Accounting firms after the pandemic have resorted to offshoring to mitigate their staffing challenges. They also realise that if they are going to work remotely, let's try offshoring.Compulsive use of technology and transforming it into the cloud helps them offshoring better.  There has been a significant mindset shift towards offshore hiring by accounting firms. Before this pandemic, about 6.2% of the accounting firms used offshore staffing, today  that number has grown to a whopping 41.3%.

Accounting outsourcing firms are growing up all over the place, and accounting firms' clients are growing up all over the place as well! Many firms are still dealing with the mindsets issue. Entigrity has grown by around 90% in the last 15 months, implying that we have done the most of what we have accomplished in the preceding seven years.

Offshoring is a disruptive trend, especially after the pandemic, and the graph above shows how accounting firms have adapted to offshoring. Accounting firms have adapted to offshore staffing more than 2.5 times. Firms have investigated learning offshore staffing more than twice. Offshoring is thus the new normal, whether accounting companies like it or not.

CPE Outsourcing Survey 2021:

The terms 'offshore accounting' and 'tax preparation outsourcing' are known to almost all accounting firms and businesses in North America. There are presently hundreds of such firms, with employees working from remote locations all over the world. While this is not a new thought, it has gained traction in the aftermath of the pandemic.

It doesn't matter if you're working remotely from 'Boston or Bangalore,' 'Miami or Mumbai,' 'New York or New Delhi,' as long as your team has the right skillset, mindset, and speaks the same language.' Many firms have even gone one step further and started building offshore teams, leveraging the "Global Talent Pool."

However, what roles would be offshored depends on your offshoring journey. If you are in the initial phases of research, you may be dumping some of the overflowing tasks on your plate and simply learning how outsourcing works for your firm. When you begin to build up, you might ultimately begin to form a team. This is a good approach to start hiring for junior positions like as accountants, bookkeepers, customer service representatives, and tax preparers. These are the positions you should offshoring first if you have 1 - 5 years of experience.

There are 5 tasks that can be offshored:

Lets us look at what task can be offshored:

1. Day to Day Tasks: (Paying Bills, Managing AR/AP, Invoicing and Collection)

2. Periodic Tasks: (Month End Close, Financial year Report)

3. Tax-Related Tasks: (Planning Projections, Quarterly Review, etc)

4. Business Advisory Tasks: Managing Team, Team Evaluation, Designing an Incentive Plan, Evaluation Performance of Department, etc

5. Strategic Advisory Tasks: Planning, Valuation, M&A and another sort of advisory)

What are the Roles that can be Offshored? 

(Offshore and Onshore)

When we say that 65-70 percent of tasks can be offshored, we mean progressively, not all at once. It typically takes 2-3 years to fully use offshoring and provide CAAS and VCFO services.

We've split it into three phases: Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3, where we can clearly distinguish the responsibilities of onshore and offshore teams, with red representing onshore teams and green representing offshore staff.

The staffing challenge is high in the areas of 5+ of years experience profiles. So, you have to understand that the Indian ecosystem is far younger than the US. Offshoring is not just about hiring senior-level talent, but it's about building capacity so that you can use your capabilities. "Using capabilities by building capacity". When you build capacity through offshoring, you will be able to use the capability of your onshore team. 

And once you've developed a full team in your 2-3 years of offshore, i.e. a 15-20 person team, these junior employees will be able to ramp up and take on senior responsibilities, eventually emerging as team leaders or supervisors. So this is most likely an organic process of hiring and expanding a team, and you would know which positions to outsource. Please watch Shawn Parikh's video on (What roles and tasks can be offshored)

Mike Goossen, CPA, has written an E-Book on 100+ Tasks that may be done by Offshore Staff for an Accounting Firm. This E-book will provide you a comprehensive view of the many jobs that may be assigned to your offshore staff even after tax season is over.

Internal surveys may help you identify the pain points of your onshore team, as well as areas where you should restructure, train, or assign to the offshore team. For both Comfort and Enjoyment, you may rate the chores on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 being the most.

Below is the chart that can be used to assess which are the tasks that need delegation.

There are four zones as per the comfort and enjoyment level of the employee:-

1. ZONE 1(Low Comfort, Low on Enjoyment ): The zone that requires the highest level of attention where the employee is neither comfortable doing a particular task nor he enjoys it. The staff either has no clarity on the role or is completely a misfit.

2. ZONE 2 (Low Comfort, High on Enjoyment): This zone entails  the employees who are liking  to do the work but somewhere lacks the technical knowledge and needs to be trained.

3. ZONE 3 (High Comfort, High on Enjoyment): It’s the ideal situation where the staff enjoys the work and he has the skill set, so he is comfortable also. You need all your staff to be in this zone

4. ZONE 4 (High Comfort, Low on Enjoyment): This is the delegation zone where your onshore employee is comfortable but is not enjoying the work. These are the tasks that need to be allocated to offshore staff.

Offshore staff can gradually grow with your firm and support your Senior Team. Retaining a staff who is aligned to your companies' culture and invested in your firm's vision is Important.

Offshore staff can gradually grow with your firm and support your Senior Team. Retaining a staff who is aligned to your companies' culture and invested in your firm's vision is Important.

Entigrity™ is a trusted offshore staffing partner to over 600+ accountants, CPAs, and tax firms across the US and Canada. Our flexible and transparent hiring model gives helps firms of all sizes to hire staff for accounting, bookkeeping, tax preparation, or any other task for 75% less cost. As a firm 'run by accountants, for the accountants', Entigrity captures the hiring needs of accounting firms most precisely, providing staff that works directly under your control and management, still, you are left with least to worry about compliance, payroll taxes, overheads or any other benefits.