SOC 2 Type II certified. IRS §7216 compliant.
Dedicated staff from $8 to $35 per hour, all-inclusive by role. Your first 40 hours are free.
Georgia CPA firms are paying more every year for the same capacity. The federal payroll data for accounting firms says so directly.
16,521 people in 2019, 16,526 in 2025 — no growth at all, while the industry grew 7.1% nationally.
Average pay in a Georgia CPA office rose 27.7% over those same six years.
Georgia offices have shed 8.8% of their staff — more than seven times the 1.2% national decline, one of the steepest in the country.
Hiring does not fix it.
3,710/yr
Average accountant & auditor openings
~90%
Of those openings are replacement demand
Same Seats
Not new growth
Firms are not staffing up. They are re-filling the same seats.
That is the gap accounting outsourcing closes. Acculink places dedicated offshore accounting staff with Georgia CPA firms at 60 to 70 percent below local market rates, working your hours, in your systems, under your review. Firms that move to outsourced accounting keep the capacity and drop the payroll risk that comes with it. Our team of 300+ professionals includes CPAs, Enrolled Agents, Chartered Accountants, and Big-4 alumni.
The most common way Georgia CPA firms work with Acculink is the dedicated staffing model. You hire a professional who works exclusively for your firm, on your schedule, under your direct supervision. This is not a shared service or an outsourced task queue. It is your person, doing your firm's work.
Georgia CPA firms hire through Acculink for:
You meet the professional before the engagement starts, set the tasks, and review the output. Two engagement models are available: a dedicated full-time hire (one professional working exclusively for your firm) and a managed team for practices that need broader coverage across multiple roles.
Build a dedicated offshore team matched to your firm's work, from entry-level support to senior oversight.
Daily transaction entry, reconciliations, and ledger upkeep.
Accounts receivable, payable, and billing management.
General ledger, month-end close, and financial statements.
Individual, corporate, and pass-through return preparation.
End-to-end payroll, Georgia withholding, and unemployment insurance filings, including the new overtime and tips employer reporting.
Workpapers and documentation behind reviews, compilations, and the mandatory film credit audit.
Cash flow forecasting, budgeting, and management reporting.
From daily bookkeeping to the film credit schedules Georgia's mandatory audit requires, your dedicated team works across the platforms your clients already use.
Georgia forms handled
Georgia Industries
You know your client base. The question is whether our staff can work it.
Qualified expenditure schedules, mandatory credit audit support, and credit transfers, project by project. Georgia is the fourth-largest state for motion picture employment, with a location quotient of 1.40 — concentrated here, not merely present.
Multi-entity consolidations, intercompany reconciliations, and multistate apportionment for the supplier and shared-service companies clustered around metro Atlanta, a top-ten US metro for headquarters employment.
Multistate nexus schedules, apportionment, and fixed-asset work for the freight, warehousing, and third-party logistics companies built around Hartsfield-Jackson and the Port of Savannah.
Partnership accounting, investment income schedules, and multistate returns for the payments and fintech cluster anchored by Intercontinental Exchange, Global Payments, and Aflac.
Percentage-of-completion accounting, 1031 exchange tracking, and the homestead and property tax work Georgia has spent two years rewriting.
A generic offshore team is not the same as one that has done your clients' work before. Acculink's dedicated professionals are matched to your firm based on your clients' specific industries.
The salary figure is only part of the story. Here is how the true cost of a Georgia hire compares to a dedicated Acculink team.
For an Atlanta, Savannah, or Augusta firm carrying two or three accounting positions, the cost comparison between in-house and offshore is the most important number in the practice.
| In-House Hire (Georgia) | Acculink Offshore | |
|---|---|---|
| Staff accountant pay | $62,000–$80,000 / year (Atlanta, staff level) | $8–$35 / hour, all-inclusive by role |
| Employer payroll taxes and benefits | On top of salary | None |
| Office overhead | On top of salary | None |
| Recruiting and placement | Per hire | None |
| Training | Firm's cost | Included |
| Time to productive | 3–5 months | 2–3 weeks |
| SOC 2 Type II coverage | Firm's responsibility | Included |
| Turnover risk | High | Low |
At $8 to $35 an hour, all-inclusive, Acculink staff cut the fully loaded cost of those seats by 60 to 70 percent. The gap widens once employer taxes, benefits, overhead, recruiting, and turnover are added to the in-house side, and in a market where roughly 90 percent of annual openings are replacement rather than growth, those costs recur.
Georgia's flat-rate structure is what makes this work scale. One rate now drives four separate taxes, which standardizes most of your return set, and standardized volume is exactly what a dedicated professional absorbs. Three things below are where Georgia gets sharper, and where your licensed people should stay.
Georgia, at a glance
Georgia's PTE election rate moves with the individual rate every year — a great deal of published guidance still shows the superseded 5.75%.
Georgia's individual income tax is a flat 4.99% for tax year 2026. A 2024 amendment tied the corporate income tax, the S corporation election, and the partnership election to that same rate, so one number now drives four taxes.
That has a consequence most published guidance has not caught up with. The pass-through entity election is computed at 4.99% for 2026, not the 5.75% that was written into the statute when the election was created. That figure has been wrong since tax year 2024, and Georgia's Department of Revenue still shows 5.75% in an estimated-payment example on its own pass-through FAQ while its legislative summary explains the requirement was removed. The election is made on Form 600S or Form 700 and is irrevocable once the due date passes: one decision per client, per year, with no way back. Your Acculink team prepares the computation and the schedules for your review.
Every production certified on or after January 1, 2023 must undergo a mandatory audit, performed either by the Department of Revenue or by a DOR-certified eligible auditor from a list the Department maintains. Georgia made CPA firms the statutory gatekeepers of the credit.
The volume behind that is rising. A 2024 change cut the credit carryforward from five years to three for credits generated in tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2025, which pushes more credits into the transfer market sooner. The credit itself remains uncapped and fully transferable, transferred on Form IT-TRANS. Your Acculink team prepares the qualified expenditure schedules and the workpapers behind the audit and the transfer, under your direction.
This one is months old and it lands on every client with a payroll. Georgia now excludes up to $1,750 of qualified overtime compensation and up to $1,750 in cash tips from income, for tax years 2026 through 2028.
The exclusion is the headline. The obligation is the work. Every employer with hourly or tipped staff must report total qualified overtime compensation, total cash tips, and the number of employees receiving each, to the Department of Revenue monthly or quarterly, tied to the withholding return due date. Annual filing is permitted for 2026 only, so the recurring load starts in 2027 and the process has to exist before it does. This is high-volume, deadline-driven work across your entire payroll book.
Georgia's own breach statute does not reach CPA firms; it binds data brokers and state agencies. What binds your firm is federal, plus one Board rule that matters more here than any privacy law.
Section 7216 requires written client consent before tax return information is disclosed to a preparer located outside the United States. That holds even though your Acculink professional works as your own staff under your supervision: 26 CFR 301.7216-2(c)(2) is explicit, and the exception that lets one US preparer share with another without consent is limited to preparers located in the United States. No engagement structure removes it, and a provider who tells you otherwise is worth a second look.
We do not ask you to work around it. We make it easy to meet. For 1040-series returns, the taxpayer's Social Security number must be masked before the return information goes offshore, unless the engagement meets the adequate data protection safeguard standard and your firm verifies that in the consent request. Your Acculink team works to your firm's consent and masking procedures, and your firm keeps ownership of client data and review of all output.
The FTC Safeguards Rule is your operative data security standard, because a CPA firm that prepares income tax returns is a financial institution under it. The clause governing an offshore engagement is 16 CFR 314.4(f): select providers capable of maintaining appropriate safeguards, require those safeguards by contract, and periodically assess the provider.
That is the whole compliance question, and it is a documentation exercise rather than a mystery. Acculink's certified environment, contractual security terms, and diligence documentation are built so your firm can satisfy each limb and evidence it in a file.
The Georgia State Board of Accountancy's Code of Professional Conduct provides that a licensee shall not, without the consent of the client, disclose confidential information obtained in performing professional services. It carries three exceptions: a valid subpoena, a quality review, and a Board inquiry. A confidentiality agreement with a vendor is not among them.
So in Georgia consent is required twice over, once by the Board rule and independently by Section 7216 because the work is performed outside the United States. Some providers will tell you an NDA handles this. In Georgia it does not. Our role is to make consent easy, documented, and defensible, not to replace a requirement that cannot be replaced.
You already delegate production work to unlicensed staff, and Georgia says so expressly. The Act provides that nothing in it prohibits any person from recording financial transactions, making trial balances, preparing unaudited financial statements, or preparing tax returns and related forms, and separately permits a non-licensee to work as an employee of or assistant to a CPA firm provided they do not attest to any statement over their own name. The State Board has confirmed the point in its own published policy. Opinions, assurance, and the CPA title stay with your licensees. Your firm signs the work and owns the engagement.
| Certification | What It Covers |
|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type II | Security, availability, and confidentiality controls, independently audited over time |
| ISO 27001:2013 | Information security management system, independently certified |
| IRS §7216 | Structured compliance for tax return data handling |
| GDPR | Data handling standards for international client data |
Most Georgia CPA firms are fully operational within a few weeks. The steps below describe onboarding for the dedicated staffing model.
You describe your firm's needs: role, software platforms, practice areas, and client industries. Acculink identifies candidates from its bench of 300+ professionals. You review profiles and meet candidates before making any commitment.
You select your professional and confirm the engagement terms: start date, hours, rate, and scope. No setup fee. No lock-in contract.
Your Acculink professional receives access to your software and workflow documentation. The first two to three weeks are a supervised ramp-up period. Most professionals reach full productivity within 30 days.
Your Acculink team member works on your schedule, in your systems, under your direct supervision. You set the work. You review the output. You own the client relationship.
Professionals trained in US GAAP, IRS requirements, and Georgia-specific work including the flat-rate return set, the pass-through entity election at the correct current rate, film credit expenditure schedules, and the new overtime and tips employer reporting.
Built for the standard your firm is actually held to: SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2013 certifications with the contractual security terms and diligence documentation the FTC Safeguards Rule requires you to obtain from a service provider.
Georgia's Board rule and IRS §7216 both require client consent, and we supply the language and process to obtain and document it.
Dedicated full-time staff or a managed team, depending on your firm's volume and growth stage.
Compared to in-house accounting staff at Georgia market rates.
In a market where Georgia CPA offices have the same headcount as in 2019 while paying 27.7 percent more per head.
No setup fee, and no long-term lock-in.
Georgia CPA firms are not short of work. They are short of the people to do it, and the payroll data shows a profession paying more each year for the same capacity. Acculink gives your firm experienced, certified accounting staff at 60 to 70 percent below what an in-house hire in Atlanta would cost, with the return volume, film credit schedules, and new employer reporting handled under your review.
