Massachusetts based CPA firm built alternate client service capacity with Altobooks

About the firm:

The firm is located in a small town of MA somewhere near the RI border. The firm was managed by an owner CPA and also had 2 more CPAs working for the firm. It was a typical practice where they were doing bookkeeping, tax, payroll and attest practice. Softwares used were Accounting CS, QuickBooks, DrakeTax. Around 800 clients were there with the firm.

The problem statements:

1. The firm wanted to explore offshore staffing, since they were facing capacity issues.
2. During the first call, it was mentioned that the firm wants to hire someone for 20 hours / week for doing payroll.
3. Later on, the firm also displayed their requirements for bookkeeping, accounting, tax preparation and tax review.
4. Even afterwards, the owner wanted to carry out entire bookkeeping of his other business ventures by the offshore team.

So, net net, the firm was understaffed or staffed with less-competent resources and the owner was doing huge heavy lifting. Just to give a glimpse, one CPA employee left in February leaving a big vacuum for the owner.

Solutions provided:

1. A competent team member assigned for payroll. After initial training sessions, the team member started taking load off the shoulders of the existing senior team member who was involved into payroll activities.
2. The firm owner after interacting with the team member, who was working for part-time for payroll assignments, asked to do bookkeeping for his other business ventures. The software used for these ventures was ZohoBooks. The team member carried out the entire bookkeeping activities and even the owner was surprised to see the work quality. The team member, who was working 20 hours / week was upgraded to 40 hours / week and was handed over many bookkeeping assignments along with existing payroll work.
3. During the tax season, the owner started handing over tax work to the same team member, who was already having experience of tax work for 2 tax seasons. The owner was surprised to see that he could delegate around 150 tax returns to the team member during the tax season. And most of them were properly prepared with very less scope of corrections.
4. In the month of February, one of the CPA employees left the job and the owner was really worried about the work completion. This created a big pressure on the capacity of the firm. Owner connected with many onshore outsourcing firms and other contractors including Altobooks and finally decided to work with Altobooks. 1 senior team member was assigned to do the accounting review, finalization and closing and 1 senior member was assigned to do complex tax returns and tax review work. In total around 40 books were finalized and closed after the review. Also, over a year’s time around 250 tax returns of complex nature have been prepared and around 70 were reviewed and finalized.
5. The firm over a period of time, decided to engage Altobooks as a long term staffing and capacity solutions provider. They hired a full-time offshore staff accountant doing bookkeeping, payroll, tax work from Altobooks. They also hired a senior accountant on flexible staffing mode for accounting review and closing work. They also hired a tax senior on flexible staffing mode for complex tax returns and review work.

How the relationship was scaled up:

1. Week 1 – Staff Accountant started working on flexible staffing mode starting with 10 hours / week. Started onboarding calls, some training, some payroll work.
2. Week 3 – Staff Accountant was upgraded to minimum 20 hours / week commitment. The team member was completely integrated with their team members. Started doing payroll assignments for clients and accounting for owner’s other ventures’ bookkeeping.
3. Week 5 – Staff Accountant was upgraded to full-time 40 hours / week model. Was already doing payroll assignments and also started working on many bookkeeping assignments.
4. Week 10 – Staff Accountant was entrusted with few tax returns. Now the firm realized the benefit of hiring an experienced offshore team member, who is integrated with their own onshore team and is working on bookkeeping, payroll, tax returns juggling different assignments as per the requirements of the firm.
5. Week 14 – They also hired a senior accountant and senior tax preparer during tax season to fill the void of outgoing CPA during the tax season.

Challenges:

1. Skepticism around offshore staffing model – whether this will work or not: Initially, the firm owner was skeptical whether this model will work for his firm or not. They tried with few assignments and then scaled up. This is always a clever strategy especially when it is the first time you are doing offshore staffing or outsourcing.
2. Poor planning resulting in end moment requirements for staffing: It was apparent that there was no plan for work execution for many assignments. Even junior level tax returns were done by the owner many times. Payroll deadlines were chased by a CPA sometimes.
3. Not identifying real staffing issues being faced by the firm: The real issue was non-availability of the local onshore team members. Instead, they always tried to overwork and improve upon efficiency of existing team members.
4. CPA staff member leaving exactly in the beginning of the tax season: When you rely upon some team member too heavily and overlook their own challenges, people get motivated to leave. Unfortunately, for this firm, such a team member decided to quit exactly in the beginning of February.

Reasons for success:

1. The firm was open to an idea of offshore staffing despite being skeptical.
2. Good communication from the owner and other team members with the offshore team initially helped them to integrate the offshore team member with their own team very well.
3. Support from Altobooks senior team members was crucial especially when a CPA employee left the firm.

Top services provided:

1. Full-time offshore staff accountant handling Bookkeeping in QuickBooks online and Accounting CS, Payroll in Accounting CS, Tax preparation in DrakeTax.
2. Flexible staffing for senior accountant doing finalization, closing, review of client books at the year end. – Softwares used were QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, Accounting CS
3. Flexible staffing for tax senior doing complex tax return preparation and review. – Softwares used were DrakeTax, QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online