For many firms the option to outsource bookkeeping has become a viable option in running their business. The process of bookkeeping, being the recording of the financial transactions of a business, is a labor intensive one. Even though there are effective bookkeeping programs they still require varying degrees of human input.
For this reason many firms are looking at the option to outsource bookkeeping. The concept has both advantages and disadvantages.
Outsource Bookkeeping Benefits
+ Employing people costs money. The cost of having an employee inputting various financial transactions is more than just the cost of their salary. There are all the other associated costs such as training and providing office space and supplies for them. If such a role is converted to outsourcing, the cost becomes much more fixed and transparent. You know exactly what is costing to provide the bookkeeping function.
+ Outsource bookkeeping uses specialists to do the role. Their job every day is to do these tasks and so they are specialists. Employing your own bookkeeper is reliant on the level of skills that person has or wants to have.
+An outsource bookkeeping employee is independent and is not affected by office politics at all. An employee can have personal alliances within the organization that affects they way they undertake their role
+Employees can be used to focus on sorting company objectives and goals while an outsourced booking function is focused on the provision of transactional data. The objectives and goals work is value adding, the transactional is merely a necessity that needs to be done.
+If there are issues with the provision of the outsource bookkeeping services it is easier to talk to the customer relations contact than it is to performance manage an under performing employee.
+ having an outsource bookkeeping function usually leads to a reduction in the amount of printouts made. Because the data is being processed in another location and often much of the data is provided over the internet there is little need to print out masses of paper. The only things that need to be printed are completed reports and data queries.
The Negatives of an Outsource Bookkeeping Service
- The outsource bookkeeping employee is not as familiar with the nuances of your business as an employee would be. An employee with years of experience knows why an event happened 2 years ago, while an external service provider may not even care why an anomaly has occurred.
- Those who provide outsource bookkeeping services have no company loyalty
- There is a feeling of lack of control. As the bookkeeping function is no longer just down the hall some managers feel as 
though a limb has been amputated. However this can be countered by good quality and accurate information being provided by the provider of the outsource bookkeeping, which eases the worried manager’s mind.
Outsourced bookkeeping functions are being more readily accepted. And as they prove themselves more businesses will see that to outsource bookkeeping can provide solutions for them.