Outsourcing in COVID-19 Era – An Accountant’s Guide
Outsourcing in COVID-19
Era – An Accountant’s Guide
The
COVID-19 contagion has toppled our worlds not just personally but
professionally as well. A lot of US accounting firms are currently functioning
as remote firms working virtually to steer their clients during this financial
crisis due to the pandemic. The
situation has led to accounting firms getting swamped with work that is difficult
to manage in the current scenario.
As
leaders of your own Accounting firms, you surely realise the heavy and varied workload
you and your team is trying to overcome, ranging from year end accounting, bookkeeping,
financial reporting, taxes and more.
While you adjust to the new normal of working from your house and
supervising your teams remotely, it is becoming clear that functions such as
accounting and bookkeeping, payroll, AR and AP etc., basically all those
activities which are resource intensive are striving and warrant lot of your time,
energies and money being invested therein trying to manage your staff
effectively and yet things not delivering to satisfaction. Non-availability of your junior staff due to personal
reasons arising out of Covid-19 situation too is a prick in the path to a
successful client delivery.
Hence the golden
question – why not share your workload during this raging era?
As
an expert Outsourced Accounting Service provider, we – GJM & Co. have the
experience and proficiency to offer in-depth insights that will help you productively
outsource your client’s accounting and book-keeping, payroll and a lot other functions
that you serve your clients with in a routine. This article will serve as an escort
to assist you during this hour of disaster so that you can leverage the
efficiency and skill from offshore accounting partners and make time to advice
and help your existing and new clients.
We
have chalked this article to cover some of the vital points that US Accounting
firms would feel the need to be addressed in deciding upon an offshore partner.
1. Does size of an
Accounting firm have bearing on the decision to outsource?
Cost
reduction and process efficiency are the primary advantages of Outsourcing.
Both of these benefits will be important as a part of your business contingency
plans during such times, no matter how large or small your firm is. Notwithstanding your firm’s size, you can opt
for outsourcing. If you know there are certain activities that you cannot
manage effectively, which is resulting in delays and inaccuracies, outsourcing them
makes sense for all kinds of firms, regardless of size.
2. Activities to
outsource?
It
depends on your firm and its current efficacy levels in a onshore setting. You
can either outsource the entire gamut of functions or certain specific tasks.
If you think you are finding it difficult to manage your simple but voluminous
tasks like banking, invoicing, bill booking and tax return filing on time and precisely,
you can outsource this task to an Outsourced Accounting Service provider. If tasks
like processing information, payroll submissions, timesheet processing are
eating into your man-hours, or Invoice/Bill management is taking a toll in
absence of your local resources available, outsourcing these makes a great
business decision. Our least suggestion
is - identify what to outsource keeping in mind the resource intensive and
challenging nature of the tasks.
3. Selecting the
correct Outsourced Accounting Service partner
This
is your most important question! The search for the apt Outsourcing partner might
seem like a difficult task initially, but in fact it is very simple. When you
are searching for outsourcing partner you need closely evaluate their experience
and expertise in the domain. You must also assess their ability to scale based
on the number employees with core accounting/payroll/tax expertise. Another significant
factor to consider is data security. You will be sharing sensitive financial
information with your outsourcing partner. It therefore should be able to meet
with the custom data protection and privacy norms and must maintain an
excellent cyber security posture to ensure safety of your information at all
times.
4. The Engagement options
Your
plan towards outsourcing will require a choice of the method through which you
want to engage the services of the provider. More often than not, you will be
presented with these three most popular options.
Models of
Outsourcing?
Variable model: Here, you only pay
for the number of hours the Outsourced Accounting service provider has worked
on your tasks. The provider assigns a staff member who is your single point of
contact and who liaises with the accountants assigned to your tasks. This model
is best suited if your plan is to not sign up for a long-term commitment or
when you simply want to run pilot projects to test the offshore waters. It’s
also ideal for the smaller accountancy firms, that have seasonal work or when
they want to grow by focussing on more client acquisition and business
advisory.
Fixed model: Also known as the
full-time employee (FTE) model, this is the model everyone thinks of whether
they want to work with outsourced service providers in India. Here, you are
assigned a dedicated team or an individual who only works on your projects.
It’s like your extended accounting team that works offshore in India. Regular
reporting helps you stay on top of your projects and become more actively
involved in project delivery. If your firm has large volumes of work on a
consistent basis, this is the best engagement model.
The Mix Model: At times, it may
so happen that you cannot clearly define the volume of your work, whether the
same would increase beyond the committed volumes. In such situation, the Mix model, as the name
suggests is a combination of Fixed and Variable model, wherein you may commit
an estimated fixed price for the full time dedicated employee you may need and
if the work increases beyond the full time employee hours, you pay as per the variable
model i.e. only for the hours spent in excess.
There
are two mainstays to your outsourcing strategy – the quality of the services
you subscribe to and the engagement model. Outsourcing Providers like GJM &
Co. have reduced their rates as per outsourcing models to help
accounting firms out with sharing their accounting work. Contact us or Book a
Call with us to know more about GJM’s special Covid-19 offers.
5. The Other Mainstays
Business Continuity
plan:
You
have to assure your Outsourced Accounting Service provider is completely aware
of your cost pressures and operational bottlenecks in the existing times. When you pass the work offshore, you cannot
afford any downtime in operations of your service provider. So, when considering outsourcing during
COVID-19, there are some questions you must ask your outsourced accounting
service providers like:
-
How
do you ensure business continuity in Covid-19 times?
-
In
case of emergency, can you move operations to other designated sites so that
project timelines are not impacted?
-
Whether
you have all necessary resources – people, processes and platforms that assure uninterrupted
delivery irrespective of events?
Success Timeline:
-
What
is your track record? Do your clients improve profitability in the long run?
-
Have
your outsourcing services improved productivity of an accounting firm?
-
Consider
asking Client testimonials.
It
is necessary to aware that there are some poor service providers out there and
you need to avoid them anyhow. It pays
to be extremely sure of the offshore provider’s capabilities.
Continuous
professional learning:
This
is an absolutely critical aspect to be verified that the staff of your chosen offshore
partner is made up of qualified accountants, either CAs, CPAs or ACCAs or
accountants with any other equivalent qualifications and are familiar with
prominent accounting software tools such as QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage, Xero
etc. Accountants handling payroll may
also be familiar with US Payroll management software tools. You should ask if the staff is trained regularly
and their skills are updated in step with the latest developments in the fields
of accounting, payroll, and tax.
As
a prominent Outsourced Accounting Service Provider, GJM & Co. is helping the US
Accounting firms to increase proficiency by setting up a successful extended offshore
team for them in India without having to invest in infrastructure or bicker about
hiring or attrition of resources. We
encourage leaders of US accounting firms to step up as consultants or advisors
to their clients during such times and leave the non-core functions to our
offshore teams for fraction of a price.
We assure the same quality and delivery of work as onsite accountants
and free up time for US CPA/Accounting firms owners to focus on increasing
business opportunities with existing clients and acquire new clients. We provide by giving access to a pool of
skilled and trained resources readily available to help.
Conclusion
This
article allows you to identify challenges faced with outsourcing and find a
solution to them. Further, a rock-hard, workable and future focussed strategy pledges
that you are able to meaningfully justify outsourced service providers and
choose the partner who is best placed to deliver the benefits of outsourcing to
your accountancy firm while you function as a remote firm locally during Covid-19.
It
is also important to watch out for breakdowns in your current local accounting
teams and make sure to protect the psychological health of your employees
during this time and outsource wisely to share workload by cost-effective
means. We know that accountants are at the frontline of this financial crisis
and outsourcing workload whenever possible would prevent possible burnouts.
Contact us or Book a
Call with us today to learn more about our services.
Thanks & Best
regards,
Knowledge Base team
GJM
& Co.
Chartered
Accountants
Outsource to
Outperform
Accounting |
Bookkeeping | Payroll | Taxation | Business Setup
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