We’ve often predicated that Australian compliance outsourcing levels the playing field for Australian firms small and large.
Odyssey has over 1,000 Australian accounting firms utilizing our services on an ad-hoc basis, which means as long as we receive one job during the year, then we’ll keep your account open.
After a year with no jobs, we do like to make contact and just make sure you haven’t retired!!
The premise of a level playing field is something we believe in: allowing all Australian accountants to drop a job over to us whenever they want. It’s the same concept as only calling a taxi (or uber) when you want to go somewhere, versus having a car in the garage.
Certainly many accountants struggle with this concept. Some accountants struggle with not having large compacti (plural of compactus) full of tax returns, struggle with not having a server room with everything on the cloud, and now struggle with not having full time staff – either onshore or offshore.
Certainly there has been a rise on offshore “full time” resources recently, more likely as a result of this drive to have some substance to a firm, especially as clients are significantly more mobile. However, this might just be a “flash in the pan” as Australian accountants might likely be following in the path of other companies looking to cut costs.
Certainly many airlines have tinkered with offshore maintenance of aircraft, and even deploying staff from offshore cheaper countries. There has been a certain amount of trepidation by Australian accountants in the use of outsourcing, certainly some of this amounts to concern about what their clients will think when the outsourcing is discovered (especially if it isn’t disclosed!!)
Certainly it’s in the the best interest of the offshore provider to push the risk back onto the Australian accounting firm by hiring a full time resource. This saves risk that the resource won’t complete work accurately with high quality (as a resource and not a job is being sold), and ensures the full time resource is always chargeable, along with pushing the training back onto the Australian accounting firm. This looks like a cost-benefit analysis hasn’t perhaps been properly done by the Australian accountants!
However, for those that see outsourcing as a “job” solution, outsourcing is proving invaluable, and proving that it is possible to compete with the big accounting firms. It’s certainly a more level playing field than in previous decades!
Odyssey is the market leader in the provision of ad-hoc job-based compliance services. Talk to us today about how we can assist!
The Lifecycle of Outsourcing . . .
Why bringing your outsourced work back inhouse often isn’t seamless…
What Australian accountants are really thinking about Outsourcing
What Australian accounting directors fear most about Outsourcing…
Capacity planning… We don’t need no capacity planning
Tax Agents still upset at outsourcing work overseas
