Time and time again we have clients come to us expressing regret over their accounting hiring decisions. They say things like:

“…We hired what we could afford and the person we brought in is totally underqualified…”
“…We’ve had so much turnover in the role – we just can’t keep anyone, and we don’t have the budget to get someone who will stick around…”
“…We simply can’t find what we’re looking for these days at the price we’re willing to pay…”
“…We put off hiring because we didn’t want to spend the money before, but now we’ve waited far too long and we need to find someone immediately!..”

​The lesson here is clear – trying to cut costs with accounting hiring is always going to cost more in the long run! Let’s look at why hiring a “cheap” accountant is actually more expensive than hiring a good accountant and how you can improve your hiring strategy. 

A resource offered in partnership between The ASP Team and CFO Selections

​One commonality among our businesses at The ASP Team and CFO Selections is that we often talk to business leaders that aren’t sure which kind of accounting role they need. They typically understand the duties they would like the person to perform and the deliverables they expect to receive, but they aren’t sure what to call the role exactly. Without the proper title it makes it difficult to hire into the role or find an accounting services company to provide exactly what they need.

Sometimes clients will come to us at The ASP Team saying that they need a “bookkeeper” as a catch-all phrase for someone doing any kind of accounting work but what they are really looking for is something more – an Accountant, Senior Accountant, or even Controller. Similarly, sometimes clients will come to us at CFO Selections saying that they need a “CFO” as a catch-all phrase for someone doing more advanced accounting work or leading an accounting team but what they actually need is something less – a Controller, Accounting Manager, or Senior Accountant. How do you know which you need? 

As accounting consultants, we have seen AI usage increase dramatically over the last five years across daily accounting activities throughout organizations of all sizes. So, where is AI most widely used in bookkeeping and accounting these days?
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When it comes to AI in accounting, A/R and A/P augmentation has proven to be the low hanging fruit. As accounting technology has grown more sophisticated machines have been tasked with doing these types of repetitive functions that have traditionally bogged organizations down with manual work. With A/R and A/P already being powered by AI, what can we expect next?

​Usually, we discuss more specifically focused accounting and bookkeeping topics to share in-depth industry knowledge with our readers. However, today we’re going back to the basics to answer a fundamental question: “What does an accounting services provider do?”

​Simply put, an accounting provider does less than full-time work. This work can be either ongoing part-time work or short-term work (which includes interim engagements and project-based work). What does that entail exactly? 

​Research shows that today’s bookkeepers and accountants are making mistakes as their workloads have increased due to economic volatility and newly enacted regulations. The data also shows that the more capacity constrained accounting professionals are, the more likely they are to make data errors on manual work and miss issues when conducting regular reviews on accounting records.

And while this certainly does not mean accounting professionals across the board are doing poor work, even the best accountants are feeling the pressure. As their time continues to be squeezed and their responsibilities expanded, good accountants are finding that they need to work even harder to maintain the top-notch work that they are doing. The result is an environment more conducive to burnout and errors regardless of the integrity and work ethic that they bring to the role.
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If your books are messy due to overworked bookkeeping and accounting staff or turnover in those roles, you need to be able to figure out what needs to be fixed, understand how to fix it, and take a proactive approach to avoid future accounting issues!