Role of an Accounting Back-Office

The world economy and health have been disrupted significantly ever since the COVID-19 outbreak started. The personal and professional lives of people have changed drastically, and this scenario is likely to stay for long. If we talk about the businesses, either they are witnessing a surplus demand for products and services, or are struggling to make ends meet. Irrespective of the situation a business is in at present, it is imperative that it focuses on its core operations of getting more clients and meeting their demands timely and proficiently.

This is only possible when they stop investing their time and energy in managing the back-office tasks, especially the accounting ones, owing to its complexity, need for expertise, and a zero scope of error. This is where an outsourcing accounting back-office partner steps in!

The Outsourcing Partner Support

The Outsourcing Partner Support

In this pandemic and lockdown time, most of the companies are struggling to ensure smooth business operations, either due to a staff shortage or an inability to hire new employees. Accountants play a vital role in business and if a company’s in-house accountants are unavailable or incapable of providing remote working services due to a lack of appropriate work set-up at home or technical expertise, it can seek help from an outsourcing partner.

An outsourcing company has a dedicated team of accountants who are ready to serve you in the pandemic. These companies are extremely professional in their approach and have made work-from-home arrangements for all their employees to ensure consistent client services.

Read Also: Small Business Accounting and Bookkeeping Basics You Can’t Ignore

Some Interesting Stats

  • Almost 78% of companies throughout the world are satisfied with their outsourcing partners and feel positive about their collaboration.
  • Some or entire services are outsourced by 71% of financial service executives.
  • As per reports, the combined Annual Contract Value (ACV) of the outsourcing market in the Asia Pacific accounted for $2.2 billion, up by 8%, equivalent to the best quarter of the region.
  • This growth was mainly focused on the as-a-service segment, which increased by 25%, accounting to a record $1.7 billion and has now become 75% of the entire market value.
  • IaaS went up by 32%, accounting to $1.5 billion despite the decline of SaaS by 8% to $213 million. ~ Source

Top Benefits of Outsourcing Back-Office Accounting

1. Reduced/Delayed Payments

As we all know that businesses are going through an economic crisis, they need every penny they have right now. With the help of outsourcing, they can reduce their operational expenses to a great extent by not spending in-house and also availing discounts with outsourcing services. Apart from this, a great bonding with your outsourcing partner can enable you to pay late as well when everything goes back to normal.

2. Quicker Job Completion

Due to COVID-19, a lot of tasks related to your accounting back-office might be lagging behind. In such a scenario, seeking outsourcing help is the best option as their accounting experts are highly skilled and familiar with different industry accounting laws to get things done timely and efficiently.

3. High Accuracy

Accounting demands 100% accuracy! As compared to your in-house accountants, the accounting team of outsourcing experts is highly experienced in providing you with unmatched accuracy in your accounting processes.

4. Round-the-Clock Work

When it comes to managing the back-office operations, a plethora of tasks is there to handle. You cannot work 24/7 to complete those pending tasks on time. However, you can hire an outsourcing team that works in different shifts and can provide you with round-the-clock services to get the job done in a trouble-free and timely manner.

5. Enhanced Security

Today, data breach cases have become a major concern, especially in the accounting industry due to the sensitive financial information it contains. Most of the businesses cannot really afford the expenditure of buying/maintaining expensive and high-security accounting software/infrastructure.

Outsourcing providers are highly professional in this regard and have invested in secure infrastructure and technologies to ensure the safety of your financial data against any kind of data breach attempt.

Read Also: Impacts of Coronavirus on Businesses Worldwide

6. Effortless Audit of AP & AR Transactions

Just as we discussed above that every penny matters at this point in time, outsourcing enables you to have detailed and accurate financial reports. This enables you to gain valuable insights into the transactions of accounts payable and receivables, paving the way for an effortless audit.

7. Enhanced Cash Flow

There have been a lot of instances during this pandemic where businesses had paid for a service but didn’t get it due to lockdown, along with situations where they had to collect money from someone but could not. When you get your accounts audited accurately with the help of outsourcing, you can know exactly from where you can collect money during this economic crisis, leading to enhanced cash flow eventually.

8. Better Handling of Heavy Consumer Demands

There are businesses that have seen a significant drop in sales/demand for their products/services, and then there are those who are witnessing a heavy demand. These include businesses selling items related to grocery, medicine, masks/sanitizers, etc. Also, there are many businesses that have started small scale industries to manufacture PPE kits, sanitizers, and masks to leverage COVID-19 opportunities.

Such businesses should focus on meeting the surplus demand of consumers and not on handling back-office accounting tasks. Outsourcing frees them from such chores and enables them to focus on serving their consumers better and timely. While they focus on consumers, outsourcing providers prepare financial reports for them on a quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis.

9. Growth Opportunities and Vision

The COVID-19 situation is no different as there are businesses who will struggle and there will be the ones who will look for opportunities. Renowned and respected back-office partners are usually the ones who provide you with more than just financial reports. With their years of experience, they enable you to gain valuable insights into the financial data to help you understand your position in the market and enable you to have a future vision and look for growth and scalability opportunities based on the same.

For instance, a firm that was providing offline tuition classes had to stop its operations due to lockdown and is now looking to offer online classes. It will benefit at large from the support of outsourcing providers as they will provide the confidence to the firm in its ability to offer online services through the guidance and detailed financial reports prepared by them. These reports will help the firm in understanding its financial position and do adequate planning accordingly.

Conclusion

Businesses need to understand they have to hold hands together during this pandemic period as this is the only way they can survive and thrive in the present market scenario. By opting for outsourcing accounting back-office services, firms can focus on their core competencies of meeting the demands of their consumers proficiently and timely, paving the way for their growth and scalability.

In case you are looking for a renowned and trusted outsourcing partner to manage your accounting back-office processes; you may consider collaborating with Cogneesol. It has been providing the highest quality accounting and other types of outsourcing support to businesses worldwide since 2008. Start your free trial by contacting us today itself!

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