05

Apr 2018

The Top 9 reasons why your Accounting firm probably isn’t Outsourcing

The Top 9 reasons why your Accounting firm probably isn’t Outsourcing

By: Odyssey Outsourcing
Tags: Outsourcing, top 9 reasons

As you’ve probably seen from our blog postings, there are plenty of benefits of outsourcing accounting and tax compliance.

However, we’ve also seen a lot of people come up with excuses as to why accounting outsourcing won’t work for their firm.

So we thought this week we’d give you the “Best of the Best” excuses about why people haven’t gone ahead with outsourcing. Note: as this is a blog, you’ll have to do your own drum roll.

Reason 1: We’re not the right size… We’re really really small, or we’re really big.

This is one excuse we hear a lot. For the small firms we hear: “I’m juggling so many balls at the moment, I can’t stop”. For the really big firms the excuse is along the lines of: We have problems getting all the directors into one room once a quarter, let alone having a serious discussion about something so important.

Reason 2: We have lots of filing cabinets and they are full of paper.  

This is another great excuse. The firm is paper based, and client’s keep on dropping more paper off at their front door. I visited one client’s office and one director had a clean office, and the other director had a small path in his office to his desk with the rest of his office floor used as ad hoc filing.

Reason 3: We haven’t gone into the cloud

We sometimes hear this. The quote is usually “I resisted computers until I had to install them, I resisted the cloud until my clients force me to do it, and I’m going to resist outsourcing”. Enough said.

Reason 4:  What will my clients think

This is another great reason. Accountants being worried about what their clients will think. The reality is the clients are already buying stuff overseas here already. They holiday here. All that’s missing is you!

Reason 5: My staff won’t like it

This reason we have under the “I’m almost retired, and I don’t want to learn something new” comment from staff. It’s also known as the “But I like keying in bank statements” (the same reason they resist new technology).

Reason 6: I’m almost retired

Business owners tend to have legacy issues. They have legacy clients (still using paper), legacy staff (still on desktop systems) and legacy thinking. Everyone just wants to hold out long enough to make it to retirement.

Reason 7: I’d only outsource if it was cheaper

This is one of the bad reasons we see to outsource.  We usually hear it at the same time as we hear: “We have this bloke down the road, who is semi-retired and 80 something, and he agrees to work at $X” … it’s not really the way to build the firm of the future is it?

Reason 8: If it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it.

This is the status quo reason. Let’s just keep things as they are.

Reason 9: I’m a late adopter.

We’ve all seen the curve… News Flash. If you aren’t already outsourcing, then that time on the curve is here!

We hope you enjoyed the top 9 reasons why your firm probably isn’t outsourcing…

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