Outsource accounts to India - Positives please

[Strontium Dog]

Has anyone got any positive feedback on outsourcing accounts prep or bookeeping work to the subcontinent? David Griffiths - do you still do this ?

When I looked at doing this a while back the problem seemed to be average hourly rate was £10-£12 ph for the providers I looked at, and around here an experienced AAT costs about £15 inc holidays etc. Also I calculated that that there are still fairly considerable costs in the UK as someone needs to scan docs, and act as a link between India and the client to get queries answered. The person doing the liason must have a grasp of accounts in order to get the questions answered properly and not appear like a dipstick to the client. This is in addition to cost of buying suitable kit. All in all I decided cost savings were insufficient to warrant the idea.

I still toyed with the idea of using at as an overflow mechanism, but apparantly most of the outsourcers in India want to tie you in to specific amounts of work each month.

I would be interested in seeing if anyone can put me right on the above.

[Andrew @ PLA]

I think that the lack of any response says it all really ;)

[David Griffiths]

I think that the lack of any response says it all really ;)

Only if you want it to. A comment published on a Sunday evening with no reponse by 9.30 on a Monday? Not one of our more patient posters then?

In response to the OP, there were many positives. Yes the hourly rate was close to employing somebody, but if we only needed that somebody for perhaps 6 days a month it might not have been possible to find somebody willing to do that work.

UK costs needn't be that high, depending on the kind of work. We certainly didn't scan all documents, just the relevant ones, and those can be done by somebody in an administration role in between telephone answering etc.

We didn't use it for incomplete records jobs as we were well covered within the office for those. It was used mainly for limited company jobs with decent records.

We also didn't use it as an overflow, but on a strategic basis, with a couple of jobs every month going out. At present our needs have changed, so I don't currently use it, but would have no problems going back to using it again.

[MyAccountantOnline]

I dont know if you ever use AccountingWeb - might be worth a look there.

If you search on outsourcing you'll see its been discussed quite a few times and amongst the responses are some sensible comments from people with first hand experience of using them.

[GaryMc]

You also need to consider the impending rules for iXBRL when it comes to accounts prep. You will need some idea of how the tags work to ensure that the correct ones are used.