Why you need to outsource your accounting

Many CEOs, CFOs, and other executives still make mistakes when it comes to their company’s accounting. They spend resources (time and money) on a function that is non-core to their business by building an in-house finance and accounting team instead of outsourcing.

Prominent global companies have the means and genuinely benefit from having a dedicated, in-house accounting team. However, businesses with $5 to $200 million in revenues should acknowledge the benefits of outsourced accounting.

This article will go in-depth of these benefits by explaining all the signs that point to the need for outside help for your growing company’s finances.

1. You want to cut down on costs

The primary need for hiring accountants instead of keeping a team of them in-house is to cut down on costs.

The central myth business people believe in is that outsourced accounting costs more. However, nothing can be further from the truth.

Let’s take a look at it this way. If you have an accounting team, you should expect the following:

  • Paying large salaries to each accountant, which can be $60,000 and often more
  • Paying numerous benefits to each accounting employee
  • You won’t need them at all times, but you’ll still have to pay them

Now, as for outsourced accountants:

  • You hire a dedicated, professional, and capable team only when you need them or keep them on retainer which is much cheaper than a single accountant’s salary
  • No spending money on benefits
  • Finance as a Service (FaaS) firms are often more qualified and have a lot more experience than in-house teams as they have worked with a vast number of companies like yours.

As you can see, cutting down on costs is more than merely possible when hiring outside professionals.

2. Your company is growing extremely fast

Growing companies experiencing rapid growth are precisely the ones that need to outsource their finance & accounting and should consider Finance as a Service (FaaS).

Do you want to know why? The reasons are clear:

  1. With the rapid growth, there is the selling of more products or services. Transactions increase as the business grows. Now the business is collecting more and more financial data that needs to be analyzed and recorded.
  2. The existing accounting team (if there is one) can’t handle such a massive and sudden increase in the amount of work they have to process.
  3. Mistakes now occur more often than usual.
  4. One of the results of rapid growth are increased revenues, which leaves additional sums that can be used on hiring experienced professionals who can handle the finances.

3. The workload is too heavy

Many growing companies entrust the accounting (and all financial responsibilities for that matter) to the CFO. It inevitably leads to that person burning out over time.

Overworking is a severe problem in this day and age, where people try to take on too many roles or take on too many tasks.

Another problem here that is a direct result of the CFO with a heavy workload is that they are not able to spend their time on strategy which is where their expertise is really needed. It’s often easy to understate this problem as it’s not as easily noticed as one might think.

When such a thing starts to occur, it’s a clear sign that outside help is necessary. By outsourcing your accounting needs:

  • The CFO can oversee the finances as a whole, while the hired experts will deal with other time-consuming and transactional tasks.
  • The hired finance professionals manage the vast amounts of data. It then provides the CFO with completed analytics which can help them gain better insight into the company’s affairs
  • The CFO has more time to analyze the financial picture of the company.

Precisely because of all of this, the CFO can make better decisions and improve the business as a whole, furthering the growth of the company.

4. Your accounting team is wasting time on lesser issues

Accounting typically operates separately in most companies, and these teams have a lot of freedom in what they do. It inevitably leads to wasted time and money on minor issues, while the most important things are left on the side, which are:

  • In-depth analysis of key performance indicators
  • Strategizing
  • Moving the company forward

When this happens, and it almost always does, it’s a clear sign that your company needs to outsource their accounting as the hired professionals can deal with these less important issues and day-to-day activities. The Finance as a Service (FaaS) model provides high-level CFO guidance and support. Your CFO, supported by your FaaS team, can then manage the previously mentioned crucial tasks that focus on growing the business.

What’s more, you won’t even need a big accounting team anymore, which will help you cut down on costs.

5. Your software is fallible and old, and you don’t know what’s the best solution

Accounting and finance software is a necessity in the modern age for any growing business. However, several problems stem from this need:

  • Every software solution quickly gets outdated (every three years or less, while this timeframe will only get shorter over time)
  • It’s hard to find the right program as many have faults or they do not offer everything your company’s finances require
  • Your team most likely won’t be able to find the best solution as they are not the developers of such software

With such clear and critical problems, it’s evident that your company would benefit from a FaaS company with the right software and the one that understands what your business needs from their software solution.

Other potential signs

Besides these five significant signs that point to the need of hiring outside help, there are several, less critical ones that you might want to know about.

  • The CEO or CFO lack real-time visibility into financial data
  • No central dashboard where the CFO or CEO can get insight into all the critical economic data and have a general overview of the financial picture of the business
  • Lack of visualization in the financial reports
  • Financial and accounting tasks are not always finished on time
  • The CFO needs additional help that’s not affordable through classic, in-house solutions

All of these signs have a straightforward answer, and you can quickly deal with all of them, as well as the main five, by outsourcing your finance & accounting needs.

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Top objections and concerns: can outsourcing can improve your finance & accounting function

 

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Consero Global is a top Finance as a Service (FaaS0 company that provides a plethora of robust solutions for CEOs, CFOs, and investors regarding all the financial and accounting issues that they have with their companies. Our platform disrupts the way businesses achieve the financial clarity and scalability needed to drive them forward.

We concentrate on high-growth companies and offer top solutions that enable them to grow and get to the top tier in their respective industries.

Our solutions are all-encompassing, they consider everything when it comes to a company’s finances. We offer:

  • Strategy and funding services
  • Operational financial services
  • Financial controller services
  • Bookkeeping
  • Administration services
  • Our unique cloud software platform aptly named SIMPL

In line with our vision: ˝To make the traditional in-house finance function as obsolete as the flip phone˝, our solution is cutting-edge and goes well beyond traditional outsourced accounting.

Outsourcing allows you to get access to various accounting trends and advanced tech solutions in an accelerated timeline and at a lower cost. But many are still skeptical of outsourcing. Today, we will go in-depth with the top objections and concerns our customers have.

Our primary mission is delighted customers benefiting from solutions that are easy to understand and can serve the requirement of moving the company forward. With that in mind, we will answer all the concerns and objections you might have. We hope that this text will provide additional answers to the questions you might have about how we can transform your finance and accounting function.

“We’ve outgrown an outsourced solution.”

With the solutions Consero Global offers, outgrowing outsourced accounting is entirely unnecessary and counterproductive. There are several reasons for this:

  • Consero Global’s Finance as a Service (FaaS) model is very different to other consulting models. Not only do we manage all the back-office operations through our enterprise-level finance & accounting software stack, but we provide ongoing high-level strategic guidance.
  • Our model is different from other outsourcing models. We deliver a sophisticated high level of service, powered by smart, on-tap and highly scalable digital technology.
  • We aim to help your company by implementing a turnkey finance & accounting system that’s complete with processes as well as with a team of experts in the industry.
  • Our variable and predictable pricing that scales up or down with the business help you stay consistent with your budget forecast.

We work with businesses that generate more than several hundred million in revenue and leverage that knowledge to help you scale and grow your business.

What’s more, we do this in the most cost-effective manner possible as well as in the shortest amount of time. All in the aim to provide quick, easy, and practical solutions for all your finance and accounting needs.

Our system will provide you with best-in-class finance and accounting solutions used by top performing companies, made to be in line with your company’s size, yet still enabling you to expand and grow quickly.

You will avoid the pitfalls of traditional in-house accounting which include substantial capital investments, extensive recruiting efforts, and problematic management challenges.

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“I’ll just hire one person to figure it out since I don’t have time to manage this.”

This is exactly how many companies fail. It’s not only a problem with finances; it’s always very counterproductive to hire a single person to manage more than what they possibly can. You can make many mistakes in business, but finance and accounting is not one of them. The single-point-of-failure comes with a very high cost.

When it comes to finance and accounting, there are plenty of technicalities that a single person doesn’t have the time nor the knowledge to handle appropriately. A team of experts is always preferable as they have a variety of skill sets needed in finance. Why is that? Because; you want to have a world-class finance and accounting department. This department has one of the critical roles in moving your company forward.

Consero Global has precisely the people with the right skill sets who will help your company grow. The team we provide is a team of experts in every area needed in finance and accounting. From design and implementation to daily accounting activities, we have the experts for it. They are trained and ready to assist you.

Our solution is unique in this way, because:

  • We combine the traditional CFO, bookkeeping and controller services into one.
  • We have created proven processes and integrated them with a cloud-based software.
  • Our software application stack, called SIMPL, provides you with a dashboard view of how your entire company is performing and gives you the ability to manage customers, pay vendors and more, all in one place.

If you need more reasons why our solution is preferred when compared to one single in-house person dealing with everything, our clients have the answer. They have repeatedly found that our approach with a team of experts significantly improves the outcomes. One individual just cannot take care of everything, no matter how much they try.

“As a CFO, what will there be left for me to do once Consero is implemented?”

Consero is not here to replace you as a CFO. On the contrary, we are here to lighten your workload. We aim to assist you by taking over some of the less essential responsibilities a CFO has.

The duties every CFO has are both operational and strategic. Numerous tasks go into both of these categories. The strategic tasks are ultimately the ones that truly matter for a company. Unfortunately, strategy often gets put on the back-burner because the routine, daily tasks must get completed. The CFOs more often than not, spend most of their time on the numerous operational needs of the business.

Consero Global solution takes care of the routine operational tasks and leaves you with less workload, thus enabling you to concentrate on the strategic functions fully, the ones that when completed successfully, will turn you into the best right hand any CEO can have.

Upon using the service of Consero, you save your time for the tasks that require all of your experience, intellect, and insight.

We hope these answers are the ones you need and the ones that will help you understand our business better. We are here to help you and your business grow and improve.

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Consero Global is once again a top partner in the Sage Intacct Accountants Program with the new SIMPL platform

 

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At this year’s Sage Intacct President’s Club organized by Sage Intacct, a record number of partners achieved membership. Among several other essential credits, Consero Global is honored as a top partner at the Sage Intacct Accountants Program, which is the company’s third year in a row of receiving this prestigious award.

Consero Global has again been recognized as a leading Finance as a Service (FaaS) company that provides the flawless combination of people and technology for high-growth companies. Consero goes beyond basic outsourced accounting, and Sage Intacct recognizes their uniqueness through this award. They strive to provide experienced financial guidance and a cloud based financial console that delivers the financial clarity and scalability needed to drive a business forward.

Granting the honor of being once again a part of Sage Intacct’s program is, in part, recognition for Consero’s top new SIMPL platform, unveiled at the CFO Leadership Conference in Boston, back in May. SIMPL is in many ways similar to other cloud-based financial command centers, however, it proves to be much more due to several unique features it has:

  • Provides the top financial tools Fortune 500 companies would use, for high-growth businesses
  • All the data is much easier to approach, understand and control, which leaves you to concentrate on more critical strategic tasks in your company
  • Boasts an easy-to-use, intuitive and straight-forward interface

Let’s have an in-depth look at the platform, and see what separates it from the rest and makes it very useful for CEOs, CFOs, and investors of companies of all sizes.

The SIMPL platform

Consero’s SIMPL cloud software platform provides top financial control and insight for small, mid-sized and large companies. By using the platform, the companies can continue to grow quickly and efficiently all the while using software fit for the wealthiest companies of the world. It doesn’t matter at what point the firm starts with the software, as it was created to encompass all the financial and accounting needs a company requires at all the stages in its development, from the start-up phase, through IPO and beyond.

Consero’s mission was to create a leading and comprehensive software solution that’s much more than a simple outsourced accounting tool. Consero has achieved this with an innovative approach with simplicity and clarity in mind. The SIMPL platform further establishes Consero as the leader in the Finance as a Service (FaaS) industry, and the Sage Intacct’s award confirms this by making the company a top partner, once again.

What are some of the things that SIMPL can help busy executives achieve?

  • Easily comprehend from the platform where their entire business is at any moment
  • Effectively learn about all the factors that are currently driving the changes in performance of the whole firm
  • Quickly connect with the finance team and get them to take fast action
  • Monitor the company’s performance through intuitive graphical information and financial reports
  • And much more!

As the CFO of Consero Global, Scott Tynes said: “With SIMPL’s disruptive technology, Consero continues to make the traditional in-house finance and accounting function as obsolete as the flip phone.”

Now let’s get back to Sage Intacct and their prestigious club to point out the importance of the award.

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The Sage Intacct President’s Club

Sage Intacct has made this very coveted sale and customer satisfaction honor almost a decade ago and awards it annually, but only to the top-performing partners.

The award recognizes the Sage Intacct Accountants Program companies (SIAPs), and the value-added resellers (VARs). They have to succeed in leveraging the Sage Intacct’s cloud financial management software and move businesses forward to receive this esteemed reward.

The membership has managed to attract the most firms of any other cloud financial management software seller. The numbers speak for themselves:

  • 31 of the top 100 CPA firms
  • 30 of the Top 100 VAR firms in the industry

Sage Intacct’s program has been in existence since 2010, and it continues to attract more of the industry’s top organizations. This past year, Sage Intacct added 28 new VAR partners and 31 SIAP partners.

These stunning numbers for 2018 prove what a successful year it was for Sage Intacct and what remarkable results they keep on achieving.

Consero Global is proud to be an essential part of Sage Intacct’s elite group and will continue to deliver top financial and accounting services to growing companies to further improve businesses and keep proving the quality of their software and service to their clients.

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How to know you are working with a smart accountant

 

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Being an accountant in the smart modern era of new technologies and automation is not an easy job. Accountants can quickly lose a job or clients if they are not evolving with the times. If they try to keep up with the old ways of accounting, i.e., manually, they will quickly be on the sidelines of the business.

Modern accountants must be smart accountants, as the main processes in business today are automation and workflow. Without it, they can’t succeed. But what do those things mean? What is, in fact, a smart accountant?

What is a smart accountant?

Most everything the older accountants did was through knowledge and by hand. The mantra of today, however, is making most of the operations automated.

Smart accountants do precisely that. They still use the knowledge they already have, but they also know how to automate many of their processes. These automated processes and many other things are with the use of cloud software like Sage Intacct, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, and many more. All of these platforms have unique ecosystems, and they allow you to attach other tools which in turn gives you expanded functions and capabilities.

Smart accountants know how to utilize these software tools in combination with their skills and provide a modern and active service.

What does a smart accountant do?

Business leaders today do not want to do any accounting, which is understandable, but they expect to get the benefits of leading-edge accounting. They want all the information accounting can provide, organized in a meaningful way that can easily be accessed. A smart accountant can provide precisely that by:

  • Understanding the process and the workflow of their clients
  • Understanding the software
  • Recommending the right solutions, i.e., apps that capture the data in a meaningful way in which the client can understand and utilize

Almost all accounting apps can bring in the bank and credit card information. However, it is up to the smart accountant to create and set all the rules and systems which will ensure that the information is collected and presented to the client correctly, and in the manner that’s usable to that business owner.

The existence of these software solutions and their practicality shows that there is no need for an accountant to prepare monthly statements for their clients because they can use the management dashboards of these tools. The dashboards can create a lot more information that’s also more useful and can allow the client to make their decisions for the business.

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Key information to know

These software tools can replace a lot of things, but a smart accountant still needs to do what they do best – accounting and financial advice. In essence, consulting and advisory services still need to be provided.

Many businesses are turning to the Finance as a Service (FaaS) model which includes all the people, processes and systems needed to support a company’s daily financial operations and to enable more informed strategic decision making. The Finance as a Service model includes: a pre-integrated software stack, operational accounting services, financial reporting, compliance management and CFO services.

It is important for any finance & accounting leader to assess the various KPIs that are now created automatically and point out to the client the trends and critical measurements that only you can see.

A smart accountant will also have to utilize three additional methods which we will talk in greater detail in the following sections:

  • Setting management dashboards
  • Workflow automation, to bring in data from banking and credit card statements quickly and efficiently
  • Charging for value, not hourly

Setting management dashboards for clients

It’s important to recognize that businesses either don’t have the time to figure the data out or they can’t. Furthermore, they shouldn’t have to worry about this as it should be the accountant or Finance as a Service provider’s job to help them and deliver the right data in an easy format.

Accountants or FaaS providers can do this by creating an efficient dashboard that will deploy data to the client quickly and in a way that’s easy to understand. If you want to achieve this, you should follow several steps:

  • Create custom data that’s specific to the business. Everything on the dashboard needs to be unique and unambiguous. This can be done by understanding the business’s goals and missions.
  • Make the complex data easy and intuitive, because businesses don’t need to get bogged down with complex data that won’t mean much to them.
  • Prepare real-time data that the business can access when they need it the most.

Workflow automation

Every accountant knows that processing bank and credit card statements take a lot of time. It involves a lot of manual work that takes a lot of time – time that would be of better use on other more important things for clients.

Accountants can spare themselves the time and effort wasted on this and thus improve how to deliver data to clients. By using some of the previously mentioned software tools, accountants can automatically transfer the bank and credit card statements onto the dashboard.

Charge for value

Charging for projects is a far better way of doing business as an accountant than it is by charging per hour. It might seem that an accountant will earn more by charging hourly, but the reality is that this way won’t retain clients.

Charging for value means that an accountant will also have to set up a fixed price in advance. That price needs to first take into consideration of the importance of what an accountant is delivering to the business.

The Finance as a Service (FaaS) model has a predictable service-based pricing that scales up or down with the business which is ideal for budgeting. The FaaS solution that provides finance and accounting services to companies as an alternative to building an in-house F&A function, in an accelerated timeline and at a lower cost.

There are several other pros for this way of charging:

  • Businesses executives are not interested in the hours an accountant needs, and this method skips that
  • Businesses care what’s in it for them, and this method proves that their service provider thinks that way as well
  • Businesses want to buy an accountant’s skills, not their time
  • Price certainty attracts everyone; hours do not

The modern world requires an advanced form of thinking that includes the current trends, and a smart accountant does possess such knowledge. Hopefully, this text will help you on your journey to choosing a smart accountant or Finance as a Service provider.

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Questions answered: how does the Finance as a Service model work?

 

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Welcome to Consero Global! We are a Finance as a Service (FaaS) partner of many growth companies, as well as CEOs, CFOs, and investors. Why? Accounting and finance cannot deliver those business insights and metrics that leaders of most growing companies need. And because strategic finance is the secret accelerator of high-growth companies, the growth is stalled due to outdated systems, inefficient processes, and the wrong people.

The global markets are highly disruptive, especially those affected by the technological advancements. Growth companies need to respond to every change in the quickest possible manner. To do that, they need clear insights into their financial fundamentals, forward-looking reports, and the best perspective of their performance metrics.

Time to grow

When the economy is strong enough (according to all the indicators) the confidence increases and companies think about growth. On the other hand, the landscape of supply chain and technology solutions has changed during the last decade, and now companies can leverage third parties to support them in their expansion. The outsourcing of areas, such as finance and accounting, is becoming more and more necessary to ensure acceptable profit margins, satisfied customers, and timely delivery.

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Outsourcing concerns

Outsourcing has been around for quite a while. But if a company never sought to outsource before, there is often have a myriad of questions and concerns about outsourcing a new project. Outsourcing can bring success only if built on good communication, integrity, and trust.

Top questions from prospective clients

1. “What will my Consero Global team look like?”

Your Consero Global team will consist of an accounting management team dedicated to you and a VP of Finance with 15-20 years of experience who will oversee the accounting team. Consero will carefully examine your role and business needs, and assign you a team that is built to meet your requirements. Each member of our team is a degreed accountant, while 70% of our employees have a post-graduate degree in accounting.

2. “How do you understand the nuances of my business?”

There are no two businesses that are entirely the same. Consero has proven systems and processes that are universal and can be applied to all businesses. But as each company is unique in its way, we will customize our systems according to your specific needs and requirements.

We work with our clients to define the most optimized process for managing revenue because the revenue model is typically the unique aspect of a business.

3. “How do I know that everything is getting done?”

Consero will work with you during the implementation of our services to identify everything that needs to be done on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Next, we will systemize all tasks into workflows and track everything, providing you with total transparency and complete insight into what our team is working on.

Our clients will never feel like they’re “in the dark” as we aim to gain the trust of our clients by showing our expertise, being honest and transparent, and providing the desired results. All this gives our clients more control and visibility that they’d had with their in-house finance and accounting team.

We understand that control is among the primary client concerns regarding outsourcing for accounting. However, technology has evolved to a point where data can be managed and shared with approved team members in real-time.

4. “With you guys doing so much, what will I be working on?”

Well, it all depends on your role and responsibilities in the company.

  • CEO. The CEO of a company is a person who wants to focus on the solutions for driving business growth. CEOs need financial reports as the source of information that will help them bring more informed decisions with more confidence. However, with CEOs being consumed with other aspects of their business, they can’t gain a real understanding of where their company is and where it is going (from a financial standpoint.) Consero can empower CEOs by:
  • Reducing time spent on finance and accounting
  • Increased transparency
  • Complete understanding of your financials
  • Efficient and scalable financial solutions{{cta(‘d470b563-0969-408c-aa3f-cf3f608ebda9′,’justifycenter’)}}

We will simplify your business operations and help your decision-making.

  • CFO. What are the concerns of a growth-company CFO? A Chief Financial Officer’s duty is ensuring the organization is capitalized adequately and helping the company understand financial impacts. They are there to make the most optimal business decisions, but also to work on improving the company’s financial infrastructure that can often be immature. As the company grows, the reporting needs become more complex while operational inefficiencies can slow down the growth. CFOs need complete insight into their companies’ finance, and Consero provides them with everything they need to support them – from integrated, web-based operational software to reliable back office services. That will enable you to focus on the strategic aspects of your CFO role.
  • Investors. With Consero, Private equity investors get a faster and customized way for increasing visibility and improving their operational profitability. Private equity investors struggle to get accurate, timely, and audit-ready financial information. Consero can transform portfolio company finance functions through a combination of innovative workflows and software automation with the help from experienced professionals.

Consero Global can help, and do it in a quality and cost-effective manner, whatever your business needs or role might be.

Growth companies need to have a sound growth strategy as well as an excellent execution plan. It justifies the questions they always ask when considering to hire a third-party to take care of their finance and accounting. Growth companies need effective financial controls to speed their time-to-market and pitch investors more confidently. Greater control can also propel a business to an established firm quickly, as it all comes down to knowing where you stand regarding your plans.

 

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In-House or Outsource: How outsourcing your finance and accounting could reduce the chance of fraud

For fast growing businesses, capital often takes over, compromising the quality of in-house finance to fi budgetary restraints. Small to mid-sized businesses can only afford to hire one person, so they aim for the middle. They hire someone who can collect and deposit checks, invoice customers and reconcile the bank account but can also manage and prepare the financial statements. However, the risk of fraud increases when these duties are not separated. High growth businesses are the most common victims of finance and accounting frauds.

While executives are busy with achieving their business goals, they ignore oversight of the internal accounting control, thus falling victim to fraud. That’s why outsourcing comes as the best solution for the separation of finance and accounting duties.

Separating Duties

Instead of leaving everything to one employee, separate the accounting duties to two or more experts. The three primary accounting functions are record keeping, authorization, and custody of assets. One or two of these functions can be left to an outsourced expert, as dividing the work between two employees is the minimum level of accounting duties separation.

CEO Opportunity Cost

CEOs don’t want to be bothered with time consuming and tedious daily accounting tasks. But when fraud happens, they’d wish to have been there to check the numbers from time to time. CEOs are more focused on other business’ core competencies and gave up the potential benefit that they could have received from finance audit. It is called opportunity cost, which is why CEOs outsource their accounting processes to outside experts who perform the review instead as well as offer critical financial advice on how to avoid common accounting mistakes.

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Check Tampering Fraud

Tampering fraud is when an employee alters, forges, or intercepts a check drawn on your business’ bank account. The four types of check tampering are:

  • altered checks (changing the payee),
  • concealed checks (the signer failed sign a check that was hidden in a batch),
  • forged checks (forging the check signature),
  • authorized maker (misappropriation of funds by the signer).

To separate accounting duties, such as bank reconciliation and data entry, you can outsource for an additional accounting person or service who will perform all the necessary audits to check for fraud.

Billing Fraud

When an employee submits invoices for fake goods and services or personal invoices for the company for payment, it’s called billing fraud. It’s one of the most common types of fraud which happens when the accounting duties, such as bill payment and bill reconciliation, aren’t separated.

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Payroll Fraud

Payroll frauds happen when an employee issues payment to fictitious workers or inflates their working hours on their timesheet. It’s less likely to occur in larger organizations because they outsource payroll because of the complexity of the function. Luckily, there are automated billing systems and fraud detection tools (offered by banks) to which you can safely outsource payroll.

Skimming Fraud

The term “skimming” means taking something off the top. The cash is skimmed by the employee responsible for the cash receipts, and it’s a typical scenario in organizations that continue to receive cash payments. The fraudster takes the money and deletes the entire transaction or reports a lower cash total. By hiring someone to run an audit trail, they can detect that something was deleted in your business’ cash account.

One of the most significant fraud problems is corruption, regardless of the size of a business. Companies can avoid making it easy for people to commit fraud by setting up a system of internal accounting controls. The accounting staff you outsource to will address the causes of fraud, such as under-optimization in the accounting software, understaffed or overwhelmed employees, and messy books. They will give you unbiased oversight and focus on finding any mismatches. Also, it allows for the separation of crucial accounting duties which will provide you with peace of mind.

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Can outsourcing improve your business’s financial accounting processes?

Business owners and entrepreneurs start a business with many goals in mind. Tasks such as finance and accounting are often not something that business owners are experienced in executing. At the same time, they realize that accurately keeping track of numbers is critical.

Today, more and more companies are deciding to outsource their financial activities to improve their financial and accounting processes. Why? An experienced outsider is more able to identify areas that are ready for improvement, leaving business leaders and CFOs to focus more on other essential activities instead. Here’s how outsourcing can help improve your business’ financial accounting processes.

#1 Lower Costs of Staying on Top of Trends

Outsourcing allows you to gain access to various accounting trends and advanced tech solutions at an accelerated timeline and at a lower cost. An experienced finance and accounting individual or company can provide the technology for less than the cost of your old and outdated technology. It can even cost you less than the upgrade costs that you would have to invest in.

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#2 Focus on Strategy

When finance and accounting tasks are performed in-house, it can become a secondary importance to the business. This is because there are so many other processes that are being tended to in-house as well. The priority is usually given to the revenue-generation processes. On the other hand, an outsourced solution like Finance as a Service will have finance and accounting specialists that plug in the right processes and systems. An outsourced partner can implement a world-class finance & accounting function in 30 to 60 days instead of the nine to 19 months it would take for a company to do it on their own.

#3 Reduce Risk

Companies are susceptible to theft. Many businesses have money stolen by their own employees. To enforce a checks and balances system without making employees feel distrusted is difficult because it kills the company morale. That’s why outsourcing for accounting services is the best solution, because you will have experts handle your finances, save time, money, and stress, but you’ll also have a third party review your money trail. With an impartial standard of checks and balances, you will decrease the risk of internal fraud and improve compliance.

#4 Capitalize on Finance and Accounting Expertise

If you are just beginning to build a finance & accounting team and are not savvy in those tasks, you still need to learn how to do it the right way. Talent is hard to find (and keep) so, be prepared to invest a lot of time and effort to hire, train and manage turnover of the position. But time and energy are precious, especially when your company is experiencing rapid growth and you need to use your time for the strategic aspects of the business such as product development and building a customer base. An outsourced provider and their team will have more knowledge and expertise than you do, and they can work on your projects with complex rules and regulations or at crucial times. If done in-house, it would probably never be very cost-effective.

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#5 Saves You from the Hassle of Subcontracting

Certain companies experience peaks and valleys in their finance and accounting cycles (monthly, quarterly, and annual.) During peak workloads, these businesses need to manage the costs of outsourced staff and budget for their in-house baselines. They need to handle staffing for finance and accounting regularly and ensure that the activity remains cost-effective.

Outsourcing can help them make minimum cost commitments for F&A staff. The outsourcing provider will do the resource management planning, ensuring the delivery of lower resource cost.

Poor cash flow management is a common cause of business failure which is why financial and accounting processes must be top-notch. Outsourcing for this role is, thus, one of the best solutions. But be sure not to rush things over when finding the right expert. You need a partner for the long haul.

Back Office Holding Back 3

5 Finance mistakes made by small and middle market businesses

Beginnings are always messy. If you run a small or even medium-sized business which is still shaky, there’s much work to be done to keep it running and scaling. You need to hire the right talent, establish an effective marketing strategy, find and reach the right customer base, create a viable product, and a lot more. The path toward business stability and profit is full of various traps and pitfalls that you need to avoid if you want to go unpunished. Financial mistakes are most harmful and most common. These are some of the mistakes that your businesses should know how to steer away from.

#1 Slow-Paying Customers

A delay in receivables can cause severe cash flow problems, like when a client or customer is slow in paying their bills. Companies often allow their clients to become delinquent in paying without realizing that it can have a severe impact on liquidity. To ensure your customers pay on time, you need to put consistent procedures and controls in place. Don’t assume that they know what to expect. Clarify your payment expectations and terms on every invoice.

#2 Uncertainty about Future Cash Flow

Running a business requires your full attention as you need to take care of many aspects. Once a company gets caught up in those daily operations, they don’t take time to anticipate their future cash flow. Maintaining a good cash flow requires a long-term vision. Every accounting expert will tell you that you need to support at least a six-month cash flow projection, along with expected expenses, revenue, and adjustments for seasonal valleys and peaks.

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#3 Expanding Too Soon

Expanding a business can be a bad idea if you try to do it too soon. For a company to scale appropriately, there must be some vital resources and structures in place, such as access to credit, access to equity, cash, and secured supply lines. It will be time consuming, but you must be meticulous about building the table stakes: stable business systems, efficient processes and and critical staff. Organic growth may appear slow at first, but with the right foundation in place, you will have a solid business.

#4 Not Paying Attention to Expenses

Unexpected expenses, like a natural disaster, replacing malfunctioning technology, and costly equipment repairs, often lead businesses to a cash flow crunch. It can also happen due to ongoing expenses that have quietly risen up to an unsustainable level. When this happens, you need to rethink your continuous cost structure and have a rigorous process for tracking your expenses. If you’re not savvy with accounting tasks, you can always leverage Finance as a Service and outsource your finance & accounting to experts that know how to keep an eye on your business cash flow and anticipate future challenges.

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#5 Not Reinvesting Early-Year Profits

After businesses start to gain momentum, business owners often over spend resources that aren’t necessary. They don’t understand the importance of reinvesting their early profits in the business to achieve stability and secure its long-term performance. These resources could be used for expansion or vital operations.

A business owner must focus on finances almost fanatically. When you have a firm grip on things like financial planning, accounting, and budgeting, you can secure the future of your business and make it grow into a profitable venture.

In-House or Outsource? How Outsourcing Finance & Accounting Saves Time and Money

All too often, businesses find themselves buried in a seemingly endless pile of paperwork, trying to collect payments from clients, make payments to providers, or deal with all sorts of other financial aspects of the company such as budgeting and forecasting. But even if a company’s finances are an expensive and time-consuming process, they are, nevertheless, a necessary part of a business organization.

By outsourcing your accounting department, company leadership can again begin to focus on the core elements of their organization. Today’s business environment is no longer confined between the four walls of a company and is instead spread throughout the world. Many customers could be based in one country while the product developers are in another. What’s more, most of the internal communication happens on various digital platforms such as Slack and Zoom. Cloud based finance & accounting platforms such as SageIntacct, Bill.com and Tally make accessibility easier than ever.

This means that a lot of the work that revolves around running a business can be done remotely– and finance & accounting is no exception. Here are some of the benefits that will accompany your decision to outsource your finance & accounting department.

Focusing on Core Objectives

Like we said before, many small business owners have to multitask a lot of the day-to-day activities of their companies – including accounting. By outsourcing this time-consuming and energy-intensive activity to professionals, they will have more time to focus on other core objectives like scale-up activities, meeting with potential clients and partners, etc.

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Cost-Effectiveness

Since the outsourcing of finance & accounting services can be delivered at a fixed cost, businesses have a much higher return on investment. An in-house accounting staff will attract additional costs: taxes, insurance benefits, training, rehiring, etc. Then there’s the cost for office space, supplies, hardware, software, etc. With outsourced accounting service models like Finance as a Service (FaaS), most of these these costs do not exist.

A considerable part of those savings in operational costs can be channelled toward other projects or core business processes. What’s more, your business will now have access to an experienced team of specialists which will handle more complex accounting problems or challenges.

Standardization

Typically, outsourced accounting firms have ready-made templates and frameworks that can be easily customized to fit with every company’s needs, meaning fewer mistakes, more timely returns, fewer to no financial or legal penalties for accounting delays, etc. In other words, all deadlines will be met adequately, resulting in a more cohesive operation. When a company has an in-house accounting department, it will need to build and maintain that framework on its own.

Access to the Best Technology

Outsourced accounting service providers make use of some of the most high-tech technology in the industry sothey can provide their remote services with higher accuracy and efficiency. Contrary to the traditional way of doing things, artificial intelligence, data, and automation are quickly phasing out the need for managing large amounts of paperwork and files.

Conclusion

By employing the services of an outsourced accounting firm, you will save a lot of time and energy that you can use on other projects or core business operations. It’s always important to remember that these firms have experience in their field and make use of the most advanced technology available, offering you more knowledge, accuracy, and expertise to develop your business’ financial strength. And if this is what OA can do this much for a business, just imagine what Consero Financial Solution can do for you!

 

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Top tech gadgets every CFO needs in their arsenal

Tech gadgets can certainly enhance our effectiveness. If you’re a CFO, some useful devices can make a difference in your daily life. With so much time spent crunching numbers, saving an extra hour can let you relax instead of thinking about work. Take a look at our list of top tech gadgets that every CFO should have in their arsenal.

1. Treadmill Desk

Sitting at your desk for long hours can cause neck and back pain. If you want to get a workout and maintain good posture while working, a treadmill desk may be the best choice for you. Research repeatedly confirms that sedentary office jobs increase heart disease and obesity risk, which is why you should be proactive and consider walking while working. With a treadmill desk, you can burn calories, stretch your legs, and improve your posture.

2. Smart Watch

Smart Watches are a convenient devices. The gadget keeps you connected to your contacts, email, and favorite apps. You can check your schedule, check your Financial Management dashboard, text or call – all from one compact screen.

3. Kinetic Shoes

What are kinetic shoes and why should I trade my classic Oxfords for a pair? Well, if you walk to meetings a lot, you know that a lot of energy is expended while moving around. Kinetic shoes are designed to harvest the energy from walking and use it to charge devices like phones and laptops.

4. ili Wearable Translator

At times, you can’t wait for your translators but need to speak to personnel or clients in other countries. But how to do it when you don’t speak the same language? With the ili wearable translator, you can get an instant translation without the need for an Internet connection. The proprietary device can be worn around your neck, put in a pocket, or held in your hand.

5. Hudway Glass

There are some places where talking or texting on a smartphone while behind the wheel is illegal. Every year, more than a million deaths occur in accidents caused by smartphone distractions. Drivers often take their eyes off the road, but there’s no need for that with HUD (Head Up Display) technology, like the one used in Hudway Glass. The technology allows you to watch videos, text, and tweet while driving. Due to the constant need for communication, CFOs can use it to tend to their duties and be more productive while on the road.

Embrace the technology. These great gadgets were invented because the people who made them recognized the need, and how it could enhance productivity and effectiveness, as well as physical and mental health. As a CFO, you can consider getting yourself some of these gadgets. We’re sure that they will make a lot of things easier, helping you to focus on more essential elements regarding financial management.