How Outsourced Accounting Services Help U.S. Firms Cut Costs Without Sacrificing Control

“The fact that we have regular meetings (which we record) via Teams and Zoom is a huge help. It gives me more control. It enables me to explain what needs to be done, the nuances of a client, and other specific procedures to my outsourced team. They have told me that they refer back to those recordings to deliver everything the way we discussed. That has been great for me.

Rebecca Santiago, Owner of Advance Professional Accounting Service

Located: Deerfield Beach, Florida, United States

Every firm benefiting from outsourcing today has had to struggle with the uneasy feeling of the unknown. The uncertainty about how much control you will need to give up is valid, but not necessary.

But if you have remote team members, you are more familiar with the level of control in outsourced accounting services than you think.

Technology (and investments in data security infrastructure by outsourcing providers) have enabled U.S. accounting firms to maintain security, administrative, and quality control while enjoying lower labor costs and a stronger data privacy and protection than they can afford internally.

In this article, you’ll see how outsourced accounting firms enable U.S. firms to keep labor costs low and work quality high.

Why U.S. Firms Are Rethinking Accounting Costs

The Limits of Traditional Hiring

For the average accounting firm in the U.S., addressing increased client demands meant hiring more full-time (usually local) accountants. But that model is no longer sustainable.

More accountants are leaving the industry than those coming in. The seniors are retiring while the mid-level accountants are switching careers. Yet,  fewer students are pursuing accounting in schools. This has increased the demand for accounting professionals over supply, driving up the cost of hiring and maintaining qualified local accountants.

The result? A shortage of qualified accountants to manage the growing financial compliance and client advisory services in the country.

Meanwhile, offshore accountants have continued to grow in numbers and expertise, driven by lower labor costs, technology, and the rise of outsourcing firms (that make hiring quick, secure, and affordable).

This has made outsourcing accounting services to countries like India and the Philippines a more cost-effective way to manage the capacity crisis in the U.S. accounting industry.

Burnout Due to Staffing Shortages

Busy season stress is common because there are so few tax accountants preparing too many tax returns. The same applies to month-end close, QuickBooks cleanup, and other compliance and process-heavy projects.

Due to the shortage of qualified talent, fewer candidates are applying to job postings, and those applying take a longer time to weigh their options. Not to mention the high rate of employee turnover due to the competition for talent on the labor market.

As a result, senior accountants do not have enough hands to delegate work to, and the junior staff are overwhelmed with compliance work and tight deadlines. This results in long hours, exhaustion, and burnout that increase errors and rework, keeping many firms from adding more clients and revenue lines.

“I have a bookkeeping and accounting firm. Somewhere around 15 clients, I just completely ran out of capacity. I was working around the clock, 7 days a week. I had no work-life balance, and I was at capacity.

I ran out of time and space, and the ability to take on more clients. I did not want to be in a position of turning clients down.”

Adrienne Dove, Founder of Corban Accounting Solutions

Outsourcing helps with these challenges by increasing your capacity for more work while relieving your in-house team and balancing your workload.

What Outsourced Accounting Means

Outsourced accounting firms/companies provide all accounting services, but the more time-consuming, high-volume, and repeatable services seem the most common.

Commonly outsourced accounting services include:

• Bookkeeping: Everything from recording transactions to bank and credit card reconciliations, QuickBooks clean-up to general ledger maintenance.
• Tax Preparation: Outsourced tax accountants specialize in U.S. tax laws and are up-to-date with individual, business, federal, and state tax requirements.
• Accounts Payable & Receivable: Outsourced AP & AR specialists use technology to process and manage vendor invoices and collect payments on time to help your clients maintain healthy cash flow.
• Payroll Processing: Offshore payroll specialists understand the ins and outs of Payroll administration according to employee type, status, and salary, making relevant deductions in a way that complies with U.S. payroll regulations.
• Audit Support: Outsourced accountants can support financial audits by handling tie-outs, lead schedules, confirmations, and workpaper preparation to ensure information accuracy.

Dedicated Vs. Shared Teams

These are the two engagement models in Outsourced accounting. Here’s how they differ:

• Dedicated Teams: This gives you a dedicated team of accounting professionals who will work with your team, like a full-time hire. Although they are paid and managed by your outsourcing partner, the accountants will serve your clients exclusively, acting as an extension of your in-house team.

This is most suitable for accounting firms needing help with complex, long-term client demands. It gives you more control over your outsourced team while they learn about your systems, workflows, and expectations over time.

• Shared Teams: In this model, you’re sharing your outsourcing provider with other accounting firms in the sense that the same employee serving you is serving several clients. You won’t have access to a particular professional. Your work can be done by any available (and qualified) accountant.

This arrangement gives you less control over your outsourced team, which is partly why it is more affordable. It is more suited to teams needing help with fluctuating workloads.

Working Within Your Systems

You don’t have to change your current workflow systems or adapt your outsourced partner’s systems.

The top outsourcing partners will work within your existing tech stack on your terms. Finsmart Accounting’s Co-Founder, Maanoj Shah, recommends integrating your dedicated professionals into your firm.

That allows them to work within your systems, use your processes, and collaborate with your internal team, enabling you to monitor their performance in real-time.

Cutting Costs Without Losing Control

Here’s how lower costs stack up against other benefits of outsourced accounting, like administrative and quality control.

Reducing Cost Per Role

Outsourced accounting requires a monthly (or hourly or task-based) subscription instead of spending your money on salaries, employee benefits, and severance packages.

In India, this subscription fee is $2,600 a month for a dedicated accounting professional. When compared with the $4,700 monthly salary for a U.S.-based accountant, the difference is almost dramatic.

You can redirect the cost savings into growing your profit margin, expanding your service offering, or simply rewarding your high-performing local staff to drive employee retention.

SLAs, Visibility, and Oversight

Whatever level of control could have been lost in outsourcing is gained through strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This instrument defines your engagement with external accounting firms in a way that keeps you in control of your work quality and other metrics that matter to you.

By setting performance, communication, and reporting expectations, SLAs include penalties for non-compliance, which keeps outsourced accounting providers accountable. When done well, your outsourced accounting team (whether onshore or offshore) can be like your regular remote staff.

SLAs allow you to spell out:

• Turnaround times (such as 48 hours for bank reconciliation, one week for draft returns).
• Accuracy thresholds (e.g., 97% clean data entry rate).
• Communication channels and frequencies (daily check-ins, weekly reporting, monthly review).
• Escalation processes (who to contact (and how) when there’s a problem).

Many U.S. accounting firms combine SLAs with project management tools (such as Financial Cents, Jetpack Workflow, and TaxDome) to get full visibility into their outsourced team’s tasks and productivity levels.

Maintaining Compliance

Finance and accounting outsourcing providers understand the importance of regulatory compliance, so they have measures in place to protect their clients by securing, processing, and handling sensitive financial information in compliance with relevant regulations.

At the center of their compliance efforts are security standards and measures, which include:

• ISO 27001 certification: This shows that a provider has the right systems in place to identify, assess, and mitigate information security risks.
• SOC 2 Type II: Proves that a provider’s security controls have been independently tested within the last 6–12 months.
• Role-based access controls: Restrict access to financial information to relevant people.
• Secure VPN and encrypted data channels: protect data from unauthorized access during transmission.
• Signed NDAs and compliance training for all offshore staff: Ensures outsourced staff abide by the confidentiality of client information.
• Data residency policies: Keep confidential information within controlled environments, ensuring it is not sent to insecure environments like public Wi-Fi and local storage facilities.

Outsourced accountants also use their training in generally accepted accounting principles, SOX requirements, and U.S. tax law to deliver service that meets U.S. tax and financial reporting standards.

When Firms Choose to Outsource

Common Triggers and Use Cases

Outsourcing is a response to crucial challenges, which could result from any of the following circumstances:

• Vacant Positions: Firm owners like Rebecca Santiago are forced to look externally to fill vacant positions after trying (unsuccessfully) to fill their open roles with local accountants.

“I found myself in a very unique position where I was having a hard time finding the right fit for the right price.

I needed to fill two vacant positions, and I could not find accounting talent with the right skills that were not priced outside our budget.”

—Rebecca Santiago, Owner, Advance Professional Accounting Service

• Addition of New Clients: Adding clients increases workloads, and hiring local accountants to manage it has become too slow in recent years. Outsourcing offers a pool of plug-and-play talent that can start meeting client deliverables within a few days.

• Tax Season Overload: This is arguably the most common trigger for outsourced accounting firms in the U.S. Most accounting firms are overwhelmed with tax work from January 1st to April 15th.

The best move is to hire seasonal staff to relieve their internal teams of the pressure and burnout, so that everyone can complete their tax work as accurately and efficiently as possible.

Supporting Advisory Teams

“I’m able to do more advisory, overseeing, and overview work now (as opposed to the back-office operation of bookkeeping, which is also important). That is because the Finsmart Accounting team takes care of that for me.”

Adrienne Dove, Founder of Corban Accounting Solutions

Accounting firms outsource their services when they need to focus their internal resources on client advisory services. After all, the work that overwhelms them (the compliance and process-driven work) can be done by anyone and from anywhere.

This frees them up to work with clients to deliver services like budgeting, cash flow forecasting, and financial KPI reporting.

Outsourcing tasks like QBO cleanups, bank reconciliations, and report formatting helps free up your in-house staff to provide quality advisory services.

Hybrid Staffing for Flexibility

Accounting firms also outsource their services to segment their workflows by volume and value. They assign repetitive tasks (reconciliations, data entry, etc.) to offshore teams while their in-house staff handle review and quality control.

This works particularly well with offshoring. Outsourcing to countries like India means your outsourced accounting team is working during U.S. nighttime.

By the time your senior, in-house team members are getting to work in the morning, your offshore team will have completed their tasks and will be ready for review.

This increases your overall turnaround time and profitability, making it a beneficial long-term growth strategy.

In-House vs. Outsourced Accounting

Cost Comparision

Category	In-house (U.S.-Based)	Outsourced (India)
Accountant	$67,000/year	$32,000/year
Tax Preparer	$96,000/year	$38,400/year
Employer Overhead (benefits, taxes, insurance)	+20–30% of monthly salary	None
Recruiting & Training	High in terms of time and money	Minimal and mostly managed by the outsourced accounting company

Speed, Talent, and Scalability

• Speed

In-house: Although they are familiar with your best practices, in-house teams struggle to focus and complete work on time due to capacity challenges (which lead to burnout and errors).

Outsourced: A dedicated outsourcing team serves your clients alone. This dedication pays off in efficiency and speed. Additionally, overnight work and clear SLAs ensure a faster turnaround for compliance tasks.

• Talent

In-house: Declining accounting population and enrollments in accounting programs make it difficult to find qualified local talent. Even when you do, the turnover rate is high because of the demand for accounting talent.

Outsourced: offshore destinations like India have a growing population of skilled and specialized U.S. accounting and tax professionals. These CPA-level professionals are trained and up-to-date with emerging financial reporting regulations, evolving client needs, and advancements in accounting technology.

Outsourced accounting companies hire these CPA-level accountants and ensure they are upskilled and ready to meet client demands as soon as possible.

• Scalability

In-house: The short supply of accounting professionals also makes it difficult to find suitable candidates in the first place, and when you get them, the hiring process is unusually slow and expensive.

This makes it hard to add more staff to meet client deliverables at scale. Severance packages also make it difficult to downsize as your needs change, so firms are more careful to add full-time staff, making it harder to grow a local accounting team.

Outsourced: It takes an average of seven (7) days for your outsourced team to hit the ground running, and accounting outsourcing companies do not require a long-term contract, making it easier to add more staff to meet a surge in workload. Since it’s a subscription-based pricing, you don’t have to worry about severance costs.

Software Alignment and Communication

In-house: While outsourced teams bring their technology expertise, your in-house team will likely need training on the latest tools. Other than that, they have access to your internal software and communication systems. You can communicate with them in real-time.

Outsourced: Outsourced accounting teams are proficient in the software systems you use for work (QBO, Cero, Drake, UltraTax, Financial Cents, Karbon, SmartVault, etc.). This allows you to collaborate with them in your preferred software.

If you use Finsmart’s proprietary Accounting Seat model, your outsourced team will work in your workflow systems like your in-house staff. They can access client information, comment on projects, and take any other action you permit them to take. So, communication will be as it is with the rest of your remote team.

To address the time zone difference in outsourced accounting, you can use scheduled daily or weekly check-ins on Slack, Teams, or Zoom to collaborate in real-time and maintain alignment.

Managing Compliance and Data Security

While the accounting firm remains responsible for the security of its client information, outsourced accounting companies have made it easy to secure your client’s data without lifting a finger.

What you have to do is vet your offshore partner properly and control the systems your firm works in. Again, this is easier to do in the embedded outsourcing model, where your dedicated team is integrated into your firm.

In any case, the top accounting outsourcing companies have several systems in place to ensure ongoing data privacy and protection. Many outsourced accounting firms have stronger security infrastructure than many mid-sized U.S. firms can afford on their own.

The top accounting outsourcing companies have security certifications and practices that ensure compliance with:

• Global Security Standards: Partner with providers that are compliant with SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR & CCPA Alignment, and HIPAA (for healthcare-related financial data).
• Secure Infrastructure and Access: Reputable accounting outsourcing providers operate within controlled IT environments that prevent breaches, leaks, and unauthorized access.

They use encryption technology, secure remote access (VPNs, VDI), role-based access control, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and biometric access verification.

• The Regulatory Requirements of U.S. Firms: U.S. firms must ensure the protection of client data (under IRS guidelines, FTC Safeguard Rules) and maintenance of client confidentiality by implementing Business Associate Agreements (BAAs), NDAs, and audit trails.

Why Finsmart Accounting Is the Right Outsourcing Partner

Your choice of an outsourcing partner will strengthen your security, administrative, and quality control in your outsourced accounting relationships. It will determine the trust and cultural alignment between your in-house and outsourced teams.

That is why Finsmart Accounting has spent the last 17+ years building its processes, employees, and technology to fit the financial reporting, security, and compliance needs of accounting and CPA firms in the U.S.

After 300+ happy clients with an average client retention of nine (9) years, here’s how we measure against the core features you need in an outsourced accounting partner:

• U.S. accounting expertise: Finsmart Accounting has a pool of accounting and tax professionals who specialize in U.S. tax laws and financial reporting standards (GAAP, IRS forms, SOX, etc.).
• Strong data security protocols: Our processes rely on secure IT infrastructure, encrypted communication, and strict access control, which enables us to maintain the confidentiality of work and client information.
• Full-time dedicated staff: Finsmart Accounting uses the dedicated and shared team outsourcing models. However, we encourage our clients to use the dedicated team model because it helps workflow continuity and consistency.
• Clear communication practices: We provide timely updates, daily check-ins, and weekly reviews depending on our client’s preferences. We also have a clear escalation strategy for addressing unforeseen challenges.

The team that Finsmart provided to us has always been a part of our team. We hold regular meetings with them, and my internal staff really enjoys working with them because of their efficiency.

Elizabeth Bergen, Owner of Foray Business Group

• Scalability and flexibility: You can start with one hire and add more staff as your clients, services, and workload grow.

“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 with us.

When we had to bring on additional projects, Finsmart assigned additional staff to help us manage the added workload.”

Elizabeth Bergen, Owner of Foray Business Group

• References and case studies: In our 17+ years of existence, we have provided various accounting services to U.S. firms, ranging from bookkeeping, tax preparation, payroll, AP/AR, and CAS.

Here are some of what our past clients have to say.

Finsmart’s Software Compatibility

Our accounting resources are built to integrate into your existing tech stack, so that you wouldn’t need to change anything in your workflows.

Our staff are trained on the software U.S. firms use, be it accounting, software (QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, NetSuite, Drake, Bill, UltraTax, SAP, etc.), project management solutions (Financial Cents, Karbon, TaxDome, etc.), or data management tools (DropBox, Dext, Hubdoc, etc.).

All you need to do is provide access, and the dedicated team we assign to your firm will log into your systems using secure access protocols. They’ll complete their assigned tasks using your templates and SOPs to deliver results that meet your standards.

Finsmart Accounting’s 5-Step Onboarding Process

It takes seven (7) days after signing the agreement to start enjoying the benefits of your partnership with the Finsmart Accounting team.

Here are the five short steps to start working with us:

1. We Assign You the Accounting Talent (or Team): We assign our qualified, pre-vetted resources to your firm.
2. You Train the Talent on Your SOPs: You train the assigned talent or team on your best practices to familiarize them with your SOPs.
3. You Test Their Skills and Expertise: You give your assigned team a mock project to measure their skills and efficiency.
4. We Review Test Project Together: We work with you to review the work. Once you’re satisfied, we proceed.
5. Your Dedicated Team Goes LIVE: Once you are satisfied, the assigned team is now yours. Manage them as your in-house team while we handle their payroll and HR.

To learn more about balancing costs and control in outsourced accounting services, Book a free Demo with our outsourcing expert today.