The Step-By-Step Process To Ensure Consistency & Accuracy Are Improved When Outsourcing Your Finance Function

The decision to partner with an outsourced accounting team can be an effective decision that not only reduces costs but improves efficiency. However, if you don’t make sure the proper steps are taken, you can run into issues with consistency and accuracy that take away from effective outcomes or expectations. Here we outline the best step-by-step process to engage an outsourcing partner to ensure you actually enjoy the benefits of an expert outsourcing solution.

Understand your Why for Outsourcing the Accounting team

Your first step is to identify the reasons you are looking to outsource your accounting team. In most cases it is one or more of the following challenges with an internal team:

Lack of access to talent: Talent is very expensive, and getting the right mix of trained professionals working as an internal team is difficult to balance given the cost constraints and limited resources available. By working with an outsourced expert, you get the benefits of the experience and professional knowledge without the cost of additional employees.

Lack of full-time requirements: Small businesses rarely have the luxury of needing full-time resources for each of the accounting functions, including Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll, General Ledger and reporting. Having the internal leadership that works with a shared service outsourcing partner can find the right balance to meet the business needs without the cost of unutilised internal resources.

Time Wasted on Labour Intensive Accounting Tasks: Business owners don’t go into business to be a bookkeeper or accountant. By engaging the right outsourcing partner, business owners can free up their time to focus on the passion that drives the business and their customers or just take time away to recharge the batteries.

Relying on unqualified internal staff: small businesses often repurpose internal staff to do the bookkeeping, which not only increases the risk of errors and inconsistent data, it also increases the risk of fraud. Managing your finances is not something that should be done as an add-on to other responsibilities - it should be done by trained professionals. By engaging the right outsourcing partner, you receive the benefit of expertise and best-practice and the benefits of segregated duties that mitigate the risk of fraud.

Inconsistent processes and inaccurate data entry: Relying on every business in a network to do their own bookkeeping means that there are many different processes, wild swings in level of competence of the people posting transactions, inconsistency in data entry and increased risk of errors and inaccurate financial information. Engaging the right outsourcing partner will help you centralise the processes that are needed to drive accuracy of the financial information across the network.

Key person dependency: Multi-site businesses are also faced with the challenge of key person dependency - if that person leaves or has an unplanned absence, everything grinds to a halt. The right outsourcing partner provides redundancy not possible when the work is done by individuals across the network

Heightened ATO Audit & Compliance Risk: Inaccurate data not only impacts decisions but also leads to a heightened degree of risk in the event of an ATO and compliance risks, which, if left unchecked, could have significant consequences. The cost of bad bookkeeping adds up very quickly in both risk and the cost of rework.

Steps to Ensuring Improved Finance Function

Next, you need to identify an experienced outsourcing partner that not only combines people, process and technology to ensure accuracy and consistency, but also invests in understanding your unique business needs. They need to know more than just accounting; they need to quickly identify the key drivers of your business so they can provide a valuable solution to help you run your business.

Step 1: Discovery Call

An initial conversation provides you with the opportunity to evaluate their competence and experience for providing a value-based solution and set the relationship up for success from the start.

Step 2: Free Health-Check

Give the outsourcing partner limited access to your information and ask them for a free health check. Get their insights into your business and identify the opportunities for them to add value. This also allows the outsourcing partner to understand the context of your business and ensure their solution will meet your needs.

Step 3: Summary of Observations and Implementation of Processes

Ask for a summary of their observations and opportunities to add value. And review the work plan they are proposing to use to ensure you receive a solution that meets your needs.

Step 4: Get involved in the implementation

During the implementation, be sure to engage with the outsourcing partner to ensure they understand your business and they deliver the information you expect.

Step 5: Enjoy the benefits of outsourcing

Once integration takes place, the outsourced team becomes an extension of your team, delivering you consistent, reliable and accurate information for every single site every single day. If you follow these steps, you will engage the right outsourcing partner that can seamlessly scale their resources as your business needs change. You will quickly see the benefits of consistent, best-practice delivery across the entire business and have the information you need to make informed business decisions.

How Outsourcing Your Finance and Accounting Service Will Save You Time and Money

The goal of outsourcing is to get access to the best-practice processes delivered by the best professional talent using the latest technology and necessary infrastructure to ensure a value-added solution that meets your unique business needs.

The right outsourcing partner will also scale with your business, which means you have the flexibility to match the team with your changing needs, up or down. 

And with the right team doing the right work, you avoid costly mistakes and rework. Your internal team can focus on the tasks that drive business value and leave the data entry to the expert.

How to Maximize the Benefits of An Outsourced Finance and Accounting Service

Choose the right outsourcing partner that will provide you with the benefits of expertise and give you access to trained professionals that may not be possible by building an internal team. Free up your internal team’s time and get them focused on the key drivers that will increase value. Take advantage of the experience of your outsourcing partner and gain insights into your key challenges.

Finance Function Transformation Through Outsourced Accounting Services

Outsourcing will allow you to transform the finance function by giving you access to best practice processes and trained professionals. You will get a tailor-made solution specific to your business that leverages best practice solutions that will deliver timely, accurate and consistent data across your business.