Whether you operate in plastic manufacturing, commercial cleaning, sheet metal fabrication or the food industry, your company needs to find a way to maintain its legal matters and manage its books. For some business, this means having an in-house accounting team or department, depending on the business size. In some cases, companies find it more efficient to outsource to a qualified accounting firm around their location, to look over their financial record management and offer other relevant services.
During the last few years, business conditions have changed, and outsourcing services have been on the rise. Today, businesses attach great expectations when it comes to financial transparency and government compliances. Often, businesses struggle with trying to look after the core day-to-day business operations alongside the more time-consuming business aspects of accounting, finance, internal auditing, compliance and risk management.
Hence, businesses of all sizes are turning towards outsourcing different business departments and accounting. In fact, many companies are finding that the outsourcing experience offers them new opportunities to receive expert legal and financial support from a qualified and experienced team of professionals, without the added burden or overhead associated with in-house resources.
In this article, we have identified the top 8 benefits of outsourcing to a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firm.
1. Accessing Expert Advice
Economists today argue that if the expertise or output of an in-house accounting team cannot successfully sell in an open market, then outsourcing to an accounting or CPA firm that specializes in the services you need is the efficient way to go.
Hence, associating your business with a team of qualified and certified professionals with relevant experience and expertise will leave you feeling confident that you are legal, accounting and financial matters are being handled correctly, in an objective and unbiased manner. Moreover, you often get customized and scalable services that provide you with the flexibility you need to be effective.
2. Meeting All Compliance Requirements
Accounting experts and CPAs are on top of all the latest changes in regulatory requirements. They keep up with all that is happening across the industry and carefully follow up with the relevant laws and regulations to be able to look out for unique opportunities and stay current in processes.
The diligence showed by your CPA firm actually helps you to have some peace of mind that your accounting and financial tasks are looked over by a team of qualified experts in the field.
3. Reducing Business Costs
The highlight of outsourcing your accounting needs is the fact that you only have to pay for the exact services you need when you need them. Outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping saves not only time and effort, but it also saves your business from extra overheads.
Your CPA firm has the expertise to accommodate your cash flow realities and business risk gaps to make sure that you receive the most from your investments and operations. Moreover, you can choose to get full outsourcing services, co-sourcing or go for a specialized resource enhancement to help address your temporary staff shortages and spend according to your needs.
With your CPA firm, you can downsize or upsize the services with your accounting requirements, without having to deal with conventional personal challenges like the risk of unemployment claims or the need to hire more employees and plan for their healthcare packages and more. Businesses are also no longer required to spend time and money on recruiting and training resources.
4. Improving Productivity
With a team of qualified experts working on your behalf and taking over accounting responsibilities, you can rest assured that everything will be done on time. In fact, your CPA firm will most likely streamline the tasks to generate higher quality results and even provide insightful and valuable analytics to help you better understand your business performance and budgeting concerns.
Moreover, as your firm immediately informs you of any suspicious activity, the chances of fraud or government penalties are reduced.
5. Gaining Valuable Time
The right outsourced accounting firm can provide you with support for your accounting functions and allows for better management of the workload. It will free up your valuable time to redirect the focus on the core business activities and the future of the business, by delegating responsibilities. The firm also provides help in a variety of areas like treasury and cash management tasks such as cash flow preparation, working capital optimization, credit facility analysis, investment monitoring, debt compliance monitoring and it even extends its services for special events like initial public offering preparation.
6. Contractual Obligation
Your outsourced firm faces higher liability than the in-house team, which makes them more likely to follow through with their contractual obligations and less at risk for your business because they have more to lose in case of non-compliance.
Dealing with contracts or agreements with your outsourced firm is easier than dealing with the recruiting process, negotiations, and many other human resources issues like employee management.
7. Adjusting as per Your Business Cycles
Accounting and bookkeeping tasks fall under a category that varies with business cycles. Outsourcing allows you to easily increase your resources and staff or to cut back quickly according to your business cycle and the time of the year. It provides you a flexibility that can be difficult to achieve with your in-house team.
8. Reduce the Risks of Suddenly Losing Staff
If you have run your business long enough, you’ve probably experienced the pain of suddenly losing your staff. Businesses of any size cannot afford to keep buffer staff in place, as it isn’t a very efficient use of resources.
However, when you outsource to an accounting or CPA firm, you work with a team of experienced experts that is more reliable due to the teamwork. The team members and managers can check and double-check each other’s work to ensure you’re getting the quality of work you are expecting.
