Outsourcing Archives - Unison Globus

Accountants understand not every client needs the same level of support and attention. While the ‘low maintenance, high margin’ client is ideal, the reality is that many clients need more contact, follow-up, and detailed work than their fees may justify. Knowing what to do with difficult clients, and having the conversations needed about engagement terms, scope of work and fees, is still a challenge many accountants would prefer to avoid. However, consistently undervaluing services can lead to staff burnout, dissatisfaction, and declining profit margins. Whatever fee has been negotiated, it needs to be sustainable to deliver planned margins.

While disengaging difficult clients may seem like the obvious solution, accountants should first consider whether outsourcing can make these relationships more manageable, profitable, and sustainable.

How outsourcing can help

Difficult clients often require more support to progress even the most basic accounting tasks. Documents may arrive late, making monthly bookkeeping difficult to complete. Records may be incomplete when year-end accounts are prepared. Clients may also fail to keep their accountants informed about important developments within their business.

These clients can be full of surprises, making it difficult for an already busy practice to keep up with their accounting requirements.

Outsourcing routine accounting tasks can free accountants to focus on the work where their expertise and judgement are most valuable. Bookkeeping, monthly reconciliations, VAT returns, and year-end accounts preparation can be handled by an experienced outsourced team, creating more capacity without increasing headcount.

Use in-house resources to nurture the client relationship

When an outsourced team handles routine accounting work, onshore accountants have more time to work directly with their clients.

This creates an opportunity to understand the client’s business, identify changing requirements and ensure that tax and accounting services continue to meet their needs. It also provides the time needed to address difficult issues constructively.

If a client regularly misses deadlines, continually changes their requirements, or expects work outside the agreed scope, then clear engagement terms are essential. Evidence can be gathered to support conversations about the scope of work and fees, while the added value and benefits of the work being provided can be explained more effectively.

To achieve this, it is helpful to assign responsibility for the client relationship to a single point of contact in the practice. They understand the client’s history, expectations and specific requirements and are best placed to nurture the relationship and reinforce the positive aspects of the service, including:

Professional expertise and experience
Quality and timeliness of work
Customer support
Competitive pricing.

Meanwhile, the outsourced team can complete recurring, deadline-driven work quickly and efficiently. The onshore team retains control of communication, advice, final review, and delivery and can make a better impact with the client.

Achieve planned margins

One of the biggest benefits of outsourcing is the ability to make a demanding client commercially viable. While accountants understandably focus on achieving reasonable margins, many practices don’t regularly review how services are delivered to ensure those margins are achieved.

Before deciding what to outsource, record how much time is currently being spent servicing the client. Consider:

How many hours the client currently consumes
Which tasks take the most time
What those tasks cost internally
How much it would cost to outsource suitable work
Whether the client’s fees could support a revised delivery model.

Where excessive time is being spent, those tasks should be prioritized for outsourcing.

The initial aim may be to improve efficiency and reduce costs, but the longer-term benefit is often greater by creating capacity and improving profitability.

Accountants often find that a client who initially appears unprofitable is worth retaining when work is delivered more efficiently. Where outsourcing allows the onshore team to spend less time on routine processing and more time on higher-value advisory work, the overall benefit can be greater than the direct cost saving.

Which services can be outsourced?

Many recurring accounting tasks are well suited to outsourcing, including:

Monthly bookkeeping
Bank and balance sheet reconciliations
Payroll
Quarterly VAT returns
Year-end accounts preparation
Routine accounting administration.

By outsourcing these recurring tasks, accountants can create more time to spend with difficult clients, understand their needs, and adapt services accordingly.

However, outsourcing is not a substitute for effective client management. If a client consistently sends incomplete records, misses deadlines, or requests work outside their agreed terms, those issues still need to be addressed. An outsourced team can process the work efficiently, but the relationship, expectations and commercial arrangements still need to be managed by the onshore accountant.

Retain the client while improving the relationship

Difficult clients don’t always need to be a problem forever. Sometimes, the underlying issue is that too much routine work is being performed by expensive onshore resources, leaving too little time for the client relationship. Outsourcing can change that dynamic.

By moving work to an experienced outsourced team, accountants can free up valuable onshore capacity to communicate with clients, understand their businesses, address issues, and demonstrate the value of the services being provided.

The result can be a more sustainable client relationship, improved profitability and a practice better equipped to scale.

Want to learn more?

Outsourcing can help support even the most difficult clients. It can improve profitability, make service delivery more efficient, and give practices the capacity they need to retain, nurture, and grow their client base.

Unison Globus UK’s outsourced tax, accounting and payroll services are suitable for all client engagements – from sole traders and micro businesses to large companies.

We provide a free trial of up to 10 hours of accountant time, with turnaround or work in 72 hours. If you’re looking to outsource for the first time, increase margins, and help your clients, you can book a video call with one of our expert advisors or email us at [email protected].

UK accountants are facing unprecedented challenges, including increasing compliance requirements, a hot recruitment market, rising employment costs, and the introduction of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD IT) affecting millions of small businesses. At the same time, clients expect more proactive service, faster turnaround times, and greater value from their accountants.

For many practices, recruiting additional staff is no longer viable. Finding experienced accountants is difficult, fewer people are entering the profession and salaries continue to rise. Peaks of work have never been more severe, with compliance deadlines now converging around a short window over the winter months.

As a result, more accountants are turning to outsourcing to support their growth plans. When implemented correctly, outsourcing can help firms boost capacity, improve profitability, enhance client service, and scale without being constrained by the local recruitment market.

Why UK Accountancy Firms Are Turning to Outsourced Accounting Support

Most accountancy firms reach a point where growth begins to inhibit effective delivery. New clients are arriving, advisory services are growing, but the resources needed to deliver work are finite. Common barriers to growth include:

Difficulty recruiting suitably qualified staff
Increasing salary expectations
Rising employment costs
Staff turnover and retention
Capacity constraints during busy periods
Additional compliance responsibilities
Pressure on fees and profit margins.

Many firms find themselves trapped in a cycle where senior accountants spend more time managing workloads than focusing on growth. This is where outsourcing can transform the way a practice operates.

How Outsourced Accounting Services Help UK Firms Scale Faster

Outsourcing is no longer simply a cost-saving exercise. Leading firms now use outsourcing as a key part of their growth strategy. By partnering with a specialist outsourced accounting provider, practices gain access to experienced accountants who can support a wide range of services, including:

This additional resource allows firms to increase capacity immediately without the delays and costs associated with recruitment.

Scale Your Practice Without Increasing Overheads

One of the biggest advantages of outsourcing is scalability. Traditional recruitment involves significant costs including:

Recruitment fees
Salaries
Employer’s National Insurance
Pension contributions
Training costs
Office space and equipment
Employee benefits.

With outsourcing, firms can increase or decrease resources according to demand. An outsourced team provides flexible capacity without creating fixed overheads.

Improve Profitability

As employment costs continue to rise, many practices are finding that routine compliance work generates lower margins. Outsourcing improves profitability immediately by reducing employment costs and sustainably with a ready-made workforce. The result is:

Higher margins on recurring, compliance work
Improved utilisation of senior staff
Better margins and improved profitability.

Free Up Senior Accountants for Higher-Value Activities

Many qualified accountants spend too much time delivering routine compliance work. An effective outsourcing strategy allows firms to delegate recurring and process-driven tasks while retaining full control over client relationships and the final review of work.

This enables senior staff to focus on more productive and commercially focused work including:

Advisory services
Reactive tax services
Cross-selling opportunities
Attracting new clients.

How Offshore Accounting Teams Help During Peak Filing Seasons

Every accountancy practice experiences seasonal peaks of work. January self-assessment deadlines, quarterly VAT returns, year-end accounts preparation, payroll processing, and MTD IT reporting requirements all create significant pressure on internal teams. Outsourcing provides additional capacity when it is needed enabling accountants to:

Meet deadlines with confidence
Avoid staff burnout
Maintain service quality
Improve turnaround times
Reduce overtime costs.

Prepare for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax

MTD IT is one of the biggest operational challenges facing accountants. With quarterly submissions becoming mandatory for increasing numbers of taxpayers, many practices will need to deliver significantly higher volumes of work throughout the year. Developing new systems and process and recruiting additional staff to manage this increase is expensive.

Outsourcing provides a practical solution by giving firms access to dedicated bookkeeping and accounting teams that can support MTD IT needs efficiently and cost-effectively.

Maintain Quality and Control

A common misconception is that outsourcing means losing control. In reality, the most successful outsourcing relationships operate as an extension of the onshore team. Professional outsourcing providers typically offer:

Reactive delivery models
Dedicated team members
Structured workflows
Quality control processes
Secure data handling procedures
GDPR-compliant systems
Effective communication channels
Performance monitoring.

The onshore team remains responsible for client relationships and final sign-off while benefiting from additional operational capacity.

Create a More Resilient Business

Building a practice entirely around local recruitment can increase operational risk. Staff absences, resignations, and recruitment delays can all impact service delivery. An outsourced team provides additional resilience and business continuity by creating a resource pool that supports the practice throughout the year.

Building an Effective Outsourcing Strategy

To maximise the benefits of outsourcing, accountants should take a structured approach:

Identify Suitable Processes

Start by reviewing which tasks are recurring, process-driven, and suitable for delegation.

Choose the Right Partner

Select an outsourcing provider with accounting expertise, strong security controls, and experience supporting UK practices.

Start Small

Many firms begin with bookkeeping, payroll, or accounts preparation before expanding into additional services.

Establish Clear Processes

Define workflows, responsibilities, quality standards, and communication procedures from the outset.

Measure Performance

Track turnaround times, quality levels, efficiency gains, and financial outcomes to ensure the partnership delivers value.

Conclusion

An effective outsourcing strategy allows practices to increase capacity, improve profitability, strengthen resilience, and accelerate growth without significantly increasing overheads.

Whether your goal is to support MTD IT, improve margins, reduce recruitment challenges, or simply create more time to focus on clients, outsourcing can provide the flexibility and resources needed to achieve sustainable practice growth.

How do I find out more?

At Unison Globus, we have been providing offshore services to accountants since 2006. Our customers include sole proprietors, as well as small and medium sized UK Accountancy Practices. Our outsourced tax, accounting and payroll services are suitable for all client engagements – from sole traders and micro businesses to SMEs and large companies.

We provide a free trial of up to 10 hours of accountant time, with turnaround in 72 hours. If you’re looking to outsource services for the first time, increase margins, and help your clients thrive, you can book a video call with one of our expert advisors or email us at [email protected].