Assetsoft offers all solutions and services that you need to keep an efficient back office. We let our clients rest assured their administration and support operations run smoothly, from records to accounting audits.
The back office is a primary pillar for any company. You can focus as much as possible on marketing and managing all other departments, yet improper back office operations are the foundation for all other processes.
Luckily, outsourcing back office responsibilities is very common these days. That’s not to say you can take it lightly, but our clients’ experience with our back office offshore service highlights our professional approach to the tasks.
A Comprehensive Solution For Your Back Office
The back office covers more than just reading and recording numbers. Proper accounting ensures the ground is fertile for growing all of your company’s development and processes.
Property management requires extensive accounting skills and responsibilities. You can’t trust everyone to run your back office properly, and that’s why our staff works closely with all of our clients to make sure their expectations are always met.
State-of-the-Art Solutions
Ensuring your company stays competitive in the real estate market requires you to stay on top of technological trends. New platforms, like MRI and Yardi, have revolutionized how property management works.
Back office accounting must stick to this idea. There shouldn’t be any technological gaps between your back office and your other departments. If that’s the case, communication and integration becomes unnecessarily difficult.
FAQs to Get you Started
Finance leadership constantly faces challenges related to limited financial resources or talent acquisition problems.
It is no secret why businesses struggle with building best-in-class accounting practices. CFOs feel that their teams get overloaded with low-impact transactional work. While they might like to focus on management accounting or deploy strategic initiatives. Highly skilled talent, painstakingly sourced in today’s market, is burdened with high volume or repetitive back office work.
Once you’ve decided to outsource some of your finance and accounting workload, the next step is deciding which activities to outsource. At this point, businesses often realize they will benefit from finance and accounting outsourcing services but face a new challenge: Selecting those processes where outsourcing can most effectively be implemented.
Benefits of Outsourcing
A proactive solution to retain in-house talent by unburdening them and letting them work on high value or strategic initiatives and offloading repetitive and high-volume tasks to outsourcing partner.
Less operational and accounting errors as resources are highly qualified and experienced, and regularly attend training to update themselves regarding changes in rules and regulations.
Flexibility to increase resources quickly to support all types of additions to property portfolio without hassles of training, software licensing, and computer hardware.
Savings of up to 60% compared to traditional talent acquisition model due to savings on Hiring Cost, Training Costs, Software License Costs, IT & Hardware Costs, Separation Cost and Mis-Hiring Cost.
Generally speaking, non-core processes that are repetitive and transactional are the best bets for exploring outsourcing. Outsourcing is strategic choice that can turn make non-core processes a source of competitive advantage, whether leadership exploring it as a cost-saving measure, an efficiency workaround, or a way unburdening in-house team to stop them from experiencing burnout.
It is generally observed that non-core activities are plagued with issues such as cost-inefficiencies, low productivity, or higher turnaround times.
Determining Core Competencies
The first step is selecting those processes where outsourcing should not be implemented and as a corollary, we get a list of processes where outsourcing can most effectively be implemented.
Every company has a set of core competencies or mission-critical tasks around which the business is built. Outsourcing provides time and resources to the leadership and the team to focus on these core activities.
This flowchart can aid leadership to determine tasks that are core to your company’s business. If not, they are peripheral tasks. Peripheral tasks are great bets for outsourcing
Core Competencies = Core Tasks
Peripheral Tasks = Non-Core Tasks
Below is a list of tasks that represent the low hanging fruits for outsourcing. CFOs see a lot of success with outsourcing processes like:
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Vendor Payments
General Ledger Accounting
Bank Reconciliation
Month-end close
These tasks require specialized skills but are unlikely to contribute heavily to the product or service offering to your customers. These tasks do not create future opportunities for growth or innovation, and on the contrary, may keep you them as these tasks consume a lot of time. For these reasons, such activities fall into the peripheral tasks side of the spectrum.
About Assetsoft
Assetsoft is a leading provider of solutions such as back office finance and accounting, application managed services, help-desk, system integration, and application development. We partner with clients to design and implement solutions that match their business requirements and budget with the goal of overcoming business challenges.
We are a full-service back office finance and accounting outsourcing services provider that provides both onshore and offshore resources. Our experienced resources manage a variety of specialized processes: back office accounting processes like account payables, account receivables, payroll reconciliation, and bank reconciliation; reporting like monthly reports, investor reporting, owner reporting; finance-related processes like treasury management and loan management; leasing services like lease abstraction and lease audit; and other services like collecting and processing checks and invoices.
Outsourcing of back office finance and accounting has opened areas of new growth and fostered innovation for businesses. As the business environment and IT infrastructure have changed over the years, back office accounting has evolved too, creating opportunities for businesses of all types and sizes.
Outsourcing the finance and accounting back office leads to saving costs related to hiring, training, benefits, paid vacation, and more. Moreover, in-house employees are unburdened from performing demotivating low-impact tasks. Businesses can deploy extra cash to drive strategic initiatives with the help of unburdened and motivated in-house employees.
The first step towards taking advantage of Finance and Accounting Outsourcing is deciding whether outsourcing makes sense for your organization. This flowchart can aid leadership to determine whether there are areas of improvement where outsourcing can add value.
Should you outsource?
Scenarios to consider before outsourcing:
High Salary & Benefit Costs
Employing an in-house talent means incurring costs over and above Hiring Cost like Training Cost, Software License Cost, IT & Hardware Costs, Separation Cost and Mis-Hiring Cost. Outsourced resources come onboard at a pre-decided cost for the period of the agreement. Businesses can achieve cost savings of up to 60% with outsourcing.
Team Burdened with Low-Impact Tasks
High volume, low impact tasks drive in-house talent away for strategic initiatives or high value processes. Offloading low-impact tasks to an outsourcing partner helps in retaining and motivating in-house talent by letting them focus on value generating tasks or strategic initiatives leading to professional satisfaction.
Low Productivity
In-house finance and accounting talent must wear many hats. Due to paucity of time, they are unable to gain expertise in back office processes and software. This leads to higher instances of error and higher turnaround times. Engaging an outsourcing partner remedy such a situation. Outsourcing partners provide resources who have expertise in both process and software, resulting in lower instances of errors and quick turnaround time.
Talent Acquisition Challenges
The traditional talent acquisition process can take up to 6 months to fill a position causing disruptions in back office operations. Outsourcing provides the flexibility to increase resources quickly at pre-decided costs without hassles of training, software licensing, computer hardware, and office space. This leads to transparency and predictability without any employee cost related surprises.
The first step towards evaluating outsourcing is to get convinced about the benefits outsourcing will bring to your business. The next step is to answer questions regarding how it will affect your business. This exercise will help you put desires and expectations in perspective and prepare a template for discussion.
How much can we save?
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How will outsourcing improve productivity?
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How do we deploy funds saved?
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Who are the stakeholders in the decision making process?
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Other Question(s)
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By completing this exercise, we now have some expectations and desires related to the value addition that outsourcing will bring.
The next step is to identify processes and tasks that can be outsourced. Refer to our Guide: Decision Flowchart For Evaluating Core Activities.
About Assetsoft
Assetsoft is a leading provider of solutions such as back office finance and accounting, application managed services, helpdesk, system integration, and application development. We partner with clients to design and implement solutions that match their business requirements and budget with the goal of overcoming business challenges.
We are a full-service back office finance and accounting outsourcing services provider that provides both onshore and offshore resources. Our experienced resources manage a variety of specialized processes: back office accounting processes like account payables, account receivables, payroll reconciliation, and bank reconciliation; reporting like monthly reports, investor reporting, owner reporting; finance related processes like treasury management and loan management; leasing services like lease abstraction and lease audit; and other services like collecting and processing checks and invoices.
Once you’ve decided to outsource some of your finance and accounting workload, the next step is deciding which activities to outsource. At this point, businesses often realize they will benefit from finance and accounting outsourcing services but face a new challenge: Selecting those processes where outsourcing can most effectively be implemented.
Here are a few processes where CFOs have seen great success with outsourcing:
Accounts Payable
Finance leadership looks to optimize working capital, enabling higher savings for the business and helping improve vendor relationships. CFOs are aware that the in-house accounting team is burdened with work. Adding high volume or repetitive back office work takes away precious time from the monthly schedule hurting the implementation of strategic initiatives. Moreover, team members who do not process accounts payable regularly make errors while performing the task.
Account Payable Specialist1 | |
| Red Bank, USA |
ES | US$51,666 |
EB | US$7,750 |
SHS | US$25,833 |
Total | US$85,249 |
1: glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-accounts-payable-specialist-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,41.htm
Accounts Receivable
Accounts Receivable have evolved from a transaction-focused process to a strategic business function. Managing accounts receivable is a key finance function that impacts cash flow and is essential for maintaining a strong and vibrant business. Processing accounts receivables creates a time crunch for the in-house team, distracting them from their regular work resulting in a negative impact on both activities.
With the right resources our customers increase their control on every account with consistent follow-up on outstanding invoices and extensive reporting on account activity. Our Accounts Receivable Specialists process account receivables to facilitate quicker payments and improved cash flow.
Account Receivable Specialist2 | |
| Red Bank, USA |
ES | US$48,388 |
EB | US$7,258 |
SHS | US$24,194 |
Total | US$79,840 |
2: glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-accounts-receivable-specialist-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,44.htm
Bank Reconciliation
Bank reconciliation is a routine activity that ensures that all transactions through the bank statements have been reviewed and checked. The process also helps identify accounting and bank errors by providing explanations of the differences between the accounting record’s cash balances and the bank balance position. It is an essential internal control tool to reduce errors in the data used to prepare accounts and prevent and detect fraud.
Bank Reconciliation Specialist3 | |
| NJ, USA |
ES | US$58,433 |
EB | US$8,765 |
SHS | US$29,216 |
Total | US$96,414 |
3: glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-jersey-bank-reconciliation-specialist-salary-SRCH_IL.0,10_IS39_KO11,41.htm
Property Accountant4 | |
| NJ, USA |
ES | US$65,642 |
EB | US$9,846 |
SHS | US$32,821 |
Total | US$108,309 |
4: glassdoor.co.in/Salaries/new-jersey-property-accountant-salary-SRCH_IL.0,10_IS39_KO11,30.htm
Investor Reporting
Investor reporting is a routine act of sharing key qualitative and quantitative data with financial investors on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis.
Leaders know they should be sending investor reports, but it can often get lost in the shuffle of implementing strategic initiatives. To help combat this, outsourcing partners like Assetsoft provide solutions that help relieve the stress of building and managing a repeatable investor reporting process.
Treasury and Loan Management
One of the main functions of treasury & loan management is to determine the proper levels of cash or cash equivalents. Cash visibility is a major advantage as it allows decisions to be made quickly. A properly functioning system enables an organization to manage its financial risks and bottom line successfully. The system involves following procedures and policies designed to help companies manage and streamline cash flow. It involves aspects like investments, payables, receivables and loan repayment.
Banks generally offer treasury and loan management services to only a handful of big businesses with billions in dollars in revenue. Companies that do not make the cut are denied this essential service that provides a competitive advantage to larger organizations.
CFOs are always on the lookout for resources who can assist them in managing cash and cash equivalents. A business does not have to depend on banks, spend top dollar hiring highly paid experts, or buy expensive software for management. Outsourcing treasury and loan management services help streamline business finances by ensuring cash is available at a bank account level. Seamless management enables the prompt distribution of cash to different divisions, projects, or loan accounts.
Client Services
Customers are the reasons businesses exist. Business is born to solve customer problems and keeps breathing until customers return. Today, apart from providing the best products and services, building a winning customer service strategy is vital to set your organization apart from others. A winning customer strategy is a customer-centric process that resolves issues and keeps customers happy. Working with a customer service provider allows a business to outsource customer service to experts who facilitate building and implementing the best strategy for your business.
Assetsoft’s client services team acts as an interface between our clients and their customers. Our clients maintain their competitive edge by choosing not to hire an in-house resource to address day-to-day minor customer issues like late fees, wrong invoices, ad hoc changes, and adding or removing services.
Clients are enabled with data and reporting essential for taking business decisions. Your in-house team gets regular updates on everything so it can continue to drive business to deliver the value your customers deserve.
Leasing Related Services
Real estate development and investment companies, and businesses like QSRs, retailers, banks conglomerates that regularly lease commercial real estate spaces engage us for such services. Outsourced experts positively impact the bottom line and facilitate the visibility of expenses at the property level.
Lease Abstraction
Commercial lease agreements are generally lengthy. Lease abstraction is a complex task that entails extracting the key points of a lease or worse, comparing the details of a large number of leases. The process involves distilling the most significant information within a commercial lease agreement and presenting a lease abstract – a concise, easy-to-read summary.
The abstract is typically easy to understand and includes a lease’s most important legal, financial, and business details. The process is time-intensive and requires experience and expertise to understand legal terms and clauses in agreements.
Organizations that outsource this process experience benefits like better turnaround time and FASB compliant reports while maintaining cost-efficiency.
Lease Audit
A lease audit entails a review of lease agreements and related accounting.Owners or managers handling multiple properties find it difficult to review a large volume of lease documents. On the other hand, tenants might not understand the laws and lease clauses. Both tenants and managers might overlook important details leading to cash loss for a long period of time. Lease audit has become an integral part of many companies’ internal control procedures.
Lease auditors generally review base rent, CAM charges, Utilities, insurance, tenant chargebacks, occupancy-related costs, real estate tax, and floor plan verification. Moreover, a window for an audit varies from 30 to 180 days. A short window may require immediate attention. Lease auditors require expert-level knowledge of real estate law, accounting, engineering, and property management.
CAM Reconciliation
CAM is important for all stakeholders- property owners and tenants. Well-managed facilities are important to help create value for all stakeholders. CAM reconciliation can help owners or property managers to improve operations while maintaining a healthy bottom line.
CAM Reconciliation is a complicated process. It involves maintaining the paperwork for maintenance invoices, work orders, janitorial services, and repairs. CAM cost also varies depending on the property, owner, and market value. Carrying out CAM reconciliations can be a time-consuming, tedious and complex process.
Daily, real estate business deals with hundreds of tenants and vendors, property improvements, and invoices. Reviewing and organizing the expenses is a mammoth task that calls for utmost accuracy and time. Outsourcing the CAM reconciliation to a service provider offers a high level of transparency to avoid future disputes. Incidentally, most legal issues are regarding CAM charges. Outsourcing CAM reconciliation can save your time, money, and legal nightmares.
Collecting and Processing Invoices and Checks
Collecting and processing and uploading thousands of checks and invoices on accounting software is a high-volume low-skill time-consuming activity. Yet, these activities must happen flawlessly to keep customers satisfied, vendors happy, and finances in order.
Assetsoft is one of the few full-service finance and accounting outsourcing partners that offer on-shore resources for this activity. Our commitment to a client-centric approach propels us to provide the best value to our clients.
Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping is a low-skill, high-repetition day-to-day work. In-house accountants are generally faced with the dilemma of carrying out this unfulfilling activity that doesn’t use hard-learned accounting skills. Accounting teams are left with a revolving door of sparse talent. Local unavailability of right talent forces back offices to hire untrained or unqualified resources. Due to lack of formal training, much is to be desired in terms of quality and consistency in bookkeeping.
Assetsoft focuses on reducing our clients' finance and accounting costs by helping them with their management, accounting, and tax preparation needs.
We function like a client’s virtual back office for all their bookkeeping work, right from setup, support, and maintenance. Our experts consist of experienced and qualified accountants who work on all the major software.
Interfacing with Tax Consultants and Filing Taxes
Tax preparation and tax filings are cumbersome, time-intensive, and costly affairs. Right outsourcing partner for tax preparation and filing allows you to put documents in order and reduce the chances of errors. Assetsoft offers an array of outsourcing filing and taxation services to customers in Canada and USA.
Our experts have extensive experience in tax preparation, reporting, and handling tax compliance workload. Our experts work on all the major tax software like QuickBooks, ZohoBooks, FreshBooks, Yardi Voyager 7s, MRI Platform X, etc. Our team receives continuous in-house training to ensure they comply with tax laws and regulations.
About Assetsoft
Assetsoft is a leading provider of solutions such as back office finance and accounting, application managed services, help-desk, system integration, and application development. We partner with clients to design and implement solutions that match their business requirements and budget with the goal of overcoming business challenges.
We are a full-service back office finance and accounting outsourcing services provider that provides both onshore and offshore resources. Our experienced resources manage a variety of specialized processes: back office accounting processes like account payables, account receivables, payroll reconciliation, and bank reconciliation; reporting like monthly reports, investor reporting, owner reporting; finance related processes like treasury management and loan management; leasing services like lease abstraction and lease audit; and other services like collecting and processing checks and invoices.
