Australian Outsourcing Accounting Client Tells How He Saves $100,000 a Year Using BOSS (Case Study)

Why did you choose BOSS?

I guess through high recommendations from other accountants. We didn’t rush into it hammer and tongs. Initially we really tested. We wanted to test the quality of the work, that BOSS was able to provide the timeliness, the quality of the working papers, their understanding of the tax laws, their responsiveness to our queries, how well they spoke English, how well they communicated in emails and things of that nature. So I guess what we did is we drip fed some work along the way and I really had to assure myself that all the boxes were ticked in terms of our priorities and in terms of moving forward to maybe giving a higher volume of work to BOSS.

We also looked at another option in Vietnam. Their model was a little bit different to BOSS in that you really don’t engage directly with an accountant. You’re going through, let’s say client service coordinators who then pass the information off to the accountants and sometimes there’s a lack of understanding in terms of exactly what you’re trying to communicate.

With BOSS we’re actually able to deal and communicate directly with the accountant who’s dealing with the file, we were looking to really outsource the accounting work and have it function just like dealing with in-house staff.

Can you put a dollar figure on the benefits of using BOSS?

Well I guess you know the fact that we had to employ another qualified accountant was probably a $100,000 saving a year and I guess also there were a lot of efficiency savings and I think that’s probably another $20,000 to $30,000. So I’d say it improved our performance by at least $100,000 a year.

Would you recommend BOSS as a service?

Absolutely, we had a look at other ways of outsourcing before we engaged BOSS and the option was to basically send the work over into a pool type arrangement and the work gets done and it gets sent back and hopefully to the standards. The issue that we saw with that model is that you don’t really have that control over quality and you don’t necessarily have the ability to be able to apply your own processes to the work. Whereas the BOSS model, where you engage an actual individual that works for you I believe is a far better model. It works very well and you get to put your own processes in place, your own formats that you have with accounts, the way that we want things done,  additional analysis that you want done, all those sorts of things that you have control over so the BOSS model is certainly fantastic. I’d highly recommend people looking into it. It does provide a great solution.

I know some outsourcing firms you can’t deal with your offshore staff directly, what would you say have been the benefits of having the same accountant all the time and having that relationship?

The biggest advantage you have is if there’s something that you want done in a particular way, you just have to email your accountant and it gets done that way. They’re happy to do whatever I want so I send an email saying please prioritise these jobs or do the work this way and it happens. It’s no different from having a staff member in the office to some extent, so I think that’s the biggest plus. It’s been nothing but positive for me, and the quality of work is fantastic. I think it’s a great concept and it’s been a real help for me and hopefully to grow my business.

Why did you consider outsourcing and tell us about your experience with your prior outsourcing company?

A couple years ago we had a few years there where we had one or two staff leave and at the time they left we couldn’t find suitable professional accounting replacements as fast as we’d have liked, so that’s why we started outsourcing in the first place.

One of the key things that we saw we needed was efficiency and we weren’t going to get that with the way we were outsourcing before. BOSS’ flexibility with being able to work with our systems and our own processes and work the way we want our BOSS accountant to work, has been great.

We were looking to get improvements on efficiency and that meant that what we really needed was to have someone logging into our system and processing work just like another staff member. We didn’t get that with the other outsourcing company.

About BOSS, BACK OFFICE SHARED SERVICES PTY LTD

BOSS (Back Office Shared Services Pty Ltd) was founded in 2004 to provide skilled accountants and bookkeepers on a full-time, part-time and casual basis to commercial enterprises, accounting and financial services firms in Australia.

BOSS India is a subsidiary of BOSS Australia and runs just like an ultra-modern paperless Australian public practice because the Director and Accountancy Practice Principal, Peter Vickers, has been operating his own successful Australian public practice for over twenty years.