Outsourced Accounting Services for UK Businesses

What is outsourced accounting?

Accounting outsourcing means paying an outside provider to do some or all of your finance work: bookkeeping, VAT, payroll, month-end, management accounts and year-end preparation. You keep the decisions and the sign-off. The provider does the processing.

Businesses usually outsource for one of three reasons: a UK hire costs too much for the workload, the person who did the books has left, or the books have fallen behind and nobody has time to fix them.

Three ways to outsource your accounting

The options differ in who does the work and how much of their time you get:

• A local accountancy firm: good for year-end accounts, tax returns and advice. Day-to-day bookkeeping is often extra, billed by the hour or on a monthly package.
• An accounting outsourcing company: your work joins a queue handled by a shared team. It's priced per job or per hour, and you rarely speak to the person doing it.
• A dedicated offshore accountant: one person, full time, working only for you in your systems. You direct their work as you would an employee's, and StaffLink handles employment, payroll and equipment.

When a dedicated accountant makes sense

If your finance work fills a few hours a month, a local firm is simpler. Once it fills most of a working week, with daily bank feeds, supplier bills, customer chasing, payroll, VAT and a month-end close, a full-time person costs less per hour of work than a pay-as-you-go service, and knows your business far better.

It also suits businesses that want a finance function rather than a finance service: someone who answers questions the same day, joins the Monday meeting and spots the supplier who has doubled their prices.

What your outsourced accountant takes on

Most clients hand over some or all of the following:

• Daily bookkeeping, bank reconciliations and supplier and customer ledgers
• Accounts payable runs and credit control
• VAT returns prepared under Making Tax Digital
• Payroll processing and pension reconciliations
• Month-end close and management accounts
• Cash flow forecasts and budget-versus-actual reporting
• Year-end schedules for your external accountant

Working with your external accountant

Most clients keep their external accountant for statutory accounts, tax returns and advice. Your StaffLink accountant sends them clean, reconciled records, so that work takes less time.

Your accountant uses your software, with the permissions you choose. Keep payment approval with someone in the UK, turn on multi-factor authentication for every user, and you can remove access in minutes. Our compliance page sets out how we handle data.