Offshoring has often been a temporary fix…

Short on staff for the season? Let’s hire some temp staff. Having a financial crunch? Let’s send work offshore. Too much on the plate? Let’s offload it to someone who knows how to get it done.

It has often worked like a Band-aid that you can rip off when the need ends.

But successful firms like TL Turner Group do not treat it like a fallback. It is the foundation for scalability, capacity, culture and client experience. 

We recently had the opportunity to sit with Terrell Turner, Managing Partner of TL Turner Group, who built a fast-growing CAS firm with a 90% offshore team. He shares his success with the model and how it enabled him to onboard about 18 new clients in a single quarter without burnout. 

The Shift: Offshoring as a Strategic Advantage, Not a Backup

Accounting firm owners are still apprehensive of offshoring. Even in 2025, they turn to offshoring when they fail to hire locally. For Terrell, that wasn’t the case. He took a route where offshoring was viewed as a performance advantage. 

“I decided, hey, we’re going to lean very heavy into an offshore strategy.” Terell said. For him, this wasn’t about cost-cutting. It was about building a scalable operating model that solved deeper problems:

• 24-hour workflow
• Less founder burnout
• Better turnaround for clients
• Ability to sell more without overloading the team
• Long-term operational stability
  

Unlike many firms who default to “give offshore staff the mundane stuff,” Terrell flipped the script: “It was a strategic move… not a ‘stopgap’ because I can’t find people.” And that’s what gave him the power to do more, to be more. 

Turning Time Zones Into a Competitive Edge

Many accounting firms reason not using offshoring as a strategic advantage because of the time zone differences. Terrell used it as one of his most valuable assets. When clients based in the US emailed late, work would begin almost immediately overseas. 

“If our client came to me with a request at 4:30 p.m., I could hand it to my offshore team… first thing in the morning, that client now has that answer.”

This change did two things at the TL Turner Group:

• Client Experience Improved

Clients consistently experienced fast responses and quick updates — a differentiator in an industry where waiting days for replies is common.

• Founder Time Freed Up

While the offshore team worked during their day, Terrell handled sales, marketing, and strategic work during his daytime. 

“During the day I could focus on meeting clients and doing sales… and in the evenings I could meet with the team.”

This dual-shift rhythm created an almost continuous work cycle — without overworking anyone and leaving enough time for the team to focus on important things. 

Building a 90% Offshore Firm: Team, Culture, and Confidence

Scaling an offshore-first firm is not just about hiring. It’s about leadership, cultural adaptation, and intentional onboarding. Terrell didn’t assume a US management style would work globally.

“You have to put forth a little more effort to understand the culture.”

When you have a team based in a different part of the world, you don’t expect things to change or align magically. The extra effort, extra understanding was always the key, and Terrell understood that very well. To bridge this, he built a 45-day onboarding plan for every team member.

“I literally mapped out for the first 45 days what they were going to be doing every day.”

He also moved the team from dependency → independence using one key leadership practice:

“What do you think you should do?… It took some months for that to set in.”

This built confidence, and eventually, the offshore team began handling:

• 70% of client communication
• Reporting
• Weekly updates
• Month-end outputs
• Internal training
• Managing new hires
  

“Now they have no problem speaking with the client… they probably handle about 70% of the communication.”

As the team matured, offshore employees grew into leadership. “We promoted one of our senior accountants in the Philippines to the accounting manager.”

This is the part most US firms never unlock — the ability to build leaders, not assistants.

Replacing Founder Burnout With Structure and Capacity Planning

Most firm owners break at 25–35 clients. TL Turner Group overcame this challenge with a structured approach. After hitting early capacity limits, Terrell realized that as the team grew, he would burn out. Slow growth wasn’t the solution, it was to build scalable processes. This is what he did instead:

• Capacity assessment every month
• Hiring before they needed the capacity
• Offloading almost all technical work from the founder

Many firm owners don’t realize the need for more support unless they are either on the verge or completely burnt out. And that is where they go wrong. Burnout, when taken care of early, can blow out of proportion. 

An Offshore Model That Enabled High-End Growth

Terrell made a provocative point:

He slowed down growth on purpose for a full year to rebuild the sales process and increase service level. Then — with offshore infrastructure ready — he unlocked the next phase.

“Two weeks ago we closed a couple big deals to onboard 18 more clients over the next three months.”

That’s approximately an 80% increase in one quarter — something most firms cannot even operationally imagine. Most accounting firms struggle for years to make this a possibility. 

The offshore team didn’t just support this scale. They made it possible.

Why Most Firms Don’t Unlock This Level of Offshore Success

Most accounting firms today do offshore — but very few achieve the kind of results TL Turner Group has. Primarily there are 3 reasons to this:

1. They delegate only the low-level work

Most firms give their offshore team repetitive or administrative tasks like bank feeds, AR/AP, reconciliations, expense classification, and simple reporting. But they never give offshore teams responsibility, decision-making authority, or client-facing ownership.

This keeps offshore staff stuck at the “assistant” level — and leaves the US team overwhelmed.

2. They never invest in onboarding

What the usual onboarding for the offshore teams look like is a single training call, followed by assigning for work and then hoping for the best. When firms don’t give a thorough understanding of what needs to be done and what is the expected outcome, it will lead to miscommunication, rework, and misaligned expectations. 

3. They keep client communication in-house forever

When everything has to pass through the firm owner or the leader, it is bound to overwhelm them. Many founders believe they have to do it all: 

• Talk to the client
• Send the reports
• Explain the numbers
• Answer all the questions

That belief caps growth. When everything must funnel through the founder or US staff, capacity shrinks to the size of one person’s calendar. This keeps the founder chained to the business.

The Real Future of Offshoring: Higher-Level Talent, Enabled by AI

Terrell sees AI as the unlock — not the threat:

“AI gets to take away the mundane work… then we really get to utilize the true skill set of our offshore team at a higher level.”

AI + offshoring isn’t about replacing accountants. It’s about elevating them — both US-based and offshore. This is what the next wave of modern accounting firms will look like.

Conclusion: The Firms That Win in 2026 Will Offshore Differently

The firms that grow the fastest in the next two years won’t be the ones offshoring to fill gaps.
They’ll be the firms that:

• Build offshore leadership
• Use time zones strategically
• Invest in onboarding and cultural integration
• Scale with process instead of overwork
• Partner AI with global teams
• Free founders from delivery so they can grow
  

TL Turner Group stands as proof. Offshoring is no longer a “staffing fix.” It’s a business model for modern firms — one that creates scale, resilience, and a team that grows with you.

Watch the full conversation here: https://youtu.be/C6TXv8G6fHk?si=FRgU6YbEkua9-cbn

Want to start your own offshoring journey and build a firm like Terrell? Book a free consultation: https://finsmartaccounting.com/free-consultation/