In an industry as competitive as accountancy is, keeping costs low and maximising efficiency is essential, especially when faced with the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.
Other times, expanding the businesses through more services is important, but this can catch you between a rock and a hard place – you may want to expand your business but don’t want to take on the extra costs of a new member of staff or extra resources.
Outsourcing these services is a great, cost-effective solution to this dilemma, as third-party service providers can handle discrete accounting tasks.
But which services are the best for firms to outsource?
Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping usually seems like a simple and easy job, but can often become overly time consuming, technical and a bit of a pain, taking up time that might be better suited to more important tasks or higher-end clients.
By outsourcing some of your bookkeeping, you can get your staff onto the bigger tasks your clients expect from you, maximising your firm’s efficiency.
What’s more, bookkeeping doesn’t require an extensive knowledge of the business in question so it’s a perfect task to outsource, saving you time and adding value to your work.
Payroll
Payroll is one of those tasks that your clients might be struggling to do, especially if they are a small business owner with a low amount of staff, so it’s a prime service for an accounting firm to offer.
But what if you don’t have the resources, staff or time to provide this? Outsourcing payroll services is a no-brainer.
It’s even a great idea even if you’re building your own in-house payroll service. Then, you can get the ball rolling early, advertise the service and nurse goodwill among the clients.
Self-assessment tax returns
Just like bookkeeping, we all know that completing self-assessment tax returns is relatively straightforward. Some require a lot more time, however, especially those for high-net-worth individuals whose circumstances and businesses make their return more complex.
So, by letting an outsourced accounting team handle the more routine returns, you’ll be able to free up your own team to give the more specific and strategic advice that only they can give.
Many firms also outsource self-assessment tax returns during the challenging peaks towards the end and beginning of each year, great for those that find themselves turning clients away because of their huge workload.
It’s also great for you and your team in terms of stress and mental health management by spelling an end to working evenings and weekends, allowing you and your staff to spend more time with friends and family.
VAT returns
This is another one of the high-volume, time consuming documents accountancy firms get a lot of.
But there’s also a certain knack to VAT returns, which makes outsourcing to a specialised team another great choice to save time that could be spent on dealing with high-end clients or a pressing project.
We can’t speak for every outsourcing firm, but our VAT team works with the systems that you already have in place rather than imposing our preferred setup on you, so the process of outsourcing your VAT processing is simple, straightforward and completely headache-free.
Audit processing
We are also more than able to help with your auditing processes. Outsourcing here can streamline your processes and take on some of the more basic but necessary administrative tasks like routine number crunching and paperwork.
Meanwhile, you and your team can focus on client management and the final audit report, potentially being able to handle a larger number of clients in the process.
Get in touch with us today to talk about what accounting tasks you can outsource to us.