Outsourced Bookkeeping and Accounting

Accounting is one the most important functions for any company as it allows the firm to keep a track of their financial operations and while having an in-house accounting team might be an ideal solution, it can be an expensive affair as well and for the same reason more and more companies in the United Kingdom are opting to outsource bookkeeping and accounting services to an experienced service providers. Apart from the cost factor, there are other key reasons to why a company looks for outsourcing bookkeeping and accounting services, such as:

Reasons for Outsourcing Bookkeeping and Accounting Services

• Outsourcing helps in saving valuable time: When you opt for outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping services, you not only get expert and professionals to look after accounting and bookkeeping, but also save your time in dealing with something you don’t know anything about. In addition, having a professional bookkeeping service ensures that you have ready access to your financial data as and when required and thus let you focus on the bigger picture of your business rather than wrestling with the accounting yourself.
• It removes worries about resource and quality: When you know that you have got the best of the team working on your bookkeeping and accounts, you don’t leave your sleep over it. Firms such as BookCheck have a professional team of 60 experienced staff having experience of various industries such as real estate, healthcare, information technology etc and thus there is nothing to worry about the quality of the resources.
• It helps you to gain up to date quality information: Outsourcing bookkeeping and accounting does not takes away your responsibility of ensuring the well-being of your business and while you save time by outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping services, it helps you to gain a better insight of your accounts and profits. Experts advise strongly to have a timely interaction with your accounting and bookkeeping professionals. Also such firms support their outsourced team remotely whenever required and use sophisticated technology such as data scanning and recognition software in order to derive efficiency and reduce the cost of maintaining financial information.
• It helps you to improve your profits by measuring results: If you have done your homework right and outsourced best team to look into accounting and bookkeeping, doing so will help you to measure the results and to improve the profits. Also when you outsource accounting and bookkeeping services from firms such as Flatworld Solutions Private Limited, you have got benefits such as flexible pricing structure, uncompromised data security and quick turnaround time.
• No administrative overheads: With the help of virtual accounting and bookkeeping, more and more companies in UK are saving themselves from the hassle of having administrative overheads. Handling tasks such as payroll taxes, employees benefits, paying for sick leave, recruitment costs is a major task and when a company outsource accounting and bookkeeping service from a service provider, it saves itself from the administrative overheads and time and energy.
• No software concerns: Once you have outsourced bookkeeping and accounting services from a service provider, you no longer have to worry about accounting software problems such as taking back-ups timely and installing the required updates.

In UK, firms like DNS Accountants offer following bookkeeping and accounting services, if and when outsourced:

Outsourcing Bookkeeping And Accounting Services

• Bank reconciliation: One of the main requirement of an efficient accounting and bookkeeping is that of an effective reconciliation, which is a process of matching the balances in the organization’s accounting records for a cash account to the corresponding information on a bank statement and aims to ascertain differences between the two, i.e. accounting records and bank statement and if there is any, appropriate changes are to be made in the accounting records as per the bank statement.
• Supplier reconciliation: Supplier reconciliation ensures that all credit notes are in place and all invoices are in original, which also means that no credit notes are missing or invoices duplicated.
• Customer reconciliation: Customer reconciliation is to ensure that figures in the general ledger against receivables are justified i.e. the detailed amounts of unpaid customer billings to the accounts receivable total stated in the general ledger is same.
• Control accounts reconciliation: This is a process to ensure that the entries made in the sales and purchase ledger is in synchronization with the entries made in the control accounts i.e. the totals in each is exactly the same and if not, it is a clear indication of an error in one of the ledger which need to be checked and corrected.
• Payroll processing: Payroll processing services include recording of the employees’ compensation wages, bonuses, and commissions etc after processing all taxes.
• Write-up services: With the advent of sophisticated and complex financial products, accounting and bookkeeping firms have realized that in order to be in the market, it is important to give an add-on services or value added services which are over and above the basic services that they provide to their clients and write-up service is one such service which includes entry of transactions, journal entry, balance sheets, trail balance, profit and loss statements, assets/equipment ledger, accounts payable services, financial statement preparation, cash flow statements, expenses ledger, assets/equipment ledger, income statements etc and most of the service providers in UK are working on it in order to gain an edge over their competitors.
• Credit card reconciliation: To do bank credit card reconciliation is a daunting task which many are not willing to do mainly because it is prone to errors and can cost valuable resources if not done correctly. It also forms one of important and major sub-services of accounting and bookkeeping services, where team of skilled accountants gets in touch with the in-house team to understand the need of bank credit card reconciliation and to provide a customized solution in order to address your bank management requirements.
• Payroll processing: Payroll processing is an important accounting function with administrative responsibilities and tops the list of the service of a service provider. It involves processes such as payroll reports, cheque processing, payroll tax returns or employee insurance deductions.

Off lately, it has been noticed that most of the firms in the United Kingdom are outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping services to India and the main reasons for the current trend are as below:

Benefits of Outsourcing Accounting And Bookkeeping Services

1. Cost saving: Cost is one of the main and obvious reasons why bookkeeping and accounting services from India are being outsourced to the United Kingdom because cost of a skilled labour in India is much cheaper than what it is in their own country and despite low cost, there is no dearth of skill and quality.
2. Time zone advantage: By outsourcing bookkeeping and accounting services from India, UK firms get an added advantage of time zone because the time zone of India is such that the services can be availed at any point of time and thus increases turnaround time.
3. Expert accountants and bookkeepers: India has carved its niche in the world of accounting and bookkeeping and is considered as one of the largest pools of talented and skilled accountants and bookkeepers and thus outsourcing bookkeeping and accounting services from India gives an added advantage to the firms in UK.
4. Easy scalability: It gives you an easy scalability and makes it easier for the firms in UK to up-scale or down-scale the business with a short turnaround time.
5. Keep frauds in check: India as a country is known for its work ethics and firms in UK are well assured of the quality of the results.
6. High level of accuracy: As mentioned above, India tops the list of the most preferred outsourcing destinations for accounting and bookkeeping and thus outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping services from India assures highly accurate results, which in turn helps the UK companies to manage back office operations efficiently.
7. Access to latest technology: In today’s dynamic market with new and innovative accounting tools and technologies, India is one of the nations which is the source of such innovations and it is one of the main reasons why most of the UK firms are outsourcing their bookkeeping and accounting requirements to India.
8. Avoid penalties during account processing: A smooth bookkeeping and accounting practice helps a firm to stay away from fines and penalties and quality of results produced by the service providers in India ensures that any kind of penalty because of inappropriate account and tax processing is avoided.
9. Concentrate on your core competencies: When you know that your bookkeeping and accounting is in a safe hand and a professional team is working on it in India, you can dedicate your time, energy and resources to your core competencies.
10. Data security policies: One of the major concern in business is to maintain the security of documents and accounts and by outsourcing bookkeeping and accounting from India, companies back in UK are well assured that their records and accounts are safe and in secure databases.

About the author

Sumit Agarwal
Sumit Agarwal (ACMA ACA India), the Managing partner of dns accountants is a highly respected accountant with expertise in helping owner-managed businesses.