An outsourced accounting team is, in effect, a finance department you don't have to hire. A group of accountants works on your books remotely — in your software, on your schedule — and handles the work an in-house team would.
But what exactly does that team do? Here's a clear breakdown for Canadian businesses.
The core idea
Instead of recruiting a bookkeeper, an AP clerk, a payroll administrator and an accountant, you engage one provider whose team covers those roles. Work is shared between people at different levels: junior staff handle transaction processing, mid-level accountants handle reconciliations and close, and senior accountants review, report and prepare year-end work.
You stay in charge of decisions. The team takes care of execution.
What the team does, function by function
Bookkeeping
- Recording and categorizing every transaction
- Reconciling bank, credit card and loan accounts monthly
- Keeping receipts and invoices matched to the transactions they support
Clean bookkeeping is the foundation for everything else. Learn more about our outsourced bookkeeping.
Accounts payable
- Entering supplier bills and tracking due dates
- Preparing payment runs for your approval
- Catching duplicate invoices and unnecessary recurring charges
Accounts receivable
- Issuing invoices or recording them from your sales system
- Matching customer payments to invoices
- Flagging overdue accounts for follow-up
Payroll
- Processing payroll and recording wages, deductions and employer costs
- Supporting source deduction remittances — CPP, EI and income tax — to the CRA
- Preparing year-end T4 slips and the T4 Summary, generally due by the last day of February
GST/HST
- Tracking GST/HST collected on sales and paid on purchases
- Making sure input tax credits are supported by proper documentation
- Preparing returns for your assigned reporting period — monthly, quarterly or annual
Month-end close and reporting
- Posting accruals, prepaid expenses and adjustments
- Reviewing balances for anything unusual
- Delivering a profit and loss statement, balance sheet and the KPI or industry-specific reports you need
Year-end
- Final reconciliations and adjustments
- Working papers and year-end financial statements
- Support for your T2 corporate return. Our corporate tax team can prepare and file it
How a typical month works
- Throughout the month: transactions are processed, bills entered and invoices recorded.
- First days of the next month: accounts are reconciled and the month is closed.
- Reporting day: you receive your statements and reports.
- Review: a short call to go through the numbers and answer open questions.
Your time shifts from doing the accounting to reviewing it.
What it means for your business
- Current books every month, not just at year-end
- Fewer missed deadlines for GST/HST, payroll remittances and T2 filings
- Better decisions from reliable monthly reporting
- Continuity when individuals are away
- Flexibility to add or remove functions as the business changes
Virtual accounting team or fractional accountant?
A fractional accountant is one person working part-time for several businesses. A virtual accounting team gives you several people with different skills — and coverage when one of them is away. For most growing businesses, a team offers more depth for a similar cost.
Security and confidentiality
Because the team works remotely, data protection matters. At ADYZER:
- Data is encrypted during transfer and storage
- Access is role-based, so only authorized people see your information
- All employees sign non-disclosure agreements
- We use multi-factor authentication and secure environments such as Citrix VDI and RDP with VPN
- Systems are regularly audited, and we comply with PIPEDA, GDPR and AICPA security standards
Working with ADYZER
ADYZER's outsourced accounting team offers three ways to work: a dedicated resource billed hourly, a monthly package for full-cycle accounting, or a single function such as payroll or bookkeeping. For accounting firms, the same team can work behind the scenes through our back-office support for CPA firms.
Contact us to book a discovery call and see what your outsourced accounting department could look like.