Finance and Accounting Outsourcing

Process work, with a firm boundary

We provide finance and accounting process services: transaction processing, reconciliation, records and reporting support. The boundary matters enough to state before anything else.

We do not provide audit or assurance. We do not give tax advice or file tax positions on your behalf. We do not make regulated financial decisions, sign off accounts, or act as your accountant of record. Those require qualified professionals carrying professional liability, and no volume of process capability substitutes for that.

What we do is run the recurring transactional work that consumes most of a finance function's capacity, so your qualified people spend their time on judgement, controls and analysis.

What the team handles

• Accounts payable - invoice receipt, coding, matching to purchase orders and receipts, routing for approval, and query handling with suppliers.
• Accounts receivable - invoice raising, allocation of receipts, statement issue, and structured collections chasing.
• Bank and account reconciliation - daily or periodic matching, with exceptions investigated rather than parked.
• Expense processing - collation, policy checking, coding and approval routing.
• Bookkeeping and ledger maintenance - journal entries, coding accuracy, ledger tidiness.
• Month-end support - accruals and prepayments preparation, schedule production, and reconciliation packs for your accountant to review.
• Management reporting support - preparing the recurring reports from your defined formats.
• Budget tracking support - actual versus budget collation and variance highlighting.
• Supplier and customer master data - maintained accurately, which is a control as much as an admin task.

Segregation of duties

This is the control that matters most, and outsourcing makes it easier to enforce rather than harder - if it is designed in.

The principle: whoever processes a transaction should not also approve it, and whoever maintains supplier bank details should not also release payments. Fraud and error both exploit the absence of that separation, and it is commonly weak in smaller finance teams simply because there are not enough people.

We process; you approve. Our team codes and prepares payment runs, and a named person on your side releases them. Our team maintains master data, and changes to supplier bank details follow a verification process with your approval - that specific change is the most common vector for payment fraud, so it is treated as a control point rather than a data update.

We will tell you if a proposed arrangement puts too much of the cycle on one side. A supplier willing to both prepare and release payments is offering you convenience in exchange for a control weakness.

Approval workflows and the query loop

Most accounts payable delay is not processing time. It is waiting for an approver, and the second-largest cause is invoices that cannot be matched.

We handle the chase on both: following approvals through your workflow with visibility of what is ageing where, and resolving mismatches with your suppliers and internal requisitioners rather than letting them sit. Reporting shows where the delay actually is, which is frequently a surprise - a payables team blamed for slow payment is often waiting on a budget holder who has never seen the queue.

Month-end

Month-end is the clearest case for outsourced finance capacity because the work is intense, repetitive, deadline-bound and predictable - the profile that suits a dedicated team.

We prepare; your accountant reviews and signs. Schedules, reconciliations, accrual and prepayment workings and supporting packs arrive ready for review rather than needing assembly. The judgement calls, the estimates and the sign-off remain yours.

Timetable discipline is part of the service: an agreed close calendar with tasks and owners against dates, reported against rather than aspired to.

Collections without damaging relationships

Receivables chasing done badly costs more than the cash it recovers. We work an agreed escalation ladder - reminder, statement, call, formal notice - with tone appropriate to the relationship and the age of the debt, and with named accounts excluded or handled personally where you say so.

Disputed invoices route to you rather than being chased harder. A customer withholding payment because of a service problem is a service problem, and treating it as a collections problem makes both worse.

Security and access

Finance work touches payment data, bank details and commercially sensitive information, so access is least-privilege and role-based with separation enforced in the system rather than by convention. Privileged actions can be session-recorded where you require it, and restricted environments are configured during scoping.

Master data changes, particularly bank details, are logged with the requester, the approver and the verification performed. See security and data protection.

Systems, coverage and languages

Agents work in your accounting and ERP systems. Our teams are experienced across common accounting platforms and the Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace estate - competence rather than partnerships. See technology.

Most finance process work is asynchronous, which suits overnight processing: invoices received during your day are coded and queued for approval before your next one. Coverage is built from shift units, with enhanced cover planned around month-end. Where supplier or customer contact is needed, we staff the languages listed on our languages page.

Quality and reporting

Accuracy controls follow the same logic as data entry: validation rules first, double entry on critical fields such as amounts and bank details, sampling elsewhere.

Reporting covers volume processed, coding accuracy, invoices processed within target, approval ageing by holder, reconciliation exceptions outstanding, days sales outstanding movement, and close calendar adherence. Segregation-of-duties criteria are scored pass-or-fail. Figures published elsewhere on this site are historical or representative and campaign-dependent.

Getting started, and what it costs

Priced per dedicated agent per month with a five-agent minimum - published rates and what moves them. Month-end enhanced cover is planned rather than improvised.

Bring your transaction volumes, your current approval ageing, and your close calendar. If you do not have a documented close calendar, that is the first thing worth building and we can help. Related: data entry, office administration. Talk to us.