Need to Hire Offshore Accountants? Here's What Smart CPA Firms Get Right

No CPA gets offshore accounting wrong when they are clear on the tasks to offshore, the engagement model to use, and the provider to partner with.

Sadly, many CPA firms are less prepared to maximize offshore accounting than they believe.

When they enter a partnership this way and it doesn’t work out well, their confirmation bias will lead them to believe that hiring offshore accounts won’t work for them.

If, like Elizabeth Bergen, they understand that it is only a problem with their offshoring strategy, they would try again (with a better approach).

“We used an offshore accounting contractor in the past, and it hasn’t been the same experience with Finsmart.

The other first overseas contractor we used had a massive turnover regularly, and I was having to explain and go over my SOPs with their new employees every time.”

One of the things my internal team appreciates is that Finsmart bookkeepers have integrated well into our team. We have regular meetings with them, and my internal staff enjoys their efficiency and productivity.”

Elizabeth Bergen, owner of Foray Business Group

In this article, we examine the mindset and approach that will position your CPA firm to get the most out of your offshore accountants.

Introduction: Offshore Accounting as a Growth Strategy (Not Just a Cost-Cutting Drive)

• Why top firms turn to offshore hiring in 2025

Since accounting practice management challenges, such as deadline pressure and changes in client demands, are no respecters of the current talent shortage in the U.S. and other Western countries, smart CPA firm owners have learned to remove all obstacles that prevent them from getting work done and delivering excellent client services.

Thankfully, hiring offshore accountants makes that easy. The large talent pool, accounting skills (and qualifications), and time zone difference enable firms to balance internal workload, augment in-house expertise, and meet client deliverables, respectively.

The flexibility of engagements allows firms to hire as quickly as necessary to respond to unforeseen surges in client demands, prevent employee burnout, and maintain work quality even during the busy season.

• The shift from cost-saving to performance-enhancement

The major reason for offshoring is no longer about reducing the cost of services delivered. After all, what does it benefit a firm if it accesses cheap labor at the expense of accuracy, compliance, and work quality?

A major benefit of offshore accounting is the expertise and additional capacity that allows in-house teams to focus on reviewing work and doing the tasks that suit them best, which has helped most firms retain their senior staff.

Another benefit revolves around the time zone difference between the U.S. and offshore destinations, like India. This allows CPA firms to delegate tasks to their offshore team in one day and have the completed tasks the next. This reduces project turnaround time and improves the ability to meet your clients’ deadlines.

Offshore accounting is also more scalable. It offers faster recruitment of qualified, CPA-level accountants who can hit the ground running immediately to deliver client services at scale.

Then there is the data security advantage. Offshore accounting service providers are usually more up-to-date with data security. The top offshore companies also offer better security infrastructure than the average CPA firm can afford.

They Hire Offshore Accountants as Long-Term Strategic Partners

Smart CPA firm owners understand that using their offshore team on a short-term basis keeps them from maximizing the full potential of the outsourcing relationship.

They are aware that when different offshore accountants handle their tasks (this shared engagement model is commonly used in short-term arrangements), work quality suffers and inconsistencies are more common.

• The difference between short-term staffing and strategic offshoring

With short-term offshore accounting staffing, CPA firms rely on their offshore partners to address occasional needs, usually revolving around workflow surges.

The minimal investment in training and integrating the offshore team, and the absence of ongoing constructive work, will prevent the offshore team from learning and growing with the CPA firm over the long haul.

Meanwhile, using offshore teams over the long term requires more training, integration, and lasting relationships that ensure better alignment with the CPA firm’s procedures and best practices. These are critical to delivering work that meets relevant quality standards.

This clarity also translates to faster turnaround time, which translates to more revenues and a more consistent client experience.

• Treating offshore teams as extensions of your internal team

Treating offshore accountants as an extension of the CPA firm means training them on the firm’s values, clients’ expectations, and integrating them into the workflow systems and tools.

That way, the offshore team stays up-to-date with the knowledge needed to complete their tasks in a way that is consistent with the rest of the firm’s projects.

When done well, the offshore team basically works like the CPA firm’s remote staff, working in the hours that make sense for their collaboration needs.

Speaking of collaboration, it is also easier in this case. The CPA firm can communicate and share files with its offshore teams in your project management software.

They Use Offshore Talent to Improve Client Experience

Successful CPA firms hire offshore accountants to improve client experience, though:

• Faster delivery through time zone advantage

Offshore accountants enable 24-hour client service that allows CPA firms to assign tasks in one day and have them ready for your review and delivery the next day.

This follow-the-sun workflow system enables their workday to continue in offshore locations while their U.S. teams have gone to bed for the day.

That way, client service is quicker, which improves the client experience.

• Improved consistency and responsiveness

When every team member is overwhelmed and racing to complete their tasks before their deadlines, it is difficult to insist on quality and standards.

Ensuring their internal teams have sufficient time and optimal workloads gives them more freedom to produce work that meets applicable standards throughout the year.

This workload balance also makes the team more available to attend to client calls and emails to maintain quality client relationships.

They Align Tools, SOPs, and Reporting for Offshore Integration

CPA Firms that hire offshore accountants build the enabling system to support remote work, which means subscribing to the right apps and creating the right workflow processes.

• Common tools and platforms successful firms use

Integration remains the best way to use offshore accountants, but that relies on the right software solutions that enable remote collaboration.

There is an abundance of cloud-based tools for different categories, like general ledger (QuickBooks Online, Xero, and NetSuite), tax (Drake, UltraTax CS), Payroll (Gusto, Sage), Practice Management (Financial Cents, Karbon), communication (Slack, Teams), and so on.

Two important features of these tools are accessibility and data security.  These tools centralize information to enable offshore teams to access work and client information to prevent information silos and give the CPA firm owner or manager visibility into client projects.

They are also compliant with relevant security standards like ISO, GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, ensuring that the information shared with offshore teams does not fall into the wrong hands.

• Building workflows for seamless offshore collaboration

With an offshore team that is miles away from their U.S. partners, assigning work and giving them all the information they need to track the work can be a challenge. That’s where building effective workflows comes in handy.

This is not just about telling your offshore team what to do; it’s also about giving them access to all the tools and resources they need to work with minimal disruptions.

Smart CPA firm owners document their procedures into checklist templates, which show every team member the task they need to do, how they need to do it, and every other information they need along the way.

That way, every task (such as monthly bookkeeping, payroll, or tax returns) has a set process for completing them. This saves time, prevents confusion, and keeps results aligned with firm-wide standards.

They Recruit for Ownership and Culture Fit (Not Just Certifications)

• The importance of mindset and soft skills

Hard skills and technical qualifications are crucial, but they can become obsolete. The right attitude and mindset never go out of style.

A positive mindset ensures that your offshore team is not only qualified to serve your clients today, but that they will be up-to-date with the hard and soft skills needed to stay relevant to your firm and client needs in the long term.

The right cultural fit will also enable your offshore team to integrate into your team successfully, receive feedback with grace, and correct what’s wrong as quickly as possible.

Cultural fit also affects communication. Smart CPAs understand their communication and collaboration needs, so they prioritize offshore partners that speak and understand their language and are willing to adjust their working hours to suit their desired work schedule.

How top CPAs evaluate for long-term fit

Interestingly, technical skills are easier to measure than the soft skills that determine how hard skills are used.

The most successful offshoring firms evaluate offshore accounting talents using a mix of approaches that includes:

• Structured interviews: This allows them to measure candidates’ attitude and problem-solving skills using scenario-based questions, which can ask candidates to describe a time they solved a difficult business problem.

When done well, this should show their sense of initiative, ownership (or the lack thereof), and problem-solving ability.

• Trial projects: Real-world tasks show how well an offshore accounting provider follows SOPs, how quickly they turn in the task, or how they handle negative feedback.

They Scale Fast Without Overhiring

• Meeting tax season demand without burning out staff

Smart CPAs understand that the tax seasonal surge is brutal to even the best accountants, and it reduces their ability to deliver their best services under pressure.

They also appreciate the difficulty in getting sufficient full-time staff ahead of the busy season workload without hiring more accountants than they’ll eventually need when the tax season is over.

On the other hand, waiting for client demands to increase before hiring can cause their teams to burn out before they get the accounting talent they need, given the talent shortage that has made recruiting slow and expensive.

In all of these, offshore accounting services providers have a sufficient talent pool, flexible engagement models, and expertise in tax forms and IRS guidelines to be onboarded within two weeks. This makes it easier for VPA firms to respond to a sudden surge in workload faster.

Leveraging flexible engagement models (FTE, hourly, project-based)

Flexibility of engagement models is a major benefit of Offshore accounting because it allows CPA firms to structure their use of their offshore team in any way they see fit.

Common models include:

• Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs): Provides CPA firms with an accounting team that works 40 hours a week like their full-time staff. This is ideal for firms needing year-round support.
• Hourly Engagements: Great for CPA firms needing support on an hourly basis. This helps firms with fluctuating workloads to manage client demands without the commitment of a long-term relationship.
• Project-Based Work: This allows CPA firms to manage one-off projects. This project-based approach is best suited for firms needing support for specific projects, like QuickBooks Cleanup.

They Measure ROI Beyond Labor Cost Savings

Offshoring lowers payroll costs, but even if it didn’t, many smart CPA firms wouldn’t have a problem paying more for the expertise, flexibility, and quality of work that it provides.

That’s because cost-cutting strategies that endanger the quality of client service or other important business metrics can be counterproductive.

• Key success metrics firms track after going offshore

Some of the several other ways successful CPA firms measure the positive impacts of offshoring accounting include:

• Turnaround time: Measures how quickly offshore teams complete their assigned tasks (reconciliations, tax returns, etc.). The faster it is, the better for the firm’s overall profitability.
• Work quality and error rates: Deals with the corresponding improvement in the quality and accuracy of the firm’s client service after hiring offshore accountants.
• Capacity utilization: Tracks how using offshore accountants has made the CPA firm more productive (and profitable) overall.

• Burnout prevention, client satisfaction, and retention

Team burnout is another critical metric of success for CPA firms, and that’s because it’s at the foundation of other critical metrics, like client and team satisfaction and retention.

By reducing the pressure on in-house teams, offshore accounting enables them to deliver accurate projects and ensure clients receive timely attention, which will make them feel valued and satisfied. A satisfied client hardly considers leaving the firm.

This is also important for team satisfaction because an engaged team delivers work they’re proud of and has enough time for other activities that matter to them beyond work. This encourages them to stick with your firm for the long haul.

Choosing the Right Offshore Accounting Partner

After all is said and done, the quality of your offshoring experience depends on the offshore company you choose to partner with. That is why successful CPA firms approach the selection process very intentionally.

Qualities to look for in a provider (Why firms choose partners like Finsmart Accounting

Here are the qualities an offshore accounting service provider of worth should have:

• Experience serving U.S. businesses: Your offshore accounting team should not only understand relevant financial reporting standards (GAAP, IFRS, IRS, etc.), but they should also have proven experience using relevant technology to help businesses in the U.S. maintain financial data and access insights to grow their businesses.

Finsmart Accounting has specialized accounting professionals for different accounting services and domains. For example, Finsmart Accounting’s U.S. tax professionals specialize in individual and business tax preparation (Form 1040, Form 1065, 1120, 1120S, Form 1041, Form 706).

They are constantly up-to-date with IRS guidelines, industry-specific regulations, and state and local tax deduction requirements.

• Data security systems: Strong security policies (like the use of VPNs, role-based access control) and compliance with standards like ISO, SOC 2, etc. ensure the protection of client data from unauthorized access.

The Finsmart Accounting team operates with a secure IT infrastructure and uses encrypted communication systems for client communication. They rely on role-based access control to ensure staff can only access the information that matters to their work and use managed switches and other secure data security systems that have ensured secure client service since its founding in 2015.

• Low turnover rates: When an offshore provider loses staff frequently, the CPA will be forced to train the new staff on their processes regularly.

That is why Finsmart seeks to build a firm that is not just about service delivery, but also about the people who make it possible.

Our team members have grown from talented accounting professionals into budding leaders in their own right. We are intentional about ensuring that our staff grow just as the company grows. This helps us to retain a team that grows with our clients, which has enabled us to support our clients for an average of nine (9) years.

They combine this with their proprietary “Accounting Seat” model, which provides CPAs with dedicated accountants who integrate into their firm’s workflows and use their workflow, communication, and reporting tools like the rest of their in-house team. This ensures uninterrupted client services.

“Since working with Finsmart, we have had one main person who has been with us through the whole series of time, and she has continued to learn and develop when we’ve had to bring on additional projects.”

Elizabeth Bergen, owner of Foray Business Group

• Scalable staffing models: If an offshore accounting provider doesn’t allow flexible engagement models (such as FTE, hourly, project-based), CPA firms will struggle to hire quickly enough to manage workload surges.

Finsmart’s offshore accounting resources do not require long-term contracts. CPA firms can hire any number of staff for as long as your workload needs persist.

• Cultural compatibility: Differences in work culture (such as ineffective communication and time zone misalignment) will negatively affect your ability to collaborate and align expectations.

Finsmart Accounting is based in India, an English-speaking country, which is why its accounting talents are fluent in written and spoken communication, enabling them to collaborate effectively with CPA firms and their clients. They also align their working hours to suit their clients’ preferences to ease collaboration.

Ready to Hire Offshore Accountants? Start With a Pilot Program

• How Finsmart’s offshore models work

Finsmart Accounting’s flexible offshoring models allow CPA firms to start small and increasingly hire offshore accountants as their needs evolve.

Most CPA firms start their offshore partnership with a pilot project to measure effectiveness. Once they are satisfied with the outcome, they then progress to a full-on engagement, using either of the following models:

• Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) when looking for dedicated offshore staff who work exclusively for their firms.
• Hourly Engagements for offshore engagement based on the hours of work they need.
• Project-Based Teams when they need help with a one-off project.

Steps to Start: from Consultation to Test Project and Going Live

To start delegating work to the Finsmart Accounting team, all you need to do is book a free consultation with our expert to assess your firm’s needs, align expectations, and understand the most suitable engagement model.

Once both agree to move forward, the five-step onboarding process begins with:

1. Talent Assigned: You are assigned a qualified offshore accountant based on your capacity needs.
2. Client Process Training: You add the team to your existing workflow tools and systems and train them on your processes and best practices.
3. Test Run Projects: You assign the team a real-world accounting task to complete to measure their accuracy, efficiency, and productivity.
4. Review Test Projects: You review their output and provide feedback (if any), and the team incorporates your feedback.
5. Team Goes LIVE: the offshore team starts to complete tasks, while you review their performance in your project management software.

Offshore Accounting Is Not the Future. It is the Present

Offshore accounting was “the future” in the early 2000s when companies like Finsmart Accounting were created.

About 20 years later, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of CPA firms, accounting businesses, and multinational corporations have built their entire growth strategy on offshore accounting.

In that time, Finsmart Accounting has grown its capacity to 150+ accountants and supports over 300+ happy clients with scalable and tech-driven accounting resources across the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, and other countries in the Western market.

“My offshoring relationship with Finsmart Accounting has been fantastic. It has brought a lot of peace to my heart and mind, especially considering the volume of accounting client demands.

I have no complaints. I’m ecstatic, and I’m looking to build a long-term relationship where I continue to grow and send clients to Finsmart Accounting.”

David Encarnacion, CEO of Day Care Accounting Pro

If you’re ready to start your offshoring journey in a way that suits your firm, our experts are available to talk to you. Click Here to Book Your Free Consultation Today.