Posted on

Top 5 reason CPA firms should consider outsourcing of bookkeeping process

Today’s highly developed world and day to day growing competition makes all companies to work hard and look for new ways to expand and obtain additional clients. For this reason companies seek ways to more effectively use their time and resources, cut costs, offer additional services and facilitate their operational work.

In this situation the most important decision that you can make is to outsource some of your company’s functions which will provide more benefits and give solutions to many problems.

Outsourcing is a growing trend worldwide assuring benefits from use of experienced professionals, enhanced processes and technologies, and stronger compliance measures.

Cost, enabling core business functions, and solving capacity issues are primary drivers to outsource. Leading practice organizations use outsourcing to drive transformational change and improve business results.
It is easier to develop your business, focus on your core work, establish long-term strategic goals and effectively achieve them, when you outsource bookkeeping operations to more professional and experienced companies.


It seems to be true for every company. But what if you are one of the companies that provide the financing and accounting services for your clients? Will outsourcing your bookkeeping operation will have the same positive effect for you as for other companies. It seems that you have the knowledge, human resources, all hardware and software that is needed for precise accounting and you can do it for yourself as for others in the same easy way.

But even it will sound odd and surprising for you: it’s is true even for CPA (Certified Public Accountants) firms as for others.

Yes, you have all necessary sources, but think that you can use those sources for your clients and focus on services that you provide by adding new valuable ones and focusing on the individual needs of your clients which will keep you competitive in the market.

Here are top 5 reasons, why you as CPA Firm should outsource your bookkeeping process.

  1. Save time and focus on your core services. As was mentioned above for staying competitive you should think about offering new and high-end services for your clients, for example financial planning and management consultancy, insurance products, investment management, tax planning, HR management, etc. But for doing all this you need more resources, time and focus, so you should consider focusing on your core CPA services rather than hiring and training bookkeepers for your company. Start to focus your energy and time on more complex tasks and make “added value” for your clients.
  2. Choose cost-effective way. The cost of bookkeeping outsourcing services are lower than hiring, training and maintaining of accounting staff, paying salaries and benefit costs- no overtime pay, no health insurance benefits, no need for office equipment. In this way you only pay for what you need and by saving of current costs up to 50% keep your prices competitive. You cut your costs also by automating and reducing paper. You decrease your carbon footprint and reduce wasted paper, as well as costs of maintaining your fax machine, printers and copies.
  3. Maintain your documents more safe. When you grow the business and services, then managing data and documents of increased services is becoming more complicated and causes many problems. By outsourcing bookkeeping process you acquire a chance to facilitate the storing of your documents and maintain the highest level of security.
  4. Be more flexible. You can manage your work schedule and set it according to your client’s needs and expectations, be always available for them which is the core value for outsourcing services. All bookkeeping tasks, such as payroll accounting, managing tax returns, ensure accurate depiction of the accounts are exhausting, time consuming and require a lot of responsibilities, so facilitating all these functions will give you a great elasticity. The outsourcing may especially provide you additional accounting assistance during the pic periods such as tax season and manage the workload and stress caused by lack of time and resources.
  5. Meet all unique business requirements of CPA firms and reduce risk. The firms that are providing bookkeeping services for CPA firms have more skilled stuff that are aware of the latest bookkeeping practices for CPA firms and have years of experience in that special filed. They will provide customized bookkeeping services, more accurate write-up services, maintain transparency within your accounts, regularly update and maintain your financial statements, do your CPA Tax and Sales preparation, Knowing that all these responsible activities are taken by bookkeeping experts without your time and effort expended gives you confidence and peace of mind. Moreover, you get third party that audits your accounting process which decreases the risk of mistakes and problems with governmental and regulatory services. With today’s advanced technologies and software you have an access to your financial data anytime anywhere which gives you a total visibility into your business’s accounting process which allows you to make more confident and informed decisions.

If you are a manager or CEO of CPA form and seek a solution whether outsource your bookkeeping process take a time and consider all these added benefits of outsourcing and achieve your success in a more vivid manner.

“With the advent of cloud technology and globalization, we see outsourcing as a viable option now particularly the accounting industry.”
“A large number of firms are advertising to graduates stating — you’ll never have to do a tax return. You’re coming into the business for an advisory role — with a lot of the compliance work being outsourced to a global team, it provides a great opportunity for graduates to focus on local client facing work.”
Nick Sinclair, CEO of The Outsourced Accountant (TOA)

Posted on

Xero and Bookkeeping eSolutions: A Perfect Partnership

Introduction

Being a small business founder or owner entails wearing many hats at the same time. You are the Sales person, the inventory manager, the product developer, the finance specialist – all rolled into one. However well you manage these tasks, there are some chores, among these, which could definitely be weighing you down!!

Moreover, these tasks take you away from something precious that you love doing – Growing your business!!

It wouldn’t be amiss to say that Bookkeeping and Accounting is one such chore. If you agree, then you must be wondering what could be the simplest solution to handle the same with minimum effort and lower cost!

Cloud Accounting is the solution.

Cloud Accounting allows all bookkeeping and accounting tasks to be done online and stores all the information on the cloud in a secure manner. One major benefit of this arrangement is: it gives you real time access to your business information – anytime, anywhere and from any device.

There are numerous Cloud based accounting software’s available, each with their own benefits. However, most of them are expensive and involve a steep learning curve. For small businesses, which usually have tight budgets, adopting the right accounting software, is thus essential.

This brings us to Xero: A cloud Based Accounting software, specially designed keeping small business needs in mind.

About Xero Accounting Software
Beautiful Accounting – is the motto of Xero and they totally live up to it. Pursuing the simple common goal of making small businesses and their advisors more successful, Xero is loaded with a number of intuitive features. Let us glance through some of the key features, which addresses almost all of your Bookkeeping and Accounting requirements:

  • Bank Connections and Reconciliations: Xero allows you to setup automatic feeds from multiple banks and from any number of bank accounts. With this in place, Bank transactions flow automatically, in a secure, accurate and reliable way into Xero every single business day. Further, reconciliations can be done easily with the help of coding suggestions. It even allows grouping similar transactions together and matching them instantly.
  • Personalized Professional Invoices: Xero is furnished with beautiful invoice templates which can be conveniently personalized with your company branding. Setting up automated invoice reminders is brisk and you can choose to be notified when the client views the same. These online invoices can be replicated easily, reducing repetitive work. And, are secured by a two-step authentication process to protect them from unauthorized changes. Sending online invoices could lead you to getting paid faster
  • Inventory Management: Managing your inventory cannot get easier than this. Xero provides a real-time log of your bestselling product lines and the profit you are making, at the click of a button. Moreover, It helps you keep track of stock levels and values on a daily basis. These highly accurate inputs will come in handy to help you make business purchase and pricing decisions.
  • Payroll Management: It is equipped with a robust Payroll app that assists with everything required to track working hours, manage leave and process pay. It also enables employees to view their pay slips, submit their timesheets and apply for leave effortlessly.
  • Purchase Orders and Paying Bills: Xero helps set up the entire purchase order process with a complete audit trail. Whenever required, it is simple and quick to convert a purchase order into a bill. Moreover, the purchase dashboard, with its inbuilt charts and graphs, provides a complete overview of the pending bills and purchase orders – helping you stay on top of all business expenses.
  • Xero Dashboard: gives you a complete up-to-date picture of your cashflow and business finances.

About Bookkeeping eSolutions

Bookkeeping eSolutions is a multifaceted team. We are a fine blend of US CPA’s and Indian CA’s, armed with more than 15+ years of rich experience in the field of Bookkeeping, Accounting, Taxation and Finance. Our qualified and experienced team has a global and diverse Industry experience gained from partnering numerous small businesses and CPA firms in the US, Canada, Singapore, Australia and other regions.

We provide a complete range of cloud based bookkeeping and accounting solutions for individual business owners, self-employed professionals, small-businesses and corporates. Examples of clients we service on a regular basis:

Entrepreneurs with an online presence, intent on keeping an accurate set of books at the end of each business day.

We assist such entrepreneurs by integrating their online store with Xero which will automate everything – right from receiving orders to payment of bills and taxes. This will ensure they are on top of all their accounting tasks, maintain a neat inventory and can easily track the all-important cash flow, on a daily basis.

Small Businesses who are eager to outsource their Bookkeeping and Accounting requirements to an experienced and qualified team at a fraction of the cost, usually charged by their local bookkeepers / accountants.

For such clients, we do offer a discount on backlog work and further setup the necessary processes to streamline their daily bookkeeping and accounting tasks. The result is instant access to high quality accounting information, enabling them to improve business and financial decisions with higher accuracy.

Medium-to-large sized businesses which need efficient access to meticulously kept financial data of the business. This data will majorly be in the form of Monthly or quarterly financial statements, Cash flow statements, Asset and Income statements.

Their primary need is to have a clear understanding of their company’s financial health, such that they can easily spot problem areas before it gets out of hand or identify newer avenues for growth. For such clients, we have designed the requisite solutions keeping their unique financial analysis needs in mind.

Bookkeeping eSolutions is a Xero Bronze partner. Earning the Bronze level highlights not just our commitment towards our clients but also our continuous investment in raising our expertise. This also lends credence to our level of experience working with Xero customers.

Posted on

Why Outsource

Offshoring of Finance and Accounting functions – A Strategic tool for success

Finance and Accounting are critical to the survival and success of any business. Traditionally, every business had an in-house accountant or team of accountants, to manage the firm’s bookkeeping and accounting. However, rising costs and the lack of competent personnel led to offloading of these vital tasks to independent contractors – locally available bookkeepers and accountants. This can be referred to as ‘Local Outsourcing’.

The next disruption to this bookkeeping and accounting setup came with the wave of offshore outsourcing spreading across continents.

What is ‘Offshore Outsourcing’?

With Offshore Outsourcing, the only difference is the locally outsourced activities will now be managed by parties based out of geographies remote to one’s business.

‘Offshore’ & ‘Outsourcing’ has been combined to arrive at ‘Offshoring’.

Offshoring emerged and is driven by a firm’s never-ending search for efficiency and cost-reduction. Support activities that are not customer-facing could be easily offshored at a fraction of the cost and without a drop in the expertise level.

Moreover, this provided the opportunity to firms to re-engineer their existing processes – examine what is important and do away with the repetitive tasks. The result is a complete focus on their core business. No Wonder, Offshoring is now commonly identified as a strategic tool utilized by organizations to reconfigure their activities across geographic locations.

As per Knowledge at Wharton, World Bank relocated its finance back-office activities from Washington D.C to India way back in the early 2000s. According to the then director of the World Bank, this move not just led to cost savings; it helped them to re-engineer the business by eliminating a backlog of expense forms and accounts-payable items.

The Big Four audit firms have been routinely offshoring finance and accounting to India since the early 2000s. Cost savings may have initiated big organizations like General Motors, BP Amoco, Citigroup, British Airways, and World Bank to take the Offshoring route. However, rapid technological advancements, the availability of skilled human capital, and the allied cost savings has positioned offshoring as a viable and cost-effective strategic tool for all small and medium businesses as well.

Let us look at why companies outsource?

As per Deloitte’s Global Outsourcing survey, conducted in 2016, the primary drivers to outsource can be listed as follows

To sum this up, it is a cost-effective tool to execute your business needs, onboard the requisite skills, gain control over your business and improve your bottom line. All at the same time.

The advent of the Gig economy and long overdue recognition of Remote working

With computers becoming mundane, there had been a growing prevalence of workers logging in remotely to assist and complete their workplace responsibilities. However, they were still part of the traditional workforce.

But, with the advent of the Gig economy – where independent workers contract with organizations for short term engagements and derive their remuneration by piecing together discrete earnings – Remote working is finally receiving its long-overdue acceptance.

Let us consider some statistics:

  • There has been a 115% increase in telecommuting over the last 10 years
  • According to Forbes, over 50% of the US population has transitioned successfully to remote work. Here, remote work implies completing one’s work outside of the traditional office environment
  • According to the CEO of Intuit, In 2017, the gig economy in the US was about 34% of the workforce and it is expected to be 43% by the year 2020.
  • Harvard Business Review states that approximately 150 million workers in North America and Western Europe have transitioned to becoming independent contractors.

Besides, Have you heard of ‘virtual companies’ or ‘distributed companies’?

These are companies that have no physical offices. Each worker telecommutes from their respective locations. This phenomenon is widespread throughout the US and Europe and is catching up globally.

All of these statistics point to the relative global prevalence, safety, and acceptance of remote working or remote contractors.

In light of these findings, it is surprising that many small and medium businesses are hesitant to outsource their bookkeeping and accounting tasks to an experienced and competent team of professionals? They may be remote. But, their expertise and availability can help you in transforming the most challenging division of your business into a rewarding arrangement.

India – A highly developed Offshore location?

India is the most preferred offshoring location.

As per HFS Research, the Finance and Accounting Offshoring market stood at $30.4 billion in 2017. It is further expected to grow at a CAGR of 6% from 2017-2021. Of this, India commands almost 50% of the market. (need more stats)