourcing. Also, understand the requirements of your clients that will aid you in the search for an outsourcing partner. By noting down the requirements of your accounting practice and in turn your clients, you can narrow down on the outsourcing accounting firms that will fulfil your accounting requirements.
Conduct Thorough Research on the Potential Service Providers
Every potential service provider must undergo thorough research, especially when it comes to following rules and regulations such as MTD compliance and GDPR. Every professional service provider will make it a point to showcase their certifications, such as ACCA and ICAEW, which gives them credibility in the market.
Most importantly, you need to know their past achievements in solving complicated accounting challenges, innovations in accounting processes, and support provided to clients. Checking the case studies is the best way to learn about the challenges faced by them and innovations made to achieve success. Every professional service provider will ensure to showcase their case studies on their websites. Also, try to analyse their clients’ testimonials and reviews; this will give you an even better understanding.
Assess Technology and Security Offered
Due to increased regulation complexity, accounting in the UK can only be done with the help of advanced technologies, and professional outsourcing service providers have understood this. They have invested considerably in new technologies and trained their staff to operate the latest software, such as Xero, QuickBooks, etc. These investments have streamlined the accounting process. Hence, select the one that is highly capable of it.
Also, when you choose to outsource, you are giving your client’s sensitive data to a service provider, making it a target for data breaches by cybercriminals. Therefore, it is important to select a service provider that has robust data security protocols in place. Professional service providers always make considerable efforts to have the best data security in place, and by selecting them as your outsourcing partner, you are making yourself more secure.
Understand the Cost Structure to Avoid Surprises
Don’t relax your guard after checking their services and security system. You have to check whether their services are within your budget, and for that, you will have to know their fee structure. After checking the service quality, make sure to conduct price negotiations so that you can get the best deal possible.
Specify the decided price in a contract with termination clauses for non-compliance. With fair pricing and a contract, your accounting services will become highly affordable, thus helping you expand your services.
Check Out Their Communication Setup
One of the important aspects of accounting outsourcing is communication between the service provider and the accounting practice. Without proper communication, you will be unable to maintain track of the progress made and discuss issues if they arise. Therefore, it is important to find an accounting outsourcing service provider that has an established communication process.
Usually, a professional service provider dedicates a point person to whom you can get the status of your accounting tasks and clarify doubts if they crop up. With proper communication set up, you can prevent many misunderstandings, especially during year-end.
Get Live Test Through a Pilot Project
Once you have selected a professional service provider with excellent achievements, reviews, communication channels, and tech support, it is time to get a live demonstration from them. Yes, you must consider a live demo because every accounting practice has a different set of requirements and you need to be sure whether the provider will fulfil your requirements. Select and hand over certain accounting tasks or projects for a live demo and evaluate their performance. Based on the evaluation, you can decide on your future course of action.
Maintain Regular Review
It’s not the end of the story once you outsource your accounting task to a service provider. Instead, you are responsible for monitoring its performance at regular intervals. Make it a point to monitor certain important KPIs such as accuracy, cost savings and deadlines to complete tasks accurately and on time. By reviewing the performance of your service provider, you can identify areas for improvement and provide feedback. You can also go a step further and ask your internal team and your clients to offer their feedback, this will create more trust in the system.
With continuous reviews and feedback, the outsourcing service provider will improve and scale up its services, thus meeting your growth strategy.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it would be safe to say that there is no escaping from outsourcing accounting, and it’s better to embrace it and use it to your advantage. Outsourcing has become the tonic that will make your accounting practice more efficient and profitable. However, to enjoy the fruits of accounting outsourcing, you must take the pain of finding a reliable and professional service provider. By conducting thorough research, setting priorities right, negotiating the price, checking their data security protocols, and checking their communication channels, we are confident you will find the ideal service provider for your accounting practice.
You must have noticed many of the ideal accounting outsourcing service providers in the UK accounting market, but Corient UK is increasingly gaining prominence among them. We are a tech-savvy outsourced accounting service provider that has earned specialisation in offering a wide range of accounting services to accounting practices based in the UK. Our services in bookkeeping, payroll, year-end, audit, corporation and VAT services have brought qualitative changes for our clients and can perform the same miracle for you. Feel free to share your doubts or questions on our website contact form, and our executive will contact you at the earliest.
Looking forward to a high-yielding and long-term partnership.