Will Your Outsourced Accountant Succeed or Fail?

When you are considering whether to use an outsourced accounting solution there are always questions around what to expect in terms of results.

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• Will an outsourced accountant be qualified to handle our company’s specific financial needs?
• Will they work well with the rest of our staff and leadership – completing deliverables, meeting deadlines, and interacting effectively?
• Will they be available when we need to talk to them and explain things in a way that’s easy to understand?
• Will they implement accounting policy and procedure improvements to benefit the overall organization?
• Will they be committed to the future growth of our business?

These are all examples of the types of questions business leaders ask when evaluating whether to outsource and deciding which accounting company to choose when they do. Most of these are predicated on the idea that finding the best accounting company or the best accounting consultant will be the “golden ticket” to finding success. Why? Because business owners too often assume that using a top accounting company with the most experienced team of accountants is automatically going to guarantee their success.
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And, while it is true that you’ll likely have a greater chance of success when using a well-rated and reputable accounting company, it doesn’t necessarily ensure that you’ll achieve the outcome you’re hoping for on its own. Something else is required to increase the likelihood that your accounting engagement will be successful – good communication!

Unfortunately, time and again we have seen engagements thwarted by communication issues between businesses and the accounting consultants they’re using. Remember, managing this crucial aspect of the engagement is the responsibility of both the company and the consultant!

A successful accounting engagement will always have:

Clear Expectations
Setting clear expectations upfront is a critical part of ensuring success when working with an outsourced accountant. Remember, they can’t meet (or exceed!) your expectations if they don’t know what they are and no matter how good they are at their job, they can’t read your mind. So, you need to define and manage expectations from the beginning around the duties and responsibilities included in the role.

Then, get their feedback about what else they think should be included based on what they’re seeing. There may be accounting practices or policies that need to be shored up that weren’t even on your radar. Take your accountant’s feedback into consideration to determine if the role needs to be tweaked or expanded. Periodically re-evaluate the engagement and, when needed, redefine the scope of the role to reflect changes that have already been made and changes that are anticipated in the coming months.

Ongoing Feedback
Encourage ongoing feedback from your accountant throughout the duration of the engagement to keep the lines of communication open. Remember, communication is a two-way street so both your business leadership team and your consulting accountant should feel comfortable asking questions, bringing up concerns, and sharing key information (whether it’s good news or bad news).

Some accountants (and business leaders for that matter) are better at putting their heads down and doing the work rather than communicating about the work they’re doing. This isn’t a bad thing – it just means they’ll need more deliberate encouragement to give and receive and feedback. If this type of communication doesn’t come naturally to either of you, establish regular check-ins with your consultant to ensure there’s always an open channel for good communication.

Sufficient Resources
No matter how clear the role is and how well it’s communicated, if your accountant isn’t provided with the right resources, they will fail. Effective execution hinges on having the right access levels and resources to do the job. Typically, this means providing them with things like:

• Logins to your accounting software, company bank and credit accounts, invoicing system, team communication tools, file management platforms, etc.
• Your accounting policy and procedures manual (or the items they need to create it if you don’t already have one)
• Current and past financial reports and forecasts
• Historical tax statements

One of the most important resources you can provide your accountant is time – time to learn about your company’s unique accounting needs, time to dig into your specific accounting policies, and time to fix accounting errors and issues that exist. Remember, the time that your consulting accountant takes now to understand your business is time well spent because not only will they be better equipped to do their job today but they can also hand off this institutional knowledge to their successor when you hire a full-time accountant someday!

Read: How to Improve Your Accounting Team in the Next 3 Months

​Alignment
An outsourced accountant’s role should always be aligned with broader organizational objectives and goals. This is critical because as the scope of the engagement changes over time, you can return to the basic principle that it should be aligned with strategic business goals to determine when it’s time to graduate from part-time outsourced accounting help to hiring a full-time role internally.

When you need outsourced accounting services, please reach out to us! We have a large team of US-based accountants that can provide as much or as little help as you need. Whether you’re looking for ongoing part-time accounting help, short-term accounting cleanup work, or an interim accountant while you hire a new accountant, we have the experienced accountants to do the job! Find out why more business leaders choose ASP!