How Outsourced Accounting Works With SAOS: 5 Basic Steps
Outsourced accounting certainly isn’t a new concept in the business world, but if it’s new to you, it might be a little confusing. How does outsourced accounting work? How does it benefit your business vs. hiring an in-house bookkeeper or accounting team? Is it different from what’s offered by CPAs?
Outsourcing your accounting opens the door to a wide range of financial services and advantages to help your business grow and thrive. Here at SAOS, we tailor each engagement to our clients’ needs, but our process can typically be explained in five basic steps. Here’s a brief walk-through of how the process of outsourcing with SAOS would work:
Step 1. You contact SAOS for help.
Whether your organization has an annual revenue of $1 million or $20 million, gaining better financial insight is key to making good decisions. If you’re spending your time trying to collect and organize your financial data rather than using that information to drive business growth, it’s worth reaching out for help. As experts in business accounting, we will assist you with a wide variety of financial needs. Once we’ve talked through your challenges, goals and budget, we can begin applying our knowledge to create a plan that fits.
Step 2. We build your customized level of service.
It’s your job to know your business, and our job to know accounting. With our powers combined, we can rule the universe together! (Well, the universe of awesome accounting, at least.) Together, we can figure out what you need and what will help you the most. If you decide you want to work with us, we will set up your accounting system based on the unique reporting requirements, control requirements, and other needs of your business. Once your system is set up in the cloud, you’ll be able to access it, view dashboards with it, enter data – however involved you want to be.
With your system in place, we execute accounting functions depending on the needs of your business. Based on the situation, we can work on your finances for a few hours a week or 40 hours a week. Here are just a few examples of what we can do:
- Pay bills and invoice customers once a day or once a week
- Provide customized reports daily or weekly
- Help run payroll
- Do general ledger maintenance
- Partner with your bankers, attorneys, and tax accountants
We also tailor our services based on what will give you the best return on investment for working with us, which leads us to the next step.
Step 3. We establish a fixed, predictable monthly rate based on your needs.
We charge our clients a flat monthly rate based on transaction volume, how the work will be performed, and other factors. This flat rate works similarly to paying an employee in-house. Because you’re outsourcing, however, you won’t have to deal with the other expenses of having an employee, such as administrative expenses, payroll taxes, benefits, and an obligation to manage them.
We understand that outsourced accounting needs to be a cost-effective solution, so we tailor our services to fit your budget. Many of our clients are amazed at how much outsourced accounting saves them in terms of money and time, not to mention the peace of mind.
Step 4. You get a dedicated team assigned to you.
We want to be your trusted business partner, not just another bookkeeper. When you partner with us, you will have a bookkeeper and an accounting manager assigned to your business. These highly trained professionals have experience working with businesses like yours and can deliver valuable insight. Your dedicated accounting manager will provide oversight and ensure timeliness and accuracy. If you have any questions or want some advice, we will be at your service during business hours, just like an in-house employee.
Step 5. We set up a secure way to share financial information.
We take security of your sensitive information very seriously. We will establish a secure way to share financial information (which can be read-only if desired). This can include bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial data. Bills, invoices, deposits, and other documents are shared through a secure folder. By applying our accounting expertise to your specific data, we’re able to deliver accurate metrics that matter to help you better your business.
Want to know more about outsourcing your accounting?
Every business we work with is unique, but these five steps are the basis of our outsourced accounting process. If you’d like to find out how this might work for your organization, we hope you will contact us to talk through how we can help.