How Finance and Accounting Outsourcing Companies Support Business Continuity Planning

“It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.”

Every business has either just experienced a disruption, is currently experiencing one, or will soon experience a disruption that threatens the continuity of its finance and accounting operations.

If yours hasn’t experienced any, you likely haven’t been in business long enough. The good thing is that with finance and planning, you can strengthen your systems to prevent any downtime in your operations and services when the time comes.

In this article, we’ll see how finance and accounting outsourcing companies help accounting firms and finance leaders make their operations more resilient at no extra cost.

Why Business Continuity Matters in Finance and Accounting

Disruption in your finance and accounting function is a lose-lose for everyone involved: employees, vendors, businesses, and the accounting firms that serve them.

Employees may not receive their pay on time, which could impact their ability to meet financial obligations. Vendors won’t be paid on time. The company misses compliance deadlines, which attracts regulatory sanctions and deprives them of the insights to make better business decisions.

For accounting firms, the damage to reputation can cost them valuable business opportunities.

Common Risks That Threaten Finance Operations

• Staff Turnover and Talent Shortages

Unlike other professions where the barrier to entry is low, finance and accounting tasks require technical expertise that results from academic and professional training, considering that a simple error can result in financial penalties and costly business decisions.

That is what makes filling vacant positions expensive in and of itself. Depending on their level of education, they may need to be trained on technical accounting processes, technology, and client needs, which makes losing a single employee hard to recover from.

Failure to fill these vacant positions creates a vacuum in the team, delays workflows, and increases the likelihood of errors and missed deadlines. This exposes the business to financial penalty and reputational damage.

• Compliance Failures and Audit Pressures

Changing financial reporting frameworks increases the pressure on finance and accounting teams to research relevant updates and help businesses navigate complex regulations.

Financial audits also bring their share of challenges. It requires finance teams to allocate significant resources to the process at the expense of day-to-day finance and accounting work.

Audits also put pressure on finance teams to ensure old financial records are complete and up-to-date, which takes attention away from the financial tasks at hand.

• Tech Disruptions and Delivery Bottlenecks

While technology has improved the productivity, efficiency, and profitability of finance and accounting services, it can also disrupt operations negatively if things go wrong.

System downtime, data security concerns, and poor integrations can delay accounting workflows, risking critical deadlines and missing out on timely and actionable insights.

For example, an outage that delays invoice processing can degenerate into cash flow problems, preventing clients from capitalizing on market opportunities.

How Outsourcing Builds Business Resilience

Finance and accounting outsourcing companies help to build resilience through:

• Continuity Through Distributed Global Teams

Finance teams that outsource their services to vetted third parties in other countries are less likely to be grounded when there is a disruption in their immediate environment.

In such cases, they can easily shift their urgent work (especially the most urgent one) to offshore teams to continue operations seamlessly while the affected location recovers.

That makes more sense because running a distributed means they have already moved their work and financial information, which makes them accessible to their remote and offshore teams.

• Backup Resources and Scalable Capacity

Outsourced finance and accounting services provide standby resources for finance and accounting firms. These professionals are already trained on the relevant accounting standards and are ready to be deployed as quickly as possible. This makes them ideal for emergencies, giving you workload relief.

This operational flexibility empowers accounting firms and finance teams to scale their operations up or down to manage costs and grow confidently.

• Process Rigor and Documentation Discipline

Finance and accounting outsourcing companies prioritize workflow discipline and detailed process documentation, ensuring that workflow processes are accessible to everyone who needs them rather than a select few.

For example, Finsmart Accounting documents its clients’ workflow processes and best practices. This makes it easy for us to quickly assign other team members to our clients when they request more resources or want to change their existing resources.

Detailed documentation also helps them to reduce error rates and ensure a transparent audit trail of financial transactions.

“The Finsmart Accounting team already knows the accounting requirements. I don’t have to train somebody from scratch like I did in the past. That enables them to hit the ground running immediately.

All we do is explain to them what we need to do with the client. What their business is about, so they can apply the accounting knowledge, the QuickBooks knowledge, the reconciliation knowledge, and all that stuff to the specific issues of that client.”

Rebecca Santiago, Owner, Advance Professional Accounting Service

The Role of Finance BPOs in Disaster Recovery Planning

Finance and accounting Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies ensure financial operations continue steadily during crises and natural disasters.

• Workflow redundancy and secure cloud systems

Finance BPOs create workflow redundancy by centralizing relevant information online. This ensures your financial operations can continue to function even when your local operations grind to a halt.

These cloud-based systems also protect files and information from unauthorized access while allowing relevant staff to access them from anywhere in the world. Enables firms to get back on their feet (recover) after a disaster quickly and with minimal disruptions.

• SOPs, audit trails, and documentation for continuity

Workflow best practices like audit trails and standard operating procedures (SOPs) help to map processes and exceptions, enabling new team members to be onboarded and hit the ground running immediately.

Finance and accounting outsourcing providers use these to standardize the quality of work, regardless of the assigned team member. They also make it easier for finance teammates to fill in for each other in times of crisis, without compromising accuracy and service quality.

These help to build a workflow system that withstands disruptions and shortens recovery time.

• Rapid workload transfers and geographical flexibility

Most BPO companies have delivery centers in multiple regions, where different staff work.

If a crisis threatens financial operations in one region, finance teams can reassign work to their outsourcing partners in safer locations. This will prevent delays and keep things going as smoothly as possible.

This gives you the level of flexibility that is not possible with in-house accounting operations.

Case Example: Two Different Cases Where Outsourcing Saved the Finance Function

1. Sudden team exit during tax season: fast offshore support

An accounting team in Florida faced a major disruption when two senior tax managers resigned just before the 2022 tax season.

This left vacancies in a firm where the previous tax season was overwhelming, with team members working long hours, surviving on snacks and pastries, and managing to meet deadlines.

With about ten days to the start of the season, they quickly engaged an offshore accounting firm they had worked with in the past. The outsourced team knew how to fill out the tax forms and was up-to-date with IRS guidelines, so onboarding was completed in one week.

The outsourced team’s work rate excited the in-house team, so they requested for additional three tax preparers.

Fast-forward to the end of the tax season, and the firm had the most seamless experience they had ever had, which gave them more time to review tax returns in detail to improve accuracy.

Access to a pool of plug-and-play accounting resources not just saved the day, but it reversed what promised to be a grueling experience that could have caused errors, attracted penalties, and resulted in staff turnover on a large scale.

2. Mid-year audit deadline: outsourcing stepped in overnight

John Doe Manufacturing (not a real name) firm was a few days behind schedule for their mid-year audit in 2023 when the audit team found several violations of accounting standards.

A cleanup process was needed to avoid material misstatements or a qualified opinion, which the management didn’t like for what it could mean to stakeholders’ confidence.

Were they to hire more accounting staff, the recruitment process alone would not be completed before their audit deadline. Thankfully, they were introduced to an offshore finance and accounting outsourcing firm.

They engaged them to clean up the books within a few days, discrepancies were corrected, financial records were organized, and necessary schedules were prepared to enhance the audit procedure.

The audit process was completed in time, and the opinion was unqualified, giving the company much-needed credibility and helping it to make informed decisions.

Choosing the Right Outsourcing Partner for Continuity Assurance

Your outsourcing experience and continuity plan could be different based on the outsourcing company you partner with.

These are some factors to consider to get a successful relationship:

• Must-haves: security protocols, talent bench, response time

Data security, a large talent pool, and a quick response time are the major components of business resilience and continuity, and it’s easy to see why.

When your outsourcing partner is not conscious of data security and privacy, every task you assign to them is a potential cause for a data breach and exposure that could cost a business hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Common data security systems include data encryption technology, managed switches, VPNs, role-based access control, and compliance with international security standards (ISO, SOC 2, GDPR, etc.).

Having a large pool of qualified staff is another critical factor. It determines the finance and accounting outsourcing company’s ability to supply the needed volume of accounting talent as your workload increases during peak seasons.

Otherwise, you might be left stranded when you can’t find more people to take on more work during an internal or external crisis.

Similarly, a good response time ensures your outsourcing company can onboard its staff quickly enough to meet workload demands without delays in workflow. Finance and accounting outsourcing companies rely on strong process documentation and audit trails to integrate more accounting professionals for unforeseen workload demands.

• Key questions to ask during partner evaluation

Asking the right questions will reveal your potential outsourcing partner’s strengths and weaknesses in managing stable financial operations when under pressure.

Some of the important questions to ask include:

• How many staff do you have?

Ensures sufficient accounting professionals to scale operations quickly

• How quickly can you scale resources during a disruption?

This reflects the speed and integration of their talent onboarding and integration process.

• How do you ensure redundancy across locations and systems?

Shows how quickly the provider can shift workload to ensure continued operations

• Can you describe the disruptions you have handled in the past?

Provides proof of results and credibility.

• Are you compliant with regulations (like GAAP, IFRS, SOX, etc.)?

Keeps financial data accurate to avoid penalties.

How Finsmart ensures uninterrupted finance operations

Finsmart Accounting has built its outsourcing model around access to accounting expertise, rigorous process documentation, advanced technology, and contract flexibility that enables finance and accounting teams to scale within seven (7) days.

Here’s what that means in detail:

• A pool of trained finance and accounting professionals:

Finsmart’s 100+ staff are graduates of accounting programs up to Master’s degree level. They are trained in international accounting standards and specific U.S. financial reporting regulations like SOX and IRS guidelines, which makes them a ready, plug-and-play resource for any business.

These academic and professional qualifications enable them to focus on learning their partners’ workflow processes, best practices, and client needs.

“The good thing about Finsmart Accounting is that they are experienced. There is no learning curve, so we don’t have to train anybody. They’re already trained.

It’s like having an expert sitting next to you. We usually just hand them the work, and once they finish it, their supervisor will review it and get back to me. I usually glance through it because everything is always perfect at this point.”

Mariko Hayashi-Hall, Founder and CEO of Chicago-based Brilliant Solutions Group

• SOP-driven processes:

With Finsmart, you only have to train your dedicated outsourcing staff once. We document your processes the first time you are onboarding any of our team members.

We use this documentation to train your new team members on our own (when you need more resources in the future), saving you the time and energy of doing this over and over.

• Scalable Engagements:

Finsmart Accounting’s flexible contracts enable accounting firms to quickly add more accounting resources as their needs increase or in periods of emergencies.

You can hire our team on an hourly, project-based, or full-time equivalent basis.

Secure cloud platforms and redundant systems: Finsmart Accounting’s processes rely on secure IT infrastructure, encrypted communication, and strict access controls.

Finmart’s staff are trained to manage cloud services, mobile apps, and advanced ERP systems in a way that protects clients’ financial data and enables seamless handover of work and information between in-house and outsourced team members.

Make Outsourcing a Core Part of Your Business Continuity Plan

Disruptions are not the problem. The problem is your inability to continue service delivery while looking for ways to recover as quickly as possible.

Finance and accounting outsourcing enables accounting firm owners, CFOs, and financial controllers to build systems that withstand sudden disruptions.

By providing uninterrupted access to accounting talent through flexible engagement models, finance and accounting outsourcing companies create a system of standby accounting staff that shields finance operations from internal and external operational threats.

Finsmart Accounting embeds finance and accounting outsourcing talents in accounting firms and finance teams in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. These teams multiply their locations to ensure smooth operations despite local disruptions.

For over 15 years, we have provided the talent pool, engagement models, and technology that help 300+ businesses to build resilient financial operations in these regions.
To understand how we can help you disaster-proof your business, click here to book a free consultation.