People Power - Your Team to Capacity with TOA

If creating capacity and having a global team is in your strategic plan, (you have one of them right?), then The Outsourced Accountant (TOA) will fit in like the last piece of the compliance puzzle! While technically not an app, (we will talk about this later), it does create capacity within your firm. Let’s make this clear from the outset, TOA is not just an outsourcing company, it provides you with a global team that is YOURS and not THEIRS. This is a critical distinction to make. Your new team member is yours, just like an internal employee, and you will only get out of this relationship what you put in. If you just want cheap labour and don’t care about the team member that is doing the work, then please stop reading as this blog is not for you. You may enjoy this more... ​

How did TOA make it onto on our app stack you ask? ​Read more below. 

We wouldn’t hold it against you if you thought we had gone crazy and forgot that we are promoting an “App Stack”, as TOA isn’t an “App”. While this is true, the business Clarity Street is in, is that we are “Business Frustration Extractors” and we promote applications or resources that solve the frustrations of public practice accountants. One of those frustrations is capacity. We talk to accountants on a daily basis about their frustrations and apart from the number one frustration of workflow, capacity is usually the second thing out of their mouths. To be fair it isn’t usually so eloquently stated and more like, “we just cant get our work done, we seem to be always struggling to meet deadlines, we are burning out, help....”  

TOA helps to solve this very real issue by creating capacity for your team via people, rather than an application. We are hoping that TOA will create some form of app in future, but until then, they are on our app stack as a capacity creator via people power rather than app power! 
What does TOA do? 
TOA are not your average outsourcing company, they take it to the next level and make sure the team member that is hired for your firm, is the right fit both from a knowledge and cultural aspect, and they handle everything in between. They specialise in the accounting industry and have a deep pool of CPA talent at their disposal. When you go through the TOA experience, and it is an awesome experience, you will come out the other side with a new, initially trained team member who is eager to be part of your awesome team! 

What does the TOA experience look like and what can I expect? 
TOA’s experience starts with an initial consultation, followed by recruitment of the RIGHT team member for your firm. TOA then provide everything that you need to integrate your team member into your firm including; 

• Initial training 
  
• IT & Security (very very VERY IMPORTANT) via apps such as Practice Protect 
  
• Equipment setup 
  
• Facilities management 
  
• Learning development pathways 
  
• Operations 
  
• Culture (very very VERY IMPORTANT!) 

By employing a team member that is located offshore, doesn’t mean you just pay the money, set and forget. Your new team member will need training and guidance from you, they will wear your branded clothes (if you desire), you will need to constantly COMMUNICATE with them and treat them as you would any of the team members who are in your office. They work SOLELY for you and are NOT shared with other accounting firms. 

It is vitally important that you do NOT overlook the team aspect. You need to have appropriate processes and procedures in place for your team, both onshore and off. If you don’t have these robust processes and procedures, you'll find that you're actually just creating more work, and reducing your capacity. You could implement these processes and procedures yourself before the hire or you could just talk to Clarity Street, it’s kind of what we do..... 

What are the benefits to accounting firms? 
Hiring a team member from TOA is designed to create capacity within your team, allowing onshore team members to focus on those more high value add services. That is not to say that your new TOA team member will not be able to do this work in time with the appropriate training and resourcing. You only have to look at the review page to get a sense of what you can expect from hiring an outsourced accountant from TOA. With the created capacity, you can have your team focus on meeting those compliance deadlines, perhaps even meeting them this year....  

Provide those advisory services that you have been promising you would to your clients, using apps such as Clarity HQ who will help start that conversation. You may even find that your new team member can help get this information ready for those conversations and maybe one day hold the conversation with the client?  

It sounds too good to be true? 
We mentioned earlier that the team member is yours and you will only get out of this process what you are willing to put in and we mean this. TOA are there to help and guide you but at the end of the day if you are not ready and willing to put in time and effort to train, manage and amalgamate your offshore team, then you will ultimately fail and most likely blame TOA for your mistakes.  

TOA make the hiring process simple, they provide all the necessary background checks, they provide initial training, setup and the facilities however what they cannot provide is your dedication to making this work. Please consider your willingness to manage a team member who is not sitting directly outside your office where you can walk out the door and sit next to them. Consider that you will have to turn on your webcam, put on your headphones and press that new meeting Zoom button to talk to your team member, (who is actually sitting thousands of KM’s from your office) about the task you have just assigned to them. They will make mistakes just like your onshore team, they will have family issues just like your onshore team, they will celebrate wins with you just like your onshore team. 

TOA is designed to create capacity, grow your team globally and help to address the talent crunch that is being experienced currently, especially in Australia. You need to put in the effort to integrate your offshore team member both structurally and culturally, put in place processes and procedures (this should be done even with on onshore team...) and train train train! 

If you just want someone to crunch data and process basic compliance requirements without wanting to expand your team and a have a global presence, then get in touch with us at Clarity Street, we have great connections in the industry that will suit your needs. If however, you want a team member that fits your culture and who you will in a short period of time, forget they are in another time zone, then it’s time to contact TOA!