Leaders in business are constantly faced with the challenge of operating in an ever-changing environment. Recently, businesses have had to navigate a global pandemic, inflation, a tight labor market, rising interest rates, rapidly changing technology, military conflicts, and many other matters. Suffice it to say, things have been chaotic in the past few years. For this reason, business leadership needs to now, more than ever, ensure that appropriate resources can be dedicated to running the daily operations of the business and executing the businesses long-term strategic plan. One major way your internal resources can be freed to focus on operations is by outsourcing your accounting functions. Accounting firms, including ADKF, offer advanced accounting outsourcing services commonly referred to in the accounting industry as “Client Accounting Services” or “CAS.”
With advancements in cloud computing and remote work technology, advanced outsourced accounting services have never been more feasible. In the past, many businesses could only afford to have a bookkeeper on staff and often thought that an accounting manager, controller, or CFO would be unrealistic for their budget. Now, your accounting records can be securely saved in the cloud and shared between you and your accounting team in real time regardless of where you are. Additionally, routine accounting tasks and data-entry heavy functions can often be automated to reduce costs. These changes present accountants with the ability to provide a full outsourced accounting team to almost any small or mid-sized business. You can get a highly qualified CFO, controller, accounting manager and bookkeeper that work and collaborate as a team within one firm for exactly the amount of time that you need each of them. This is the expertise that your business needs so you can have actionable financial data to make operational decisions, to communicate financial performance to investors or lenders, and enable your organization access to the capital needed for growth. Thus, hiring an accounting firm is no longer just hiring someone to prepare your historical accounting records. Your CAS team can now have access to real-time data to enable work in the present and for future planning to become an integral component of your organization’s business processes.
Many business leaders struggle with trying to learn accounting best practices or they struggle with supervising an internal accountant or bookkeeper. With an CAS team, you do not need to worry about hiring and interviewing new staff, managing human resources issues, or teaching yourself accounting. As your business grows and changes, your CAS team can quickly scale to meet your businesses needs so you can focus on what you do best – operating your business. Many small organizations still compromise their accounting expertise by employing a single person to fill all of the accounting roles. This results in organizations either overpaying for employees that have underutilized skills or compromising the quality of their accounting by hiring an employee that may be capable of completing routine accounting tasks but struggles with process improvement and strategic financial analysis. With CAS, you’ll have access to the exact quantities and types of expertise needed to match your organizations current situation.
Being true experts in the field of accounting is another advantage of hiring a CAS firm. As experts in the field, your CAS team will know exactly which systems and processes can be implemented to make your daily operations run smoother. A CAS firm will remain abreast of all recent accounting pronouncements, changes in technologies and best practices in the field. With real-time data, accounting experts will also have the ability to identify improvements to your processes and provide timely insights to make managing your business a much smoother experience.
Lastly, one of a business leader’s worst fears is fraud. In many cases, once fraud is identified (if it is caught at all) it can be extremely costly to prosecute, and the recovery of lost funds may be impossible. Going beyond the direct costs of the fraud, if your customers, investors, lenders or donors (for non-profit organizations) learn that fraud was identified they may no longer want to work with your organization out of fear the fraud could reoccur. Theft of funds is often the result of a high degree of responsibility being placed on a single employee as the necessary segregation of duties may be unrealistic or too costly for small and mid-sized organizations. The result of this is an extremely high risk of fraud in smaller and mid-sized businesses. In addition to adding an additional set of eyes on the books, a CAS firm can help your organization mitigate the risk of fraud by improving the design of internal controls and segregating accounting duties within your organization.
With offices in San Antonio, Boerne and New Braunfels, ADKF is the largest locally owned accounting firm serving the greater San Antonio area. We provide a full array of accounting services including tax, audit and accounting services. Our professionals love serving the community and adding value to help local businesses thrive in this constantly changing and challenging business environment. If you believe your organization could benefit from CAS, we would be thrilled to meet with you to discuss our services in more detail and to learn more about your organization.