Finance and Accounting Tasks You Need to Outsource

In a previous article, we discussed the five signs that your team is ready for outsourcing. Once you have determined that you are in the right position to begin your outsourcing journey, it may confuse you as to which finance and accounting tasks you should begin to outsource. Here are some ideas to get you started.

1. Bookkeeping Services

Bookkeeping is one of the basic tasks in the accounting team. This includes maintaining the books, looking after the cash flow, compiling invoices, and generating basic financial reports.

As a continuous and repetitive activity, bookkeeping can consume much of your team’s time. With the advent of cloud bookkeeping software, outsourcing your bookkeeping functions is much easier to do now. Doing so will free up more time that your team can use for more complex tasks.

2. Financial Controller Roles

Financial controllers help your organisation make sure that the processes in your finance and accounting team and parts of your operation are running optimally. They help you improve processes, remove bottlenecks, and implement these changes. Their tasks include the review and preparation of performance indicators, review of services or product line efficiency and overseeing the overhead expenses and implementation of cost-reduction methods.

Today’s technology enables us to transfer data and communicate faster than ever before. Key performance indicators, process maps and logs, and other data can be shared or mined with the help of remote servers, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and other cloud applications. Outsourcing controller functions can help you lower costs in your organization and even make it easier for you to find talents that are difficult to recruit in your area.

3. Payroll Processing

Just like bookkeeping, payroll is a repetitive and time-consuming activity that can take much of the resources of your accounting team.

Accounting software providers have integrated payroll processing functions in their software. These software can now process your payroll after placing the right information. However, you might be taking too much of your people’s time by assigning them in preparing payroll information. Fortunately, there are specialised outsourcing firms that offer payroll services to help you prepare and input the needed payroll information and augment your operations.

4. Compliance Preparation

Compliance preparation is hard work. You need to track transactions, review statements, and update yourself in the compliance requirements to avoid penalties. These documents can include transactions from the past weeks, months, and even the past year. Going through all these documents can take a lot of time and may even result in costly errors.

Accounting outsourcing firms offering compliance preparation services can help you save both time and money from costs and penalties. They can help you sort out the requirements, prepare documents for compliance, and assist you in lodging the payments and requirements. 

Outsourcing finance and accounting tasks should be done in no rush. You can start off with basic tasks and aim first to get your time back from doing time-consuming work. Doing so will give you time to be more familiar with your new work process with your outsourcing partner. Once you’re comfortable with them, you can move up and work with your outsourcing team on more complex and meaningful activities.

Looking for a specialised finance and accounting outsourcing partner? Check out our Premier CFO Solutions  and discover how our customisable and scalable solutions can help your day-to-day CFO tasks! Download your copy below and contact us for more information

This post was first published 24 May 2018 and updated 14 September 2020.