Hire Offshore Accountants for CPA & Accounting Firms – Why Outsourced Accounting Works
Handling accounts of multiple clients can be challenging on its own. On top of that, managing an internal team becomes even more difficult, especially when deadlines need to be met. That’s why CPAs and accounting firms are now adopting alternative hiring models like offshore accountants and outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping services.
Let us know in detail what an offshore Accountant is and how it can benefit?
What’s an offshore Accountant and how can it benefit?
An offshore accountant is a dedicated person who manages your accounting, bookkeeping, and other financial tasks remotely from another country. They work as an extension of your in-house team and align with your working time zone, deadlines, processes, and software.
Many tasks of accounting and bookkeeping, like bookkeeping entries, reconciliations, payroll processing, sales tax filings, and year-end closings, end up being time-consuming tasks. As a result, employees often struggle to manage all the responsibilities, take care of these tasks, solve clients’ doubts, and give advice. Result? delay, backlog after backlog, and dissatisfied clients.
An offshore accountant can work as a superhero for CPAs and accounting firms. Offshore accounting can provide the same quality of expertise, accuracy, and efficiency as an in-house team, while allowing firms to manage workloads more effectively. So, let’s talk about the benefits that make offshore accounting a strategic partner for CPA and accounting firms.
Benefits of Offshore Accountants
Cost Savings
According to a survey, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that the employment of accountants and auditors is projected to grow by 5 percent from 2024 to 2034, faster than the average for all occupations.
About 124,200 openings for accountants and auditors are projected each year, on average, over the decade. In the USA, there are vast openings for accountants and auditors, but fewer people to fill them, so demand will continue to rise. That’s where offshore accountants can be a game-changer for every CPA and accounting firm. The main reason is the currency difference, which creates a win-win situation for both sides.
Access to Skilled Talent
When CPA and accounting firms choose offshore accountants, they get the opportunity to review talent from across the globe, assessing experience, skills, and compatibility with their requirements. It’s not limited to one country; instead, it opens access to a global pool of qualified professionals.
Hiring an offshore accountant from a reputed partner like Acculink CPA ensures zero data breaches, on-time delivery, and high accuracy in every task. Apart from this, Acculink CPA has access to a vast talent pool with over 4,000 pre-vetted professionals. You can choose the professionals that match your standards without a screening process.
24/7 Productivity
When offshore accountants work in a different time zone, your service operates with 24/7 productivity. Firms can deliver work faster, handle urgent client requests or changes overnight, and ensure tasks are completed on time. This helps improve client satisfaction and drastically reduces turnaround times during month-endings.
Faster Turnaround Time
As mentioned earlier, working in a different time zone can help CPA and accounting firms achieve 24/7 productivity. This helps CPAs and accounting firms have a faster turnaround. This means clients can review our work the next morning, which is especially helpful during tax season and month-end closing.
So offshore accountants can allow CPA and accounting firms to handle more workload without the burden of hiring and managing new employees during peak season for the long term.
Focus on Core Activities
Time-consuming tasks like bookkeeping, reconciliation, and payroll can be assigned to the offshore team, and in-house employees can focus on core activities like client relationships, client doubt-solving sessions, and advising clients for long-term relationships.
Scalability and Flexibility
Scalability and flexibility are very important factors for every CPA and accounting firm to grow, and an offshore accountant can help be a strategic partner in their growth. They handle all the backend work like bookkeeping entries, reconciliations, payroll, etc. Hence, an offshore accountant is the key essential role for any CPA and accounting firm’s scalability.
How Offshore Accounting Works?
1) Identify the needs
Every CPA and accounting firm should identify the needs of the firm, especially which tasks to be given to an offshore accountant. Let's explain that, as an example, our internal team is working hard but not able to match the deadlines and the client’s expectations. Reason? Bookkeeping entries, reconciliation, and payroll are taking up much of their working hours they can hardly focus on client relationships. Such a task should be given to an offshore partner, every business is different, so as their needs.
2) Choose an Offshore Partner
Choosing an offshore partner is a very critical part. Sharing sensitive financial data of a client can be risky. The right partner can help CPA and accounting firms reach the sky, but one wrong decision can ruin your entire business.
Choosing a trusted partner like Acculink CPA, with 5+ years of industry experience, a skilled professional team of 200+ employees, and maintaining strict data security protocols, can really help your CPA or accounting firm take it to the next level.
3) Recruitment And Screening
Here comes an important part of choosing an offshore accounting partner. Have a careful screening of the resumes of the offshore accountants. Take into consideration prior experience, projects completed till date, and industry knowledge, which can be a time-consuming task.
Collaborating with the trusted trusted offshore partner like Acculink CPA has an 8-step vetting process. Each candidate goes through a detailed screening process that evaluates technical expertise, communication skills, and familiarity with U.S. accounting and taxation software. So CPA and accounting firms can confidently onboard professionals who meet their exact standards from day one.
4) Onboarding and Training session
Welcome the offshore accountant to your team who will be working for you on a weekly, biweekly, monthly, or yearly basis as per the requirements of the CPA and accounting firms. Give training for the particular project, new software, and the workflow you want them to follow to avoid rework, so they can do the work more effectively and efficiently.
5) Quality Review and Reporting
Quality review and reporting is essential. All the task work done by the offshore accountant should be reviewed by the onshore team, team leads, and managers, so any error that occurs can be solved immediately. It can help get the work done with accuracy, on time, and in compliance. Doing this will help maintain the same quality of work and match the client’s needs.
6) Ongoing Monitoring and Feedback
Ongoing monitoring and feedback will help the offshore team blend in at the early stage and also have a significant effect on their efficiency and productivity. Mistakes that are caught early are resolved early.
Common Misconceptions Of Data Security in Offshore Accounting
Many CPA and accounting firms hesitate to hire offshore accountants because of data breaches or loss of client-sensitive financial data confidentiality. However, this concern often comes to every cpa firm's owner. Reputed offshore partners like Acculink CPA follow strict data protection standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR compliance. They use encrypted communication portals, secured VPNs, and restricted access to the employees’ systems to ensure that client information remains protected at every stage.
In reality, offshore accounting firms invest a large amount in cybersecurity because their entire business depends on maintaining trust. One bad experience from the client can ruin the entire business. With the right partner and clear confidentiality agreements in place, offshore accounting can be just as secure as an in-house team's financial security.
Many owners of financial firms feel clients will lose trust if they know we offshore our work. Transparency is key to trust, and when clients get on-time work, with 100% accuracy, and go through the data protocols offshore team maintains. Financial firms can maintain long-term client relationships with 100% client satisfaction.
However, CPA and accounting firms can cut 70% - 75% on labour costs by hiring in several models, like offshore staffing and choosing an outsourcing partner. That's the main benefit financial firms get when they offshore their work without compromising quality.
End Note
In today’s fast-paced CPA and accounting landscape, partnering with offshore accountants isn’t just an option; it’s a strategic growth partner for CPA and accounting firms looking to grow efficiently while maintaining accuracy and compliance. Firms working with trusted partners like Acculink CPA benefit from experienced offshore teams, streamlined processes, and secure handling of sensitive data. By delegating routine yet critical tasks, your in-house team can focus on client relationships.
Whether you want to hire an offshore accountant to handle all your accounting work or you want to hire for a particular task like payroll, bank reconciliation, bookkeeping, accounts receivable, or accounts payable, you can get in touch with Acculink CPA. Their experts will provide you with a briefing.