Outsourcing

Outsourcing

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Good evening.

Practice continues to grow thankfully but finding good staff difficult. Ones I have I appreciate but there is need to have backup of a outsourcing company. Now this is something I have stayed clear of for very obvious reasons but the reduced fees the charge keep drawing me back and would appreciate others experiences and recommendations. I have my own list of three I think I'll use but would like to tie into recommendations. The benefit of paying £4 to £6 per hour for work obviously screams to me but the downfalls are something which stop me. Paperwork lost, errors.

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By nexventure
03rd Aug 2011 10:37

Outsourcing

I worked with 3-4 accountancy practices where outsourcing service was being used, i found that work can be done quick but facing following problems,

1-Once you start using outsourcing service you will be very bad employer for your employees in your office, you will always compare outsourcing price with what its costing you in uk and it will bad effect on your uk structure.

2-Client donot like the idea and i see mostly firms are keeping it secret from clients,

3-Lot of errors in work,timing difference,Language problem,

 

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By chatman
03rd Aug 2011 16:35

I tried three different Indian outsourcers and eventually gave up. I found the work to be of very low quality and they always tried to bill for the time to correct their own ridiculous errors. One of them suggested that the quality of the work might improve if I gave them enough work to occupy a whole member of staff. I replied that I was unlikely to give them more work just because the existing workload was being done so badly.

In general, I have always found it very hard to get a straight answer in a work situation from someone based in India.  I think it is one of those cultures (like the Mexican culture) in which they do not want to give you bad news (even if it is simply confirmation that they f*cked up).  Obviously this can make communication very difficult.

I have now found that there are UK-based alternatives: Keebo for inputting invoices; ReconSilo for bank reconciliations; downloaded bank statements for importing bank transactions, which cut  out most of the time, hassle and cost.

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By peterhool
03rd Aug 2011 17:44

We have our own office in India and therefore do not suffer any of the above problems - we also offer far more than basic outsourcing. If you would like to find out more email me at [email protected].

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Torben Halvorses owner of PaperLess Document Management for Sage
By torbenhalvorsen
05th Aug 2011 11:12

Outsourcing

In an accountancy practice I was involved in outsourcing at one point. It very much depends on the supplier obviously and has good and bad points. I think it also depends on the type of complexity of work you have. If you are interested in testing out suppliers, be aware of allowing a significant investment in training your supplier to provide exactly what you want, and the difficulties of understanding different cultures.

At PaperLess I have seen that proving automatic invoice recognition means that another option is to use this to make your book keeping work more profitable, i.e. reduce th amount of manual data entry and the non-billeable hours you have by collaborating securely with clients.

Phil

-- Accounting the PaperLess way™

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By The Black Knight
09th Aug 2011 11:25

Confidentiality concerns

Would be an issue too ? Try pursuing that across borders ? Would you even know a leak of financial data had been made to Al Qaida or some other criminal gang. I doubt if the firm you engage would ever admit it !

Quality control... firms that appear to have outsourced seem to have lowered their quality standards somewhat.

+ are accountancy staff in the UK (educated and hard working) really worth less than the cost of say £15 per hour.

If I was a client that knew you were getting the work done cheap abroad I would want a fee reduction.

On the plus side you would have no employment law issues, or health and safety nonsense, and could turn a blind eye to any unseen money laundering issues.

It's a shame we can't outsource the child tax credit claimants to India.

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By [email protected]
10th Aug 2011 07:28

I FREELANCE

I will freelance my services for 25% of the fee and no more(with a minimum charge of £100). I have also been trained well in a top accountancy practice and do what I think is decent work. Yet I cannot get any work!

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