In this video, the speaker shares over five years of experience outsourcing bookkeeping and trust accounting work for a legal firm. He outlines the unpredictable quality of offshore teams, noting that certifications like QuickBooks do not guarantee accounting competence and that staff turnover can lead to inconsistent work, missed reconciliations, and language‑related errors. He compares Indian and Philippine providers, suggesting the latter often deliver higher‑quality output. The speaker warns that outsourcing costs are typically 2–3 times the quoted price once management, training, and quality‑control overhead are factored in, and that the work delivered is usually a “minimum viable product” rather than a polished final product. He stresses the need to train outsourced staff in firm‑specific methods, especially for specialized legal trust accounting, which demands perfect accuracy and familiarity with tools such as Clio, LeanLaw, Dext, Keeper, and Digits. As an alternative, he recommends hiring a dedicated remote employee within the outsourcing firm to gain continuity and better control. He also highlights practical considerations like time‑zone alignment, security protocols, and realistic hourly rates ($25‑$30/hr). The video concludes with a call for viewers to share their experiences and to consider outsourcing as a necessary but carefully managed option for busy seasons.
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This week I thought I would discuss outsourcing and whether or not you should outsource to another country, a global firm or global team, uh, to be able to get the work done and, uh, help you and assist you through the busy season, um, migration work and the like. So I've been doing outsourcing since 2018. So I've been an early adopter. I've been doing it for a while. We've had the same company doing it at our firm. And I'm going to tell you the pros and the cons because I think sometimes people think they hire an outsourcing firm and the outsourcing firm says, well, we're all QuickBooks certified, we're all this, we're all that. And then you actually hire them and you find out that a QuickBooks certification doesn't teach, doesn't teach accounting principles. And we've had this team for a long time. And quite honestly, it's like a roller coaster. So one minute the work is stellar. You can tell it's being done by a staff that's been trained. And the next minute, because you have no visibility on whether or not this person or this team is still together, that you can tell it's new people. Like, for example, I go into a client file and I find the QuickBooks subscription is is in the ask my accountant column. Or somebody reconciled, but they really didn't reconcile. They just clicked a few buttons and made it look reconciled when in fact they did not reconcile. So there's no quality assurance. Nobody goes back and looks at this work. We've had this struggle up and down. Seems like the work goes downhill in the beginning of the year when you need it the most. But it ebbs and flows. You just never know because we don't know who's working on our file. Whether or not the same people or if there's new people. Overall, our team itself, the key people do a phenomenal job. Their English is not the best, so you'll see a lot of typos and misspellings, which means you have to take that extra step to go into the data and make sure that you correct the misspellings. Don't forget, that's not their first language. Yeah. Our language is difficult. And I'm talking about using an India team. So there's other choices. I'm told that people working from Philippines do a much better job with this than the people in India. There is also other— so some of the perks, data migration for sure. They have the tools, they have a whole team that does data migration. So you can seek them out and have them do the data migration. But remember— Yeah. when pricing your work, if you're outsourcing your work to an outside firm, make sure that you at least 2 to 3x it, what they tell you it's gonna cost to do the work, because you are gonna be involved. They might push data using tools, but they don't have the knowledge and the wherewithal to make sure that it all aligns properly. So it's not like you hire them and they do the work and you just present it. That is never the case. 100% never the case. You can never take work from them like I can with somebody that works directly for me. That's my employee in the United States and actually does the work and does the— that I've trained. And not saying that I can't 100% expect perfection. You really can't expect perfection, but the quality and the level of a few years of working directly as a hire for me, as opposed to hiring an outsourced firm where the people shuffle places and different people come and go, although they're trained in some fashion in the workflow that's inside that firm, you're going to find that, that is a quality that's lesser and you have to accept that lesser quality. So minimum viable product is what you're gonna be looking at if you're doing outsourcing. So it's not a set it and forget it. If you end up hiring a firm that has that model where you don't really know who's working for you, but you have the ability to expand. That's the benefit. You have more people working. You don't have to seek out hiring somebody which takes a lot of time. Remember that. But you will have to teach them in your methods. So it's just like hiring a new staff person. You're going to have to train them in your methods. They don't just flip a switch and start working and doing things the way you do. So that's another thing you have to think about when you're considering doing outsourcing, that it's not an instant fix. You will have to take the time to train and teach them, especially like we do legal accounting, totally different animal. They might know, um, construction accounting, for example. They might be wizards at that or e-commerce because they have a whole branch that does that. So you might have a different experience than I've had, but I'm just telling you from my perspective, this is what you see. Now, alternate plan of that is you can hire a designated employee inside that firm. You can train them. You have one person or two people depending on the volume of work that you have that work full-time for your firm only. And in that case, you will know the person's name. You will know, and they're more like an employee. You will know more information on that. You've— if they stay and you treat them right, you might be able to have that same result that you get, like I get with my insides team, my US-based team that I directly control. There's no company in between. It's directly my firm and the, and the people that work for me. So I think when it comes to outsourcing, yes, it's a viable solution. You want to find a firm that sits in your work hours, which can be challenging if you're doing, doing an Indian team or a team in another like European country or you know, we have West Coast, East Coast, so we need to span quite a time. And you need the, the people that you work with to be able to work your hours. If they're working with US clients, they should somewhat have the hours that we work. Sometimes you don't get that. So know that they might be working when you're sleeping and that might be what you're looking for, that you wake up in the morning, the bank feeds are all cleared and they've done the reconciliations. You might look for that, but you will still have to have that extra layer of visibility on top. This is where Keeper. Mm-hmm. Is a no-brainer, or Digits, because you're gonna put those two software on top and then have that be part of their workflow to kind of go through and make sure that everything's coded in because they do things super fast. I think they're paid on like how fast they get their work done, especially if you're doing fixed fee billing. So you might find that the faster they get it done, the more the company makes, and they're encouraged somehow. And this is just me guessing and speculating, but I believe that that's the case. So the The faster they get the work done on their end, the faster that, you know, the better it looks for their company. Maybe there's some kind of incentive there, but know that you will be looking at work that's probably not of the expectation of a beautiful set of records back. We deal with trust accounting. It's imperative that you have somebody know how to do trust accounting. It's a different world. So make sure that they understand trust accounting and they can understand the importance of it. It can't be minimum viable product. It has to be perfect. It's trust accounting. So you want to make sure that you look at that as well. So that's my thoughts on outsourcing. I think it's a necessity in this day and age to have it. I think that if you do walk that path, consider if you need a full-time person helping you. That might be a better way to go about it instead of just doing a part-time situation because you're probably not gonna get the results you want. You have no way of knowing if old people left and new people have come in, or they've even shift inside the firm that maybe move people up because they've been great workers and now you've lost your great staff and now you're back to square one. And you won't know that till you see QuickBooks subscription and ask my accountant. So those are the things. And it can be very frustrating when it feels like you're paying somebody to do work and the work that you get back, the work product you get back isn't helping you, that you're having to spend all this extra time looking at it. As one of my staff people said, I might as well just do it myself because if I have to go back and fix everything, it seems like a waste of time and a waste of your money. And I feel that that sometimes feels that way. I think it, if you find a good firm that doesn't do that, that doesn't feel like it's weighing you down, you'll be on a good path. I'd love to hear any comments, uh, on this video. Has anybody had an experience that's been fantastic? Um, or am I just having higher expectations? Let me know. I'd love to have an open conversation on this one, but I think this is a topic that I saw it on a Facebook post. One of my friends was posting it. They're thinking about outsourcing. Uh, and I thought this would be a great time to put a post together, because really, if you're on here in the Accountant's Law Lab, you probably have a firm that has multiple people. People working for you, and you might be considering that because, you know, busy season is coming, and is this a viable option? There's options out there. I'm sure there's fantastic companies out there that deliver beautiful work product. Just know what you're looking at, know what you're getting into, ask the right questions, ask about security. You're gonna— if you think you're going into this paying $5 an hour, you're— you are not. If you get a good company with a good security protocol in place, you're looking more at $25 to $30 an hour. Right now in the market. So you have to be ready for that because it's not inexpensive. If people think outsourcing's inexpensive and it's going to require a lot of your time. Trust mistakes happen and they're not gonna understand how to fix it and you're gonna need to get in there and fix it. They're probably not gonna know Clio or LeanLaw. They might not even know Dext or anything else that's in your workflow. So know that you might have to devote time to that as well. So I'd love to have the conversation if you're not Part of the Law Lab, we'd love to have you. Hit subscribe if you wanna listen to more videos, and we'll see you all next week. Bye now.
