Just as with everyone else, the summer season for the CPA fraternity also brings a much-needed breather and a calming slow down. After the chaotic tax season, it is quite pleasing to suddenly find space on your calendars, the rare ring of the telephone bell, and the emptiness of the inbox. While all those aspects do bring a calming effect, for the CPAs, it is just not the time to lay down the towel on the beach and start sipping a refreshing cold beverage. Although quiet, summertime also presents CPAs with a golden opportunity to take a quick look back at their infrastructure, processes, and any other aspect that can pay off significantly at year-end.
In this blog, we will help you plan your summer, not in terms of holiday spots you can visit, but to help you get ready for the year-end rush in advance. This blog aims to get you prepared for the year-end volume support, improve your overall service quality, help you scale efficiently, and prepare you to remain competitive in a changing financial services landscape. And the means with which you can do it all is – outsourced accounting services. Let’s get started and explore how you can utilize outsourced accounting services to prepare for year-end.
Summers Are for Strategy
While the rest of the world pauses and hits reset during summer times, it’s just not the same for CPA/CPA firms. Summer is a time for CPAs to focus on strategic investment and planning. For most CPA firms in the USA, the period from May to August brings a workload trough. However, instead of relaxing and relishing this low productivity period, competitive and forward-thinking CPA practices use these months to assess their processes, evaluate their operational models, train staff, optimize workflows, and, most importantly, prepare for the upcoming year-end accounting season.
For the leaders in CPA firms, summer also presents an opportunity to identify and explore strategic shifts. When done right, this period is just the ideal time for CPA firms and CPAs looking to grow their practices or expand their service offerings by exploring outsourced accounting partnerships. Let us look at how outsourced accounting transforms the slow summer period into a fruitful period to get your CPA practice future ready.
The Outsourcing Advantage: Transforming the Accounting Season
For CPA firms worldwide, outsourcing has emerged as one of the most effective channels to tackle peak season volumes, expand the service bouquet, and streamline operations. According to a recent report, nearly 75% of CPAs will be nearing the designated retirement age by 2027, which will further escalate the talent shortage within the industry and again further strengthens the position of outsourcing as a mean to gain access to skilled professionals and specialized expertise.
- Outsourcing provides easy access to resources for managing peak season workloads into manageable and scalable processes
- Outsourcing allows CPAs to focus on high-value, client-facing services
- Outsourced accounting services severely reduces burnout and enhances staff retention
Partnering with outsourced accounting partners enables CPA firms to test workflows, train remote teams, and address bottlenecks during summertime and consequently get ready for the year-end rush.
Benefits of Outsourcing During the Off-Season
While the glaring benefits of outsourced accounting services are widely known among the CPA fraternity, let us highlight some of the specific benefits of outsourcing during the quieter summer months:
Staff Flexibility
The accounting profession has been grappling with burnout for a considerable period. While different CPA firms have taken precautionary measures to minimize the aftereffects of burnout, outsourcing remains the most prominent way to overcome staff burnout. By partnering with outsourced accounting service providers, CPA firms get the flexibility to redistribute workloads among their teams to help them rejuvenate and recharge without compromising deliverables or deadlines.
Cost Efficiency
Hiring and training an in-house accounting team at any time of the year is tiring and, at times, may not be financially justifiable. This is where, with their flexible and scalable outsourcing engagement models, CPA firms gain the ability to minimize costs by only paying for what they need when they need it.
Improved Year-End Readiness
There is seldom anything that pleases CPAs more than entering September with clean books, updated ledgers, reconciled accounts, and a detailed year-end growth strategy in place. But with a proficient outsourcing partner by your side, you get the ability to enter the busy season well-prepared, with absolutely zero last-minute errors and stress.
How to Use the Summer to Prep for Year-End
Now that we’ve seen the concrete benefits of accounting outsourcing services, here are some practical ways in which outsourced accounting service providers help you use the summer to set your CPA firm up for year-end success:
Catch Up on Backlogs
The aftermath of a busy tax season can be lingering. Most CPA firms spend a healthy amount of their summertime cleaning it up. But you do not have to do so. Partnering with an outsourced service provider enables you to successfully tackle backlog bookkeeping, unprocessed client data, or late submissions while your team focuses on client-facing roles.
Clean Up Books
Maintaining clean and accurate books ensures a smooth year-end closure. Outsourced accounting service providers have the necessary resources to help you conduct audits, account reconciliations, and review your overall financial health, ensuring every figure is in order before Q4 begins.
Forecast & Strategize
With accurate books and updated data, you can easily offer clients the much-needed advisory services—budget forecasts, tax strategy consultation, or cash flow projections—without overburdening your in-house staff.
Accounting Services That Can Be Outsourced
Outsourced accounting services provider offers a wide range of services that are tailored exclusively for CPA firms of all sizes across USA. Here are some of the most outsourced accounting tasks:
Bookkeeping & Write-Ups
Bookkeeping and write-ups are the most outsourced accounting tasks as it helps you leverage offshore teams handle day-to-day entries, bank reconciliations, and month-end close support. With most outsourced accounting services provider offering cloud-based accounting platforms, this handoff is seamless for most CPA firms.
Tax Preparation & Review
While tax season may have passed, many clients still have amended returns, estate planning, or multi-state filings to address. Outsourced tax preparers can handle the grunt work while you focus on review and client strategy.
Payroll, Tax, and Compliance
Outsourcing payroll and compliance help CPA firms deliver timely and compliant payroll and tax filings, minimum risk of errors, and saves significant administrative time. If you’re a CPA firm that manages clients with multi-state or global employees, outsourced accounting services is a blessing for you.
Financial Analysis & Advisory Support
With most of the CPA firms shifting their focus towards advisory-first model, outsourced accounting services with financial analysts can help them generate reports, dashboards, and trend analysis for supporting high-level client conversations.
Leverage Outsourcing as a Growth Lever
While most businesses consider the summer slowdown a lull, for CPA practices, it is a launchpad. By investing strategically in outsourced accounting services, CPA firms in the USA gain the ability to increase efficiency, improve client outcomes, and enter year-end not in a panic but with a strategic growth plan.
We have iterated on this before, and we will reiterate it here: outsourcing accounting services is more than just a cost-saving tactic; it is a scalable growth strategy. Whether you need extra hands during tax season, require specific accounting skills year-round, or just some breathing room for your core team, outsourcing is one of the most efficient ways to do so. If you are ready to harness the power of outsourcing for your CPA firm, write to us at marketing@datamaticsbpm.com, and we will help you reset, realign, and retool your CPA firm this summer season.
Are outsourced accounting services secure and compliant with U.S. regulations?
Absolutely. Global outsourcing accounting service providers adhere to stringent data security protocols, including SOC II and GDPR, to safeguard sensitive financial information. They use encrypted communication channels to maintain transparency and provide real-time updates to their clients. However, when partnering with an outsourcing service provider, you must ensure that your trusted partner has a proven track record with U.S.-based CPA firms and follows all relevant regulatory standards.
What types of accounting and bookkeeping tasks are best suited for outsourcing during the summer?Â
In general, CPA firms outsource recurring and time-consuming tasks. However, outsourcing is also a great source of acquiring specialized expertise such as tax preparation, payroll processing, bookkeeping, audit support, and even year-end financial statement preparation. If you are planning to outsource some of your accounting and bookkeeping tasks, these are just some of the best options to get started with.
How can my CPA firm ensure quality and consistency when working with an outsourced team?Â
A good starting point to ensure absolute quality and consistency with your outsourced accounting and bookkeeping tasks will be to partner with a partner that has a strong reputation and robust quality assurance processes. You must also set clear expectations for the outsourcing engagement and communicate regularly regarding any issues that you feel might be affecting the quality of your outsourced accounting tasks. You can also have predefined KPIs to fruitfully track the performance of the functions that you have outsourced. It’s highly recommended to start with a small pilot during the summer slowdown to refine workflows and ensure seamless integration before the year-end rush.
