5 signs your firm is ready to outsource

There’s always a reason (or reasons) to wait beyond the capacity of your accounting firm to employ strategies that can benefit it, but waiting too long can set your firm back. Perhaps the team isn’t ready, the timing might not seem right, you’re concerned about client pushback, or you simply don’t know where to start. Recognising the signs can mean the difference between becoming too busy, and defining a stable, seamless workflow. 

Jump to:

1. Your team is working beyond their capacity
2. Senior advisors aren’t working to their full potential
3. Quantity has replaced quality
4. Turnaround times are too long
5. Your firm hasn’t grown in 12 months

Outsourcing is a strategy many Australian accountants are turning to to help fill in the gaps and create more revenue for their firms. Instead of being perfectly prepared to take the leap to outsource, it’s usually the firms that recognise the early signals that they need assistance with to help tackle their workload and grow their firm beyond compliance. If you’ve been contemplating whether outsourcing is right for your firm, here are five signs that could shift your outlook and your firm’s future:

1. Your team is working beyond their capacity

An accounting firm is only as good as the team they have working for them. If you’ve noticed signs of burnout, staff working longer hours, lack of morale, or you’ve experienced a high-turnover - these are serious signals your team is working beyond their capacity. The natural instinct is to look to hire in-house but with the accounting talent shortage in Australia, this option can be laborious and unsuccessful. Here are some ways outsourcing can help:

• Your outsourced partner or team can jump on board and tailor their approach to your work to suit your current workflow
• Pick and choose which tasks you’d like to be outsourced. If you’ve noticed a lag in tax submissions or bookkeeping tasks, outsource those to start and develop your partnership from there
• If team members have approached you looking to move their career beyond compliance, an outsourced partner can pick up their work while they pursue their interests in more in-depth services, like business advisory
• Outsourced teams are a scalable option. As your firm grows, your relationship with outsourcing can grow alongside it.

2. Senior advisors aren’t working to their full potential

This sign can often be overlooked and one of the more expensive side effects of working beyond the capacity of a firm. When a senior advisor or manager is spending their time on basic compliance tasks, the ability for real growth is hindered. Paying senior salaries for junior tasks to be completed can reduce revenue and increase costs significantly. 

Outsourcing is the best way to complete high-volume, low-complexity work out while allowing senior advisors to handle client management, business advisory services, and financial strategy. In order to differentiate your firm from others, senior advisors need their skillset to be utilised to its full potential. Freeing up time for senior staff means being able to take on more clients, high-net-worth-individuals (HNWI), and improving upon your services which will bring in higher returns. 

3. Quantity has replaced quality

Accountants would love to be able to take on any and all clients who approach them to handle their businesses finances, but the risk in doing so without a strong team behind you is that quantity can quickly replace quality work. Some signs that this has happened within your firm can be:

• Errors are recurring due to there not being a proper review process in place. This can happen when team members are overworked, overtired, and under pressure to just get the work out
• Rush jobs are more frequent and becoming a request from clients that can creep out from your usual scope
• Corners are being cut due to time pressure and mismanaged client relationships
• A higher number of queries from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) due to errors on important documents or frequent late submissions
• Client complaints have risen in numbers and the issues are becoming too obvious to ignore.

Partnering with an outsourced team can help. It allows you to hand over your compliance tasks and develop a strong review process to ensure mistakes are at a minimum. Gaining your firm’s time back is the ultimate goal so that quality can always be top priority.

4. Turnaround times are too long

Completing an honest review of your turnaround times over the past twelve months is the first step to recognising the signs that timelines are becoming too long. 

• Are clients waiting longer than you’d like for their tax returns to come back? 
• Are business activity statements unable to go out in a uniformed pattern so that your client can pay them with enough time?
• Are jobs stacking up in your pipeline with no real timeline on when they are to be completed?
• Are clients complaining about their turnaround times and you’re finding the word sorry to be a regular occurrence in your communications?
• Are team members consistently stressed about delays and how to manage client expectations?

If any of these questions rang true, it might be time to look into outsourcing. Slow turnaround times are usually a symptom of a firm that isn’t functioning to their full abilities. In order to banish bottlenecks, you have to treat the cause, not the symptom. In simple terms, outsourcing means more hands on deck. When you have the basics covered, jobs go out on time, queues shorten, and workloads are lightened.

5. Your firm hasn’t grown in 12 months

Growth can mean different things for different firms. Attending networking events, training days to upskill your team, adding business advisory services to your firm’s offerings, strategy meetings with clients - ask yourself if you’ve engaged in any of these over the last twelve months. If the answer is no, outsourcing is a real option that can encourage a firm’s growth.

If a firm is too busy to grow, the firm’s revenue does not grow alongside it. This can become a stagnant and dangerous cycle that continues on with no relief in sight. Outsourcing can help break that cycle. Solving the capacity problem that many firms have, outsourcing works to help you to invest the time it takes to motivate for change, and in turn, growth.