how bos work lets companies focus on what they do best.
by penny breslin
it’s not just the numbers
what do you want to do for your clients? define it, implement it in yourself and build a team that wants to be a part of your defined image. watch it grow, and adapt it to the changing times.
more: how back office support adds value | ai is not your enemy
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added knowledge and insights assist the client in taking future action on sustainability and growth of their company. cooperation between the client, the account manager and the cloud ai makes this work in order to provide the space for advisory.
first, realize that when you take on this type of work you are an outsourcer. your client is outsourcing to you, and you are insourcing their work. as an accounting business, you can decide on the type and the amount of work you want your firm to do. the work may vary from client to client as well as the steps to accomplish and maintain the work. the key is finding what is common across all those possible variables in your client base to establish the baseline for your firm’s service offerings.
what is outsourcing?
an accounting office is an outsource provider if they enter their client’s after-the-fact payroll derived from reports provided by the payroll company and reconcile bank accounts from statements obtained via a bank feed. the business owner utilizes the core efficiencies of the payroll company, the bank and other third-party providers to complete transactions that are critical to the smooth running of their business. the business owner then turns to the core efficiencies of the accounting business to make sure that all information is correct and properly recorded. in this approach, the accounting business is working from the historical source documents received, after the transactional event has occurred.
technology allows the interaction between the accounting business and the business client to occur more and more often in (close to) real time. apps with direct integrations, portals, cloud servers and software as a service (saas) platforms allow for real-time access, which means immediate access to what we want, when we want it. business applications take it one step further by allowing immediate access based on roles, rights and permissions.
these new technologies are opening the potential for accountants and bookkeepers to serve their business clients in dramatically better ways. and in fact, typical compliance work, including after-the-fact bookkeeping, has already become a commodity.
just as the accounting business struggles to keep up with changes in business, technology and the economy, so too do all businesses. in the last two decades, we have experienced an increasingly specialized economy. smart businesses find out what they do well, and do more of it by divesting themselves of those parts of their business that, although required functionally, are not part of their core competency and do not add to the bottom line.
for example, having a website with a portal so that you and your clients can share documents is now standard practice at most accounting businesses, but having your own on-staff web developer and portal manager is not cost-effective. this is true for many business operations. managing routine financial transactions, although necessary, is not work that adds to profit. sending payroll, human resources and accounts payable work to an outside service provider frees the business owner and their team to focus on its core competencies and customer-facing opportunities.
what services does a bos provide?
in anticipation of your move into comprehensive insource services, let’s look at the typical responsibilities of back-office support (bos):
financial reporting
- ensuring accuracy of transaction recording
- running month-end system reports and checking integrity
- ensuring accounting policy is compatible with double-entry standards
- maintaining and monitoring financial statements
- planning, conducting and finalizing audits of financial statements
- formulating financial statements and consolidations
- reviewing audit files and assuming responsibilities for interim and yearly audits
the above work is managed by a bookkeeper or an accountant in conjunction with cloud applications and ai and gives a baseline for the advisory services listed below. for larger firms, defining the team members’ lanes is relatively easy. but with smaller firms, these may overlap a bit more and that means utilization of ai is even more critical.
monitoring business performance
- managing issues relating to overall financial management, profit optimization and capital efficiency
- formulating all relevant reports
- reviewing daily, weekly and monthly reports and preparing them for presentation to management
- ensuring budgetary compliance
- liaising with banks
- identifying and reporting on kpis
- benchmarking performance against plans and industry statistics
- researching and reporting on factors influencing business performance
planning and risk management
- formulating long-term business plans
- formulating annual budgets
- quantifying and managing risk
- analyzing change, conducting risk assessments
case study: (re)defining the advisory role
i recently spoke with a young lady in the midwest with an mba, focused on finance. she became certified in several accounting gls and add-on apps. with the birth of her third child, the prospect of owning her day-to-day time became important. she is building her own advisory firm with a focus on dental offices. she has no interest in tax work and we found a cpa who only wanted to do tax work to support that need for her clients. with our bookkeeping staff doing the review and book closings monthly, she works with the clients providing these functions on her time.
layout of how communication flows on this team:
the advising firm has the relationship with the client. they have a scheduled meeting once a month to go over the details of the business. the advisor is also available for emails, sms and quick calls.
the advisor creates assigned tasks for the os bookkeepers within her clickup app as well as a private slack channel for off-task communication. she meets weekly on a prescheduled recurring zoom with her outsourced staff. these meetings can be anywhere from five minutes to one hour or more depending on the amount of work.
the advisor sets up the relationship with the tax expert and provides the needed documentation and data information that has been accumulated throughout the yearlong relationship with the client. she acts as the go-between and brings the client in to sign the final return.
this client came on board with us shortly before covid-19 lockdowns, so all of this work has been done virtually. within one year she has grown her business from one to 15 clients. beyond all bookkeeping functions she is helping them with insurance, multilocation rental and building purchase agreements, cost segregation for buildouts and watching their specific kpi needs.