Every company, whatever its size, is obliged to keep its accounts up to date, in compliance with the rules in force. To do this, two solutions present themselves. Either the accounting is done within the company itself, in which case employees are assigned to this task; either it is managed, totally or partially, by a person outside the company, or by another company for which it is the core business (accounting firm). Accounting outsourcing is attracting more and more companies because it offers multiple advantages. It is truly the mode of administrative assistance that is on the rise. 3H18 takes a look at the issue to support you in your accounting choices.
Why outsource your accounting?
A manager decides to outsource his business accounting when certain services become too invasive internally, both from the point of view of the time allocated to them and from a financial level.
The main accounting missions outsourced are as follows: tax management, that of fixed assets, the preparation of annual accounts, inventory work. Accounting entry can also be the subject of outsourcing, which entails the delegation of a certain number of things to be managed, pell-mell: payroll, balance sheet of purchases and sales, invoices and notes of expenses, banking administration, sorting and filing of documents, VAT returns, cash flow and overheads.
In order to increase the productivity of the company, these various missions will be entrusted to an accountant who, most of the time, works within an accounting firm.
The advantages and disadvantages
There are many benefits to outsourcing accounting. First of all, it allows you to devote less time to administrative needs, and consequently more time to effective and profitable work. The profession is thus enhanced and made more efficient.
Outsourced secretarial services also allow you to entrust part of your business management to professionals in the field who devote all their time to this type of task. When everyone can concentrate on the mission assigned to them, the overall result is automatically of better quality and the security of the accounts is ensured.
In addition, outsourcing your accounting allows you to make significant savings. Indeed, recruiting staff internally generates more costs, whatever the size of the company, in social security contributions in particular. Freed from these, the employer is a winner.
The business manager must plan for service costs with a significant hourly cost. Furthermore, the elements of outsourced accounting are made available to an organization outside the direct interests of the company, which entails both a risk on a strategic level and a lack of real-time visibility.
What is accounting outsourcing?
Business Process Outsourcing consists of allowing a requesting company to outsource all or part of its accounting and logistics. This company wishes to be able to refocus on its main commercial activity. In terms of business processes, outsourcing is essentially based on the processing, digitalization and indexing of documents in order to supply a long-lasting informative database. Certain arrangements, particularly IT, are therefore required on the part of the client company so that automation can be fully implemented. Outsourcing thus contributes to the company’s efficiency from a technical point of view.
This practice is adopted by all kinds of companies, from the moment certain services, essential to any society, request it. This could be the purchasing department or the financial department, the information systems department itself, or HR outsourcing . It may also be a question of responding to the impossibility of hiring an accounting secretary .
Management by outsourcing is done according to three distinct schemes, three ways of proceeding. First of all, there is the offshore practice, when the issuing company decides to delegate some of its administrative tasks to a company located abroad. Then there is the nearshore practice, that is to say the fact of outsourcing abroad, but in a neighboring country, on the border, or even simply in another region of the same country. Finally, we also encounter onshore outsourcing, this time consisting of calling on a foreign service provider who will send employees to work directly on the site or in the environment close to the ordering company.
It is nevertheless necessary to note the fear felt by certain managers of thus losing part of their corporate sovereignty. Entrusting the management of accounting documents, essential and, sometimes, confidential documents to another company, despite the latter having made it its field of expertise, can in fact generate a certain reluctance with regard to outsourcing. However, certain fears are fading in view of the cost savings quickly obtained, the tax advantages or a clear gain in operating flexibility. That said, computer security remains an element to take into consideration, because it is increasingly important in our time. You must therefore choose your service provider carefully so as not to regret it: they must certainly be competent, but also of impeccable ethics.
How to outsource your accounting?
In order to carry out accounting outsourcing, most companies call on a specialized service provider. This involves the drafting and signing of a contract which will sanction the agreement established between the ordering company and the company responsible for complying with it. It makes it possible to formalize the content of the exchanges between the two companies, the details of the missions entrusted as well as the fees set.
This document, to be valid, must also mention a certain number of elements relating to the two companies, and in particular to the client company. The following must be indicated: its company name and legal status, its sector of activity, its workforce, without forgetting an inventory of the accounting documents made available to the service provider company.