4 Ways Outsourcing Accounting Can Save you Time

Offshoring and Outsourcing

Posted on

Share this article:

Time is money, and in today’s age of cut-and-thrust competition, changing tech, and fast-evolving business dynamics, this adage seems more relevant than ever.

When it comes to making the most of time, business owners are continuously split between the need to focus more on their business’s core competencies and allocating resources to secondary back-end functions like accounting. But this is where outsourcing your accounting chores to an accounting outsourcing company can help you to save a lot of business hours, allowing you have more time on your hands to invest in your business’s primary functions. But before we jump into how outsourcing accounting saves you time, it’s important to understand and where the need to outsource accounts arises.

Often, businesses are buried in a seemingly unsurmountable mountain of paperwork when attempting to collect payments from customers, pay suppliers, or handle a variety of other accounting and financing tasks like budgeting and bookkeeping. But in-house accounting staff come with substantial operations and maintenance costs, which can decelerate growth. So, leveraging outsourced financial and accounting services is a great way to both ensuring accounting is handled by seasoned professionals and zeroing-in on your main business.

In this blog, we will explore 4 ways your business can save time by outsourcing its accounting function to an accounting outsourcing company.

Save Time on Hiring Accountants, CAs, and CFAs

As we touched on in our earlier blog, 4 Ways Outsourcing Accounts to India will Save you Money, nearly 70% of accounting costs are contingent upon workforce. These costs also add up to the time that is required to commit, especially in a labour-intensive and high-interfacing function like accounting.

Knowing anything about the HR function will tell you how difficult the hiring process is. In order to manage it, resources are required for everything from creating a recruitment strategy to selecting individuals for interviews. The hiring procedure requires time and money from your company, and you will need to set aside this time for the employee or for yourself.

Also, time is one component that most firms barely take into consideration in their search for an accounting professional. Moreover, expenses and time are correlated fair and square. The cost savings of outsourcing corporate processes must be considered. Due to their international access to big talent pools, outsourced solutions have an advantage in this circumstance. The flexibility to operate remotely allows service providers and financial experts to offer high-quality services at competitive prices.

Reduce Turnaround by Automating Accounting and Finance

The more manual accounting data entry chores you are able to automate with accounting software, the more time you’ll have to devote to other responsibilities. According to a study by Oxford University, there is a 99% likelihood that tax preparers’ professions will be automated, and there is a 98% possibility that bookkeepers’ and accountants’ occupations will also be automated [1]. Of the 702 listed jobs, the statistics for finance and accounting professionals are some of the highest.

To save time, the majority of accounting outsourcing companies employ accounting automation software like Xero, Sage, Visma, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Quickbooks, and others. In addition to saving time, it also lowers the odds of inaccuracies and miscalculations, which are critically detrimental from an accounting standpoint. Accounting automation reduces human mistake while also improving operational speed as automated software facilitate sending real-time accounting insights to accountants. They aid in identifying possible issues and fixing them quickly, which in turn also lessens the likelihood of internal fraud.

Make Faster Decisions with Standardisation

Using some of the most cutting-edge technologies available, accounting outsourcing companies are better able to deliver their services with precision and efficiency. With technology fast penetrating the accounting side of things as well, automation, data, and artificial intelligence are rapidly replacing the need to manage voluminous volumes of paperwork and files. These added capabilities allow business owners to concentrate on making business strategies and turn real-time financial insights into actions.

Further, outsourced accounting companies typically offer template accounting programs, software, and frameworks that can be quickly changed to comply with every company’s demand, which results in fewer errors, more timely returns, little to no financial or legal fines for accounting delays, etc. To put it another way, all deadlines will be met effectively, leading to a more efficient operation. When a business has its own internal accounting department, it is responsible for creating and maintaining this structure. But in an outsourced arrangement, this helps companies save innumerable hours in performing accounting tasks in house.

Prioritise Time-Sensitive Tasks and Business Continuity

As noted earlier, a lot of small company owners must multitask when it comes to running their businesses on a daily basis, including accounting. Accounting is a critical business function; thus any disruption may be detrimental to the organisation. When the accounting is impacted, a company may experience delayed payments, the loss of crucial documents, and fines. Setbacks such as a system breakdown can result in businesses losing their customers to competitors and a drop client satisfaction.

But, outsourcing your accounting allows you to deal with organisations that are frequently outfitted with cloud-based systems and automation capabilities and can provide you with dependable services. Also, you can request time-bound services from the provider by including a business continuity plan in the contract.

Did You Know?


  • Over 70% of small businesses outsource at least some of their accounting functions. (Source: Clutch, 2023) 
  • Outsourcing accounting can save small businesses up to 40% on their accounting costs. (Source: Association of Certified Public Accountants, 2023) 
  • Outsourced accounting can free up small businesses’ time to focus on customer service, sales, and marketing. (Source: SCORE, 2023) 
  • Outsourcing accounting can help small businesses improve their financial reporting and compliance. (Source: American Institute of CPAs, 2023) 
  • Outsourcing accounting can help small businesses scale their businesses more quickly and efficiently. (Source: Entrepreneur, 2023) 

Conclusion

Given that internal accounting has to be constantly monitored and owners don’t have enough time to do so, outsourcing your accounting operations will save you a significant amount of time. Businesses can thus devote more time to financial and decision-making tasks through outsourcing. Making decisions based on accurate and trustworthy financial information from your service provider can turn out to be quite beneficial.

By outsourcing accounting to third-party companies that have the ends and means to do it, businesses will have more time to concentrate on other key goals like scaling-up efforts, meetings with new clients and partners, and forming core business strategies. This way, businesses owners can entirely refocus on core business operations with outsourced accounting management and advanced accounting software, have access to trustworthy financial data, and ultimately play to their business’s strengths.

Bibliography

  1. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

Share this article:

Arun Mehra

With over twenty years of commercial experience and knowledge Arun’s expertise is valued by hundreds of businesses across the UK. His financial acumen and know-how, along with his hands-on commercial expertise have helped clients, large and small, new and established to achieve great things.

Become a Smarter Accountant

Join “The Unstoppable.” our FREE Newsletter for Business Tips for Accountancy Firms.

Change Cookie Settings

Cookie consent: Undecided