The benefits of outsourced accounting and finance services
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March 3, 2020However, even the largest of businesses find it virtually impossible to maintain an accounting function team who can not only cover the wide range of accounting specialties necessary but who also possess the skills and experience to achieve the high standards demanded.
This is why the accounting functions of an organisation was one of the first processes to be outsourced overseas, as business owners and CFOs look for the best solution in their drive to streamline the process, increase efficiency and accuracy and make major cost savings.
The trend continues to grow globally and businesses are increasingly looking to expand the outsourcing to new areas of accounting. Previously the most frequent areas of the accounting function to be outsourced were payroll and accounts payable and receivable, however more and more businesses are seeing the benefits of outsourcing the more strategic areas such as forecasting, budgeting and internal auditing.
Overall outsourcing has proved itself as a way of standardizing and simplifying the accounting functions whilst offering more service, cost savings and quality standards that achieve all regulatory requirements.
So what are the main benefits of outsourcing the accounting function of a business?
- Expertise
As this is their area of expertise outsourcers are always going to have the latest technology and highly qualified experts that can utilise that technology to give you the best information possible. This has become even more of a benefit as companies frequently need to analyse their data more and more.
- On-going cost savings
On average businesses find they can achieve 70% cost savings by outsourcing their accounting function. This is achieved through gaining access to better analytics that allow cost savings to be readily identified. Plus, there are the obvious staffing and infrastructure savings but also the less obvious ones such as the ability to strategically redeploy staff to areas that increase sales and add real value to the business.
- Scalability and flexibility
The true scalability of outsourcing makes it available to all businesses including those that may have considered themselves too small.
There is also the ‘future proofing’ benefit that is afforded when the burden of responsibility of managing internal talent is placed on the outsourcing company. Scaling up or down resources during changes in economic and business situations is no longer a concern for those businesses that outsource their accounting functions.
- Quality
By partnering with an external supplier businesses will see levels of quality increase as they can rigorously manage an outsourced provider more than any internal department.
Clear benchmarks and metrics will be adhered to, that will achieve not only increased quality levels but also cost savings and continuous improvement.
- Accuracy
Keeping abreast of the constant changes in regulations and compliance will be the responsibility of a company who dedicates itself to accounting outsourcing and therefore levels of accuracy will be at 99.9%. In addition, companies will be rest assured that their accounting data would always be handled and stored securely.
What is very clear is that for so many businesses, of all sizes, outsourcing the accounting function is the only viable options as it offers greater benefits as providing true flexibility, better quality, more value and significant cost savings.