Outsourced Accounting Services

Delegate the recurring work. Keep the professional opinions. A remote accountant handles transaction entry and categorization, and bank and credit card reconciliations. Then accounts payable and receivable, invoicing and collections follow-up, and payroll processing support. Then job costing, month-end close, and the management reporting your firm runs on. Your CPA keeps tax planning and filing, any audit, review or compilation engagement, and advice that carries their professional responsibility. We do not file returns, sign anything, or represent your firm to a tax authority. That boundary is set by state boards of accountancy and by the professional standards the AICPA maintains, and it is not a matter of preference. Most firms find their CPA bill goes down when the books arrive clean and reconciled, because less of that bill is spent on cleanup.

Yours. QuickBooks Online and Desktop cover most design and construction firms of this size, with Xero, Sage 50 and NetSuite appearing as firms grow. Construction-specific systems come up often: Sage 300 CRE, Foundation, and the accounting side of Procore. Around them sit the tools that feed them, such as Bill.com for payables, Expensify or Ramp for expenses, and Gusto or ADP for payroll. Time and project systems matter as much, because in a professional services firm the accounting is only as good as the time entry behind it. The professional works in what you already run and the licenses stay in your name. Tell us during qualification which stack you use. Matching a candidate to it is faster than training someone on it, and it removes the first week of friction.

By project, not just by month, which is the part generic bookkeeping gets wrong. Every cost and every hour is coded to a project and a phase, so you can see margin per job rather than only firm-wide profit. From that comes the work in progress calculation. For firms recognizing revenue over time, costs incurred are compared against estimated total costs to determine what has been earned and not yet billed. Progress billing follows, typically on the standard AIA application and schedule of values format for construction work. Retainage gets tracked separately, because it is earned and not yet collectable. Getting this right is what turns your accounting from a compliance exercise into the number you manage the firm with. Firms without it find out a job lost money after it has finished.

The same ones that should exist when the bookkeeper is in the next room, which most small firms do not have either. Separation of duties is the core of it: the person who records transactions should not be the person who approves payments or signs checks. Bank access is read-only for reconciliation, with payment release requiring an approver on your side. New vendors and changes to vendor bank details require verification by someone other than the person entering them. That specific change is the single most common fraud in a firm of this size. Add monthly review of the bank reconciliation by a principal, and an annual look by your CPA. The IRS publishes practical guidance for small businesses on recordkeeping and payroll obligations, and it is worth reading before designing any of this.

A calendar with a named owner per step, rather than a scramble. The sequence is standard. Bank and credit card reconciliations, then accounts payable and receivable cut-off. Then payroll accruals, job cost and work in progress updates, and finally the review and the reports. What varies is the deadline. Firms that close by the tenth working day make decisions on current information. Firms that close whenever the numbers arrive make decisions on last quarter's. Because the professional works your hours, the questions that always come up during close get answered the same day instead of costing a night each. The reports at the end should be the ones you actually use, not a standard pack. Compare that against what your last close actually cost you in principal hours, and count the evenings as well as the days.