How to choose the best accounting office?

A positive answer to the question whether accounting outsourcing is the best solution leads to another dilemma: how to choose the best accounting office? Before you can answer, it is worth asking another: are only accounting offices providing accounting services?

The difference is not only the scale of operations, the portfolio of services (typically simple invoice accounting and tax calculation) and the type of entities served. Outsourceers are usually companies that invest in information technologies, data protection systems, security systems, education of their employees, comprehensive and multidisciplinary.

Security and control are no less important than the quality of services. For this reason, it is outsourcing that are more often chosen by foreign entities with more experience in defining requirements and using the services of an outsourcer. Regardless of the nomenclature, however, when choosing an entity that provides accounting services, several offers from different service providers should be compared in a systematic way. Most often, the main aspects of choosing an office are the price of the service, office location, number of clients, knowledge of a foreign language. This is a catalog of aspects that do not answer the question whether the service will be efficient. Here are eight criteria to consider before choosing an accounting office.

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Security

Each company respects and protects its data. Outsourcing accounting services, in many cases, in some - often significant - control over their protection is transferred to an external entity. Because the accounting office usually works on its systems, which means that financial data are at best subject to other security procedures (than those used in the company ordering the services), and often are not protected at all. How can you check that your data will be protected in the right way? Of course, you can use the help of internal services, and in their absence from an external consulting company that will carry out a security audit of a potential outsourcer. If you do not have such services in your company and do not want to incur costs associated with the audit service, you should ask a potential outsourcer a few questions:

- does it have an internal, written security policy - admission does not guarantee security in itself, but it proves that the company at least thinks about the safety of customers,
- how to prevent data loss - among others what backup procedures it has (how often, how many independent media, where they are stored). Often, when reducing costs, accounting offices do not backup data, do it once a month, or store backups in their office (which in the event of fire or theft does not protect against data loss),
- how to prevent data leakage - among others does it have software to prevent massive loss of confidential data by email, does it allow the use of usb memory, CD recording, etc.,
- how it protects its servers - does it have the right software, hardware, has it ever conducted penetration tests using an external, independent company, etc.

Systems supporting client's operational activity

Accounting is currently not only rewriting invoice data to the accounting system, but only to make cost records and calculate tax, i.e. to meet statutory obligations. Accounting should be an element supporting business activities, by providing current and correct data allowing for making decisions. For an outsourcer to be able to convey such information (current and correct), it must not only have appropriate systems, but also must have experience in what information is needed for business needs, and finally be able to provide it efficiently. There is often a situation where accounting offices close the month on the 25th calendar day of the following month, providing only the balance sheet, not information on the current status of settlements. The best verification of future cooperation with an outsourcer is to ask him how he intends to support the client's business with his systems.

Document workflow

A very common practice of accounting offices is to passively wait for the client to send documents and to blame the client for sending them too late to make a report, declarations, etc. The outsourcer should present potential possible document flows:
- does it have tools to improve this workflow - thanks to today's technology, secure online access to both financial data and reports should be standard. In addition, the best outsourcing companies provide their clients with systems that are used not only to communicate with the outsourcer, but also to improve the circulation of documents in the client's company,


- can it help effectively use e-invoices - despite the liberalization of the regulations (although it must be honestly admitted that they are not yet perfect) - few outsourcuts help clients use this institution,
- does it propose one classic (so-called "paper") cycle or has several alternative solutions - document flow should not be imposed by the outsourcer (or internal accounting). The workflow should be adapted to the client's business reality - only then will the cooperation with the outsourcer be effective and, at the same time, improve other internal processes in the company,


- can you cooperate without sending the original documents to the outsourcer - it is often thought that the accounting office should be "around the corner". Apart from the obvious aspect, there may be an office providing low-quality services around the corner - when accounting, office location should be one of the last aspects to look out for. Thanks to advanced technologies, a good outsourcer is able to service a customer located several hundred kilometers from his headquarters (or - as global experience shows - on another continent). The only important thing is whether the outsourcer has the right tools, procedures and infrastructure to provide such a service.

What outsourcer employees will be involved in providing services

It often happens that the representative of the accounting office who sells the services does not have contact with the client later, does not fully supervise, and the promises are not reality. Before signing the contract, you should make sure who will support us, what experience he has, whether he speaks an adequate foreign language, what is the team and what are the roles in it, and most importantly, will there be one contact person who will know all issues related to the service provided.

Does the outsourcer provide other services besides accounting?

Seemingly this does not seem to be related to service, but multidisciplinary companies have the advantage over accounting offices providing only accounting services, that if necessary they have specialists who will also assist us in other matters, e.g. tax advisors allowing tax optimization, lawyers in in the event of litigation or business advisors that allow you to improve your client’s business in selected areas.


The price of the service mentioned at the beginning should be the result of the above aspects. A natural small accounting office that does not have advanced systems, does not provide online services and is not subject to external controls - it will provide cheaper services than the entity that has such systems, services or controls. This, of course, does not mean that you should decide on the most expensive service - you only need to consider whether it is profitable to take the risk of paying less.

With work on how many systems they have experience

This is an important question, especially if the service will be provided based on the client's accounting system. Accounting offices rarely refuse to provide a service because of this, but unfortunately most of them are not prepared for it - especially from the point of view of the technical capabilities of the connection setup and operational efficiency (proficiency in the use of system functionality).