While we prefer clients to provide their remote team with steady work over the course of a year, we do have a limited ability to look after seasonal clients. We have a number of these and look at new ones on a case by case basis.

Typical high volume clients pay us 25% of their compliance fee to the client (without excess deductions to low ball us), and they’re very happy with that. They’re recouping at least double our fee plus full in-house time & cost recovery. Many are doing better than that. So who-ever tells you we’re too expensive is telling you more about their own business than ours. We had one director tell us that they were not making any money by outsourcing, turns out that translated to he couldn’t recover quadruple our fee plus full in-house time and cost. Firms looking for a sweat shop won’t find one here. Seriously, the sharp operators know that the biggest benefit of outsourcing is the proportional increase in in-house capacity we created to do value added work (from all the hours we’ve taken away from them). Our 25% fee covers taking a job from checking everything is there, ready to start, through to final accounts ready to sign off. Your input is to get the job ready, answer queries, review and sign off. If you can’t make that work, outsourcing may not be for you. We have a proven system and process to help you succeed, just ask us. Trust the process and use the system. It’s your business and when your commitment matches ours it clearly works. If something is not working, we’ll even help you figure it out.

Dozens and dozens of unsolicited emails from happy clients tell us otherwise, from small sole practitioners to large multi-director firms with complex large jobs. If your idea of quality is a set of accounts that is compliant, free of material error, reflects a fair and reasonable view of the clients business, is turned-around in a reasonable timeframe and is profitable – then outsourcing with us will work for you. If your idea of quality is no “i” left undotted or “t” left uncrossed, and you agonize over a ledger account being $3.56 out – then neither in-house or remote teams are likely to be meet your perfectionism unless you are prepared to invest a lot of time and pay well for the perfection… and even then errors will slip in….oops we are human too, sorry.

Fundamentally remote teams work off documents while in-house teams have the benefit of local and client knowledge. For most remote teams (including ours) English is also a second language. That means a few tweaks are in order for smooth sailing

Job prep – Ensure there is an adequate job brief sheet (or equivalent) especially first year. Other than that 15-45 minutes prep to ensure all key information is available.

Queries – job turn-around depends on how quickly you respond and can get the information back from clients. Communication is key – don’t use kiwi sayings, keep it simple, polite, and clear and you’ll have a happy team

Reviews – profit or loss on a job is often right here. Incentivise reviewers on output not perfectionism at your expense. 30-45 minutes reviews should be the norm, not 1-2 hours. We have a training module on this to help.

Reviewers need to adopt a mindset of being there to add value. They’ve been elevated from accounts processors to reviewers to take their remote team under their wing and lift them up, bring them up to their level by following good process and our system for quality control. Instead of getting angry or frustrated when something is not right – help them out and teach. That investment in time is leveraged over an entire team if you follow our proven system.

If you are keen to use outsourcing as a structural part of your business so you can grow. If you wish to focus your recruitment and in-house team on up-skilling, soft skills and value add, with compliance support. If either of the above applies, you are the kind of firm we are looking for. We honour your trust and commitment by matching you in both.

(1) If you suffer from perfectionism AND charge low average fees – it won’t work out for you or us. Not because we can’t reach your standard, but because the standard you demand is not cost effective. We have too many excellent happy clients to divert resources to firms that won’t listen, don’t pay a fair market fee, and then demand perfection. The same attributes are also reasons for high staff turn-over.

(2) If you are looking for a solution that just takes all your work and does it without you having to do hardly anything other than review it at the end. If you are not willing to commit to the process or follow the system for doing it well. If either or both of those things apply THEN outsourcing with us (or anyone else) is not for you. Like any change, success is a result of investment and commitment. We might be the best investment you ever made, but you will not know until you make the commitment to match ours.

Not ideal. But we have helped many accounting firms over the years get back on top, or small fledgling firms get started, many of whom have gone on to grow and now support full time remote teams. We will look at casual or one-off high volume needs on a case by case basis. Our preference is for firms that want to grow, see us as a viable platform to do that, and can keep their remote team busy all year (or at least for 10 months).