As a CPA, you can definitely do your own bookkeeping.
But it eats up time you could spend growing your firm.
In other words, someone else can handle your bookkeeping, but only you can run your firm.
That’s why outsourcing is common in the accounting industry.
(I, a CPA myself, am outsourcing accounting for Future Firm.)
If you’re going to let someone else handle this important responsibility, you have to do it right.
That’s why, in this article, you’ll learn the different ways you can outsource bookkeeping, how to do it, and the best platforms where you can find people to handle that work.
Let’s begin!
Ways to Outsource Bookkeeping for CPAs
There are three ways to outsource your bookkeeping.
While they all lead to the same outcome of you not doing your firm’s books, each one presents different advantages and challenges.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing means hiring a third-party firm to handle your bookkeeping.
You hand over the work, and they manage it with their own team and processes. Unlike offshoring, outsourcing doesn’t have to happen overseas.
Instead of managing bookkeeping with an in-house team, you let an external provider take care of it.
Offshoring
Offshoring accounting or bookkeeping involves moving your accounting functions and team to another country, typically one with lower labor costs.
The main advantage of offshoring is that it can lead to significant cost savings.
Unlike outsourcing in which you hire a third-party firm, offshoring often means having one or multiple people as part of your in-house accounting team.
Plus, you retain full control over your financial data processing.
Full disclosure, I am a big fan of offshoring, I’ve done it before, and I’m still doing it now in my Future Firm team.
I’ve heard a lot of misconceptions about offshored employees in the past (I even talked about some of the common ones on my podcast)…
One of them is that they are a separate team from your onshore employees.
This is simply not true.
When you offshore, you are hiring someone else in another country, and functionally, they become your “employee.”
For example, instead of hiring a bookkeeper in Canada or the US, you might instead hire skilled professionals with the required certifications from the Philippines.
My Future Firm team is almost fully offshored.
And I’m so happy with the results that I post about offshoring on a regular basis (including this one on my LinkedIn).
Onshoring
Onshoring means shifting accounting work to another city or region within your own country.
It works similarly to offshoring (i.e., they will be part of your team).
Firms that want to avoid language barriers, cultural differences, or foreign regulations often hire local bookkeepers or outsourced accountants within their own country to handle these tasks.
The downside is that onshore hires are more expensive than offshore hires.
Whatever of these you choose, it should be conducive to unlocking more time for yourself and the growth of your accounting firm.
If you’re ready to learn how to build a highly profitable accounting firm that can run without you…
You’ll want to check out Future Firm Accelerate.
How to Outsource Bookkeeping for CPAs
Regardless of which model you choose, you can’t just hand off the work and hope for the best.
Plenty of firm owners make the right choice above and still end up frustrated a few months later.
Here’s how to do it right.
Step 1: Document Your Processes Before Handing Anything Off
You can’t outsource what isn’t written down.
Doesn’t matter if you’re outsourcing, offshoring, or onshoring.
Before you engage anyone, document exactly how you want the bookkeeping done, step by step.
This includes:
- The order tasks get done in
- The decisions someone needs to make along the way (and how you’d make them)
- The exceptions and edge cases that come up in your clients’ books
Why does this matter?
Whoever you bring on should be built around your needs, not the other way around.
If you skip this step, you’re not outsourcing your bookkeeping.
You’re just handing someone a mess and hoping they magically figure out what you want.
Step 2: Define Your Deliverables and Turnaround Expectations Clearly
Spell out what you expect: what gets done, by when, in what format, using what software.
Vague expectations lead to vague results, so this becomes your quality standard and your accountability tool.
Here are some examples of what that might look like in practice:
- Bank and credit card reconciliations completed by the 5th business day of the following month
- Financial statements delivered in a specific format (PDF, Excel, or directly inside your practice management software)
- All work performed inside your existing tech stack (QuickBooks Online, Xero, whatever you’ve standardized on), not theirs
- A defined process for flagging unusual transactions or discrepancies
- A weekly or biweekly status update, even if it’s just an email confirming everything’s on track
None of this is complicated.
But if you don’t write it down, you have no standard to hold anyone to.
Step 3: Treat It Like a Hiring Process
If you’re outsourcing or offshoring to an individual or a small team, this is where the hiring process starts.
Because you’re not just picking a vendor, you’re bringing someone onto your team.
So treat it that way:
- Give them a real task and see how they’d handle it
- Interview them based on what your firm needs right now, not a generic job description
- Pay attention to how they communicate when something’s unclear (this matters more than how they perform when everything’s straightforward)
- Ask about the things that matter to your firm’s culture and values, not just their technical skills
If you want to get started on hiring one for your team, here’s a bookkeeper job description.
But if you’re going the managed-service route instead, this step will look different.
Because instead of interviewing a person, you’ll be testing a process.
Step 4: Build In a Trial Period
Whatever route you’ve chosen, give it a real trial run first.
(Yes, even after the step above.)
What that looks like depends on who you’re working with:
- If you’ve offshored or outsourced to an individual or small team, this is your onboarding window. Start them on a smaller slice of your work, check in regularly, and watch how they handle your clients, your software, and the judgment calls that come up.
- If you’re working with an agency or a managed-service platform, ask directly what their trial or onboarding process looks like. There are platforms that offer a free first month or a low-commitment starting point. Use it.
Either way, the goal is the same:
Buy yourself a low-stakes window to catch problems before they become expensive ones.
How long that window needs to be depends on your firm, your complexity, and who you’ve brought on.
There’s no magic number, but it’s safer to have that window instead of assuming it’ll all just work out.
Step 5: Set Up Quality Control Checkpoints
Let’s say you’ve hired an experienced person. You feel good about the fit. You can see they deliver quality work.
Does it end there?
No, it doesn’t.
Here’s what I mean.
I hired a very experienced tax advisor for Future Firm.
I hired them specifically because of their senior experience.
I had expectations, and I was confident they’d meet them.
But at the end of the tax year, I got one email with documents several pages long.
Here’s what you owe, here’s what you need to pay, etc…
This frustrated me, because there was no strategic financial advice, nor did they identify any tax planning opportunities…
Which was the entire reason I hired an expert in the first place!
Since I’m a CPA, I was able to work through it with them and catch what was missing.
But can you imagine how much more stressful it would have been if I weren’t?
So, I recommend building in a review step:
- Spot-check the output yourself, or have a senior person do it, even after someone’s proven themselves in onboarding
- Look for the stuff that’s easy to miss when you’re not paying attention: shortcuts, generic categorizations, etc.
- Ask yourself if you’re getting what you hired them for, not just the bare minimum version of it
Remember the real goal here.
You didn’t outsource your bookkeeping just to get the work off your plate.
You did it so you could get expert-level work, without doing the work yourself.
Top Platforms for Outsourcing Bookkeeping Services
Every option below approaches outsourced bookkeeping a little differently.
Regardless of the approach, you can count on the quality of the people behind it.
In no particular order:
1. TeamUp
When it comes to outsourcing bookkeeping tasks, TeamUp stands out as a great option for accounting firms who are fed up with the BPO setup.
The company was founded by Isaac Smith, a former bookkeeping firm owner, and Meryl Johnston.
TeamUp connects firms with accountants based in the Philippines and ensures that the firm maintains complete control of the hiring process, team dynamics, and culture.
However, what sets it apart is that it offers a platform that eliminates the need for ongoing BPO management fees as it lets you hire candidates directly.
Simply put, its business model is basically the anti-BPO professional services provider.
TeamUp has provided accountants for US, Australian, and Canadian firms.
2. Cloud Accountant Staffing
Cloud Accountant Staffing is a popular option with firms in the Future Firm Accelerate community.
They started with offshore staffing, sourcing accountants, bookkeepers, tax professionals, and auditors from the Philippines, Latin America, and South Africa.
However, they later started offering onshore staffing services too.
Their portal lets you filter candidates by role, experience, and software skills, and book an interview yourself instead of waiting on a rep to get back to you.
Cloud Accountant Staffing was founded by a CPA who ran his own firm and got tired of not being able to find good people.
If you’ve ever struggled to find a good hire yourself, that’s the exact problem they built the company to solve.
3. TOA Global
TOA Global is one of the leaders in the accounting “outsourcing” (in quotes, because technically they offshore) world.
Many virtual firms have used this platform to build significant parts of their accounting departments. In fact, you often see them at conferences like Xerocon and QuickBooks Connect.
According to their website, they have over 4,000 people on their dedicated team and deal with almost 1,200 accounting firms.
The work is performed in the Philippines, but they also have offices in the US and Canada.
You get to choose who you want from the available pool of talent when you offshore, and you can then train them on your accounting system’s unique financial information procedures.
What I like is that they are up to speed with a lot of the modern accounting software options out there, so if you’re a cloud accounting firm, this might be a good option.
Also, they can handle more than just bookkeeping functions. They also have auditors and virtual assistants for accountants in their talent pool.
You can also utilize TOA Global to hire experts who’ll work on tasks related to financial statements, which could provide timely and accurate insights into your clients’ financial performance.
As you are hiring someone offshore, you’ll certainly pay less than what you would onshore. However, TOA Global is not the cheapest option out of the ones on this list.
4. Paro
Paro is a bit different than the other options listed here.
They are an online network of accountants, bookkeepers, and tax experts that your modern accounting firm may use to acquire expertise on-demand.
The Paro platform connects firms with US-based professionals, so it’s certainly more in line with onshoring.
And while they can help with long term staffing needs for your accounting firm, they also have a large focus on helping you with your interim financial reports and financial analysis needs if you’re in a jam.
Like Uber, they act a bit like a match-making service where they help you fill a talent gap on-demand using their available pool of talent.
After a brief consultation call, Paro will match-make your financial services needs to an expert from their accounting services platform.
Following that, you’ll get a price and a scope of work for the help you’re looking for.
Once you approve the quote, the selected expert will be onboarded onto your team. They will work closely with you to seamlessly integrate into your existing bookkeeping processes.
5. Bookkeeper360
Bookkeeper360 offers a virtual bookkeeper service that integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks Online and Xero, giving you real-time financial insights.
Specialized professionals handle your books and help keep everything IRS-compliant. They adapt to your firm’s needs, whether that’s cash- or accrual-based accounting.
6. Upwork
Upwork is a freelancing marketplace where you can locate and hire freelancers, such as bookkeepers, to help you manage your company’s accounts payable and accounts receivable processes.
It’s often a popular recommendation when considering hiring staff for outsourced bookkeeping and other crucial processes. That being said:
Approach with caution.
While you can get some really cheap outsourced bookkeeping for CPAs with Upwork, I’ve never seen anything good come out of it. In fact, I’ve seen many disasters!
I’m not saying there are no good bookkeeping freelancers that can do your monthly bookkeeping or other basic bookkeeping services on the platform.
You can find great freelance bookkeepers — but you’ll have to look hard.
It also helps to remember: you get what you pay for.
7. Intuit Expert Bookkeepers
Here’s an interesting option for firms that might be heavy in the QuickBooks ecosystem.
Intuit Expert Bookkeepers is slightly controversial — it’s a software provider that got into the services game.
But at the same time, it also provides another option for outsourced bookkeeping for CPAs.
To be clear, QB Live is targeting small businesses, not firms.
From a consumer standpoint, it works just like Uber. You connect to their platform, answer a few questions and they connect you with a live bookkeeper to help out with the bookkeeping.
Nothing is advertised online about how they can help firms, though.
When I attended a previous QuickBooks Connect, it was mentioned in the then-QuickBooks Live session that they were receiving requests from firms who wanted to outsource their bookkeeping, so it might be worth speaking to them about it.
8. D&V Philippines
While there are a ton of outsourcing options out there (and I certainly am leaving quite a few out!), I wanted to briefly mention D&V Philippines.
This Philippine-based company provides outsourced accounting services, and has been active in the cloud accounting space for many years.
Their dedicated team can also assist you with some of your other accounting needs and financial reporting requirements in addition to bookkeeping services.
And while I won’t comment on pricing here, they are quite competitive.
When it comes to outsourced bookkeeping for CPAs, you might want to add them to the evaluation.
9. Cloudstaff
Cloudstaff provides a diverse talent pool of highly skilled accounting professionals.
They that you have the flexibility to select the candidate who aligns best with your specific needs and preferences.
What sets it apart is that it takes the burden of IT and HR setup off your shoulders, saving you from the complexities often associated with remote staffing. This way, you can focus your energy on your core business activities.
In essence, Cloudstaff streamlines the entire process of finding, onboarding, and managing remote talent, making it easier for you to scale your firm and achieve your business objectives.
Why Should You Outsource Your Firm’s Bookkeeping?
Outsourcing your firm’s bookkeeping can offer several benefits, depending on your specific business needs and circumstances.
Hiring an online bookkeeping service, for example, helps in enabling businesses to make informed financial decisions through accurate, reliable financial reporting.
Here are some compelling reasons why you might consider outsourcing your firm’s bookkeeping:
- Reduced labor costs: Outsourcing can be more cost-effective than hiring and training in-house bookkeepers or accountants. You can avoid expenses related to salaries, benefits, and office space.
- Access to specialists: Outsourcing firms often employ experienced professionals who specialize in bookkeeping, accounting, and advisory services. You can benefit from their expertise and stay up-to-date with relevant regulations and best practices.
- More time for core business activities: Outsourcing your bookkeeping tasks allows you to redirect your time and resources toward core business activities like sales, marketing, financial strategy, and client relationships.
- Accuracy and compliance: Professional bookkeepers are trained to maintain accurate financial records. Often, outsourcing firms are typically well-versed in tax laws and regulations, so you can avoid compliance issues and penalties.
- Easily adapt to growth: As your business grows, your accounting needs may become more complex. Outsourcing can accommodate this growth by providing flexible solutions.
- Access to modern technology: Outsourcing firms often have access to cutting-edge accounting software and tools.
- Flexibility: Outsourcing providers can tailor their services to match your specific needs, whether you require full-service bookkeeping or assistance with specific tasks.
While outsourcing bookkeeping has numerous advantages, you need to choose a reputable and trustworthy outsourcing partner.
Carefully evaluate potential providers, check their references, and ensure they align with your firm’s goals and values before making a decision.
When Should You Outsource Your Firm’s Bookkeeping?
Deciding when to outsource your firm’s bookkeeping depends on various factors, including your business’s size, growth stage, financial complexity, and your own capacity and expertise.
Here are some common scenarios and signs that indicate it might be a good time to consider virtual bookkeeping services:
- Time constraints: As your business grows, so do your responsibilities. If you find that managing bookkeeping tasks is taking up too much of your time as a business owner, outsourcing can free you to focus on core business activities and strategic planning.
- Inconsistent records: If your financial records are often incomplete or inconsistent, it can lead to costly errors and compliance issues. Outsourcing can provide consistent and reliable record-keeping.
- Growth and complexity: As your business expands, your financial transactions and reporting requirements may become more complex. Outsourcing can help you manage this increased complexity effectively.
- Seasonal demands: If your firm experiences seasonal fluctuations in financial activity or your bookkeeping workload varies greatly from month to month, outsourcing can offer flexibility by providing additional support during peak times and scaling down during slower periods.
The decision to outsource your firm’s bookkeeping should be based on a careful assessment of your unique circumstances and needs.
You also need to make sure that whoever you choose to work with is not only skilled but also fits in with your culture. Here’s a list of 23 accounting interview questions to gauge this.
Ready to Outsource Bookkeeping?
That’s a wrap.
We’ve covered the benefits and the top platforms for outsourcing your bookkeeping.
And if you want to receive free actionable strategies on building a profitable firm that can run without you…
Subscribe to my Future Firm newsletter. 🙂
Now, I’d like to hear from you.
Where do you outsource your bookkeeping processes?
Do you prefer offshoring, onshoring, or offshoring? Is there anything we missed?
Share them in the comments below!
