Top 5 Checklist To Choose an Accounting Outsourcing Partner.

While many companies have adopted outsourcing their accounting processes because of the many advantages it brings, there are still a lot of business owners that find it difficult on picking the best checklist to pick the best accounting solution providers around.

Our head of client services came up the top 5 list that he will advise business owners to look into before outsourcing their accounting processes.

“outsourcing” is always a better option!

It helps reduce operational costs, give business owners time to create other innovative activities, allow access to trained staff who can help with several arrays of advice, and many more reasons. But finding the perfect outsourcing partner is a challenge — and for every business owner I have spoken to, the underlining statement has always been finding a partner who gives me (the business owner) the peace of mind that my accounting activity is in safe hands.

I will always advise any business owner that wishes to outsource their accounting to look into this 5 list.

1. Perform a Background Check: Have basic information about the potential partner you are hoping to work with because you don’t want to expose your operational flows to just anybody. Ensure you have answers to questions like; Services they render, locations they cover, how their engagement works, and service timeframe. Though these questions simple, it can be a good way to filter some bad eggs.
2. Accounting Software Used; You need to be sure your partner has a good understanding of the software to be used and also has some level of technical influence on it just in case some adjustment needs to be done to suit your operations. And be sure you can also access the software so as to export your data when you want to. It’s yours anyway.
3. Find Out How Secure Your Data is; Accounting data is very sensitive and should be dealt with all level of seriousness and care. So, find out how safe your data are and if possible have an NDA signed to be legally covered of any data breach. This will keep you at the safer side.
4. Working Hours and Commitment Clarity: This is a partnership, so you want to be sure you can get a response to an urgent inquiry as soon as possible, so you must be clear as to when your partners are always available for you and when they are not. As simple as this sounds, it ensures there are no grey areas in communication and you do not have too many expectations that are not meant.
5. Know The Contact person: Don’t just assume everyone in the accounting firm will know you are a client/partner and can answer your question just as you don’t expect the firm to ask anyone in your company questions relating to financial activities. Knowing you have a smart contact person solves a lot of back and forth, you can also build a good working relationship.

In Accounteer, one of the things we have done is to put quality service before billing of our accounting as a service client and maybe before you bother yourself about ticking this 5 list, we will tick it for you at our first phone or email conversation. Want to outsource your accounting processes, send a mail to team@accounteer.com and you will be contacted ASAP!