Outsource Accounting & VAT

For any start-up, small or medium-sized company, outsourcing your accounting & VAT to an experienced and qualified partner is a credible option especially if you want to secure expertise at a lower cost to inhouse recruitment.

Businesses opting to outsource can make substantial savings and benefits through:

• Avoiding the payroll and visa costs for an in-house employee
• Avoid on-going training and management overheads
• Have more security in continuity if employees leave
• Gain valuable expertise from an experienced partner

For any business with finite resources, knowing your financial reporting and VAT obligations are well managed can be an excellent choice and allow more investment into growing the business.

However, outsourcing to the right partner should be carefully considered to minimise potential frustrations.

Getting this decision wrong has far-reaching implications that can place your business at risk from:

• Administrative penalties imposed by the FTA and
• The need to transition to another option.

These issues are inevitably an unwelcome distraction when you have better use of your time in developing the business.

In this blog, we share the major considerations in the selection of a partner and set you on the path to a sustainable solution.

Quality in People & Processes

Outsourcing only works with a clearly defined process with KPIs operated by trained personnel.

You must have confidence that your partner is qualified, managing its delivery and can explain how and when you will receive your service.

Ideally, you should ensure emphasis is paid to your reporting requirements so that meaningful information is furnished in the detail you require and you are adequately trained to use any reporting features.

You will run your business on the quality and speed of their work, this should be a major consideration in your assessment.

Inaccurate and late reports or failing to meet FTA Legislation requirements may make any financial reporting risk to your business.

Transparency & Best Practices

If your business is lacking expertise or controls, your partner should propose best practices embedded in their delivery process to ensure your business benefits from the latest accounting compliance and standards.

At some stage, your business may seek external funding.

Assuring your accounting is credibly managed will increase the probability of securing funds or give you real confidence in making decisions.

Being presented with manual hardcopy reporting is not enough.

Your accounting should be transparently delivered, not only to receive rich reporting but also protect your business. Under the VAT legislation, your business can be audited for up to 5 years and it will prove impossible to provide any details if you do not have the workings support any declaration.

Use An FTA Certified Accounting System

Using an accounting system is a must.

Under the Executive Regulations, your business has mandatory compliance obligations that are best managed with an FTA certified accounting platform.

This certification complies with the FTA specifications and builds credibility in the accuracy of your VAT obligations, which may be tested under any FTA audit.

Manual reporting may seem a cheap option, however, this lacks the ability to scale and you may be faced building a historical view of your accounts at a later stage when you want to use a system.

Set off with a sustainable solution and your business will benefit from this.  

Adopt Cloud Systems

Cloud is the future.

It presents major benefits in reducing the cost of owning a platform, securing your data and provide richer functionality.

You will avoid high upfront costs, upgrades costs, while better securing your data and operate your reporting from any device.

It is common for laptops or PCs to fail to lead to problems in recovering data, hence with cloud platforms, you will receive higher levels of security for your data while enjoying the latest features in the software.

Summary

If your business wants to operate in a lean manner or add more expertise to deal with tasks where you cannot justify a full-time hire, outsourcing is a viable answer.

Basing your decision on cost should not be the sole criteria, the right qualitative decisions are critical to this strategy.

These pointers provide some key insights to help you make more informed decisions and ensure you benefit from the best support to your business.