Enhance Accounting Operations Or Outsource Accounting to Service Providers

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To run a successful company in Hong Kong, it does not only require to do well with marketing your business to your potential customers. It requires also improving your business process in terms of newer technologies. Many local small businesses would believe investing in technology solutions in the first year ever would slow down the financial growth of the company. Here is one viable solution: Get funding from the Technology Voucher programme (or TVP). The funding is especially for companies that are based in Hong Kong and is provided by the Innovation and Technology Commission (or ITC).

A business would always need someone to do the accounting/bookkeeping work, whether it is done in-house, or through outsourced providers. The downside to outsourcing accounting include:

  • Little control over things and not being local: It would mean you have no accounting/bookkeeping employee in-house to immediately answer any related questions. But when it is the right outsourced accounting firm, your business should be benefited from improved communication that is available and easy to reach.
  • Same as all other paid services, it may incur additional cost and/or hidden cost. The reason behind is that the accounting service may creep up into many tasks. To make things worse, business owners were never aware of the hidden cost in the first place.

To integrate the process of the outsourced team and the in-house staffs/coordinators, it is wise to schedule a project kick-off meeting (preferably with a conference call, if face-to-face meeting is not a viable option). After team members have talked through the upcoming potential issues and are clearly about all the tasks that are assigned to each individual member, it is time to move to the next stage. The next stage would include the following items, especially when the outsourced team and the in-house staffs are using an accounting software:

  • Requirements analysis
  • Business driver identification
  • Accounting system design and optimization
  • Financial systems integration
  • Financial data export automation

The advantages to outsourcing accounting operations to vendors/providers who can do accounting services include:

  • Reduction of cost
  • Allow focusing on core business operations and strategy
  • Solve capacity issues
  • Improve service quality and professionalism
  • Critical to business requirements
  • Access to intellectual capital
  • Manage business environment
  • Drive broader transformational change

The accounting services in Hong Kong that are typically provided to a business would usually include:

  • Bookkeeping work
  • Company structure and policy setup for accounting
  • Financial reports
  • Tax planning and tax return filing
  • Act as tax representative and deal with tax objections and appeals
  • Independent auditor