Any firm owner would appreciate working with a well-oiled machine for an accounting team. Whether you need fresh ideas from a young and promising cohort, or clearer and better-defined accounting department roles in your firm, or improvements in your accounting department structure, we’ve got something for you.
This guide can provide you with useful insights and highly helpful strategies to starting your dream accounting team – one that aligns perfectly with your firm’s goals and values. But first, we must establish the importance of how to build and develop each accounting department that your firm can always rely on.
Your Dream Accounting Team: Why Building a Strong Team Matters
More than just for maximizing profitability, a strong and well-coordinated team reflects your values as a business owner. From HR to sales and marketing to IT, each accounting department should work harmoniously with others to make your day-to-day processes more efficient, reduce bottlenecks, and overall encourage each accounting department and help them reach their full potential while working for your firm.
A well-designed accounting department structure allows your practice to deliver the best possible results to your clients. When you delegate the right accounting functions to your own accounting departments, you’re a step closer to achieving your all-star team. Specifically, an accounting team that delivers what your vision statement promises, embodies ideal accounting principles, attracts quality leads and prospects, and makes your clients stay with your accounting firm despite many rising competitors.
Things to Consider When Starting Your Dream Accounting Team
Firm owners need a guide to build, develop, manage, and encourage each accounting department to optimize their roles and responsibilities to your accounting practice. From aspects like financial health to tax laws to key accounting roles to best accounting principles, you should be observant and proactive as a business leader. If you’re curious about putting your accounting staff together the right way, then make sure you consider these accounting department functions, factors, and elements for success.
Background Checks for Each Accounting Department
Your dream team needs adequate years of experience, tried-and-tested sets of hard and soft skills, and good character references. This includes every accounting department in your firm: finance, customer service, IT, sales and marketing, HR, and the like.
It’s been proven that thorough background checks for accounting departments are part and parcel of building a successful team. Every accounting department in your firm should have members with a track record of talent and competence, a strong background in accounting, and evidence of good moral character. Especially among every accounting department, HR must verify the credentials and accolades of your team members, and make sure that they align with the mission and vision of your practice.
As a business owner who wants to build a team of seasoned and highly skilled professionals, you should implement policies against cases of bullying, harassment, or abuse among employees. As it should go for every accounting department, your firm also needs initiatives for corporate social responsibility that go beyond one accounting department.
Well-defined and Designated Roles for Each Accounting Department
Roles for each accounting department should be well-defined and designated to ensure efficiency in your workflow and general processes, accuracy in outputs, and the accountability of each accounting department member when it comes to their accounting roles. When you outline accounting positions, accounting roles, and accounting requirements, you reduce role redundancies, you minimize occurrences of errors as well, and you fill the accounting needs of your clients satisfactorily.
Well-defined roles in each accounting department also allow for specialized expertise and better utilization of resources. When you set expectations and boundaries for each accounting function as mentioned above, your employees can work more effectively towards achieving shared goals.
Some examples include assigning staff accountants tasks involving accrual accounting only (excluding cash basis accounting), delegating duties to accounting managers that have to do with overseeing financial reports, or giving tasks to senior accountants that are allow them to assume an overall leadership role — making informed decisions regarding your firm’s financial strategy and upholding high accounting standards in managing your company’s finances or dealing with complex tax situations.
Meanwhile, another benefit of setting roles of each accounting department is handling financial data with precision and integrity, while also promoting a culture of professionalism and collaboration within each accounting department. In sum, the role that every accounting department plays needs clear-cut scopes and limitations.
For our sidenote: if you see an effective accounting department, you can use that as a model for other departments that need enhancements or process improvements.
Expectations for Every Accounting Department
Since your team has a particular set of skills, traits, and kind of character, then you should set your expectations of them. The members of your accounting departments may be going above and beyond to get things done in your practice, but they also have limits in terms of job scope and daily workload.
If you assign too many ad hoc tasks to your finance team, they may be more vulnerable to burnout. An example would be assigning responsibilities like managing the general ledger or reconciling records to those tasked only to write financial statements. But at the same time, you should also make sure that the members of each accounting department are truly performing their designated tasks, like crafting a clear list of responsibilities for the accounts payable and accounts receivable departments.
Apart from what was mentioned, firm owners should embody common courtesy and train their accounting staff to be on time in team meetings, ensure that their accounting marketers have a good understanding of your key performance indicators, and invest in your staff accountants by honing their and educating them on GAAP rules, payroll taxes, and crucial accounts payable and accounts receivable tasks, among other duties.
In short, accounting standards for each department should be upheld, especially by those assuming leadership roles
Ensuring Financial Accuracy from Each Accounting Department
Firm owners should also pay attention to financial accuracy because it serves as the backbone for making informed decisions on things like strategic financial planning, managing cash flow, ensuring sound financial reporting, compliance with tax laws, and utilizing the right accounting software, among other accounting functions.
When a finance team provides accurate and timely financial information, it allows every accounting department to establish informed decisions regarding resource allocation, investment opportunities, and strategic planning per accounting function.
On top of this, stakeholders such as investors, creditors, and government agencies can rely confidently on financial reports (or any type of data for that matter) prepared by a specific team. As firm owners want consistent and reliable assessments of the financial health and performance of their practice, accuracy from your accounting functions can also include research and statistical analyses for enhanced precision, which translates into error-free financial statements and financial records, among other functions that require meticulous data entry and reconciliation.
The function of each accounting department also plays a crucial role in forecasting future performance through budgeting and cash flow analysis. Ultimately, a well-functioning accounting department ensures transparency, accountability, and efficiency within any accounting practice, contributing to its overall success and long-term sustainability. As a business leader, this is an area you can use accounting software in, for the protection of crucial financial information and the automation of risk management techniques.
A Solid Accounting Department Structure
Forming a team of superstars requires an organized and well-established accounting department structure. While this doesn’t necessarily mean an accounting department hierarchy, there should always be a chain of command, like an accounting manager or chief financial officer with a higher skill or experience level that a finance team (typically consisting of entry-level to mid-level professionals) reports to.
A good accounting department structure can be based on already-existing frameworks — or you can produce your own. When there’s a solid accounting department structure in your firm, you benefit from accountability and transparency for each accounting department, especially when it comes to their decision-making processes.
A solid accounting department structure is a good foundation for growth and scalability, as it helps your practice adapt to changing market conditions and industry trends and enhance client trust and confidence in your services, while also showcasing professionalism and reliability. Ultimately, building and developing a perfect accounting department structure for your firm depends on the direction that the firm owner (i.e. you) wants.
Collaborative Accounting Departments
For teamwork to produce optimal results, each accounting department should be allowed to collaborate with others. Firm owners must allow for close communication and coordination among every accounting department like IT, customer service, and HR.
The smoothness and seamlessness of your practice’s day-to-day operations depends on how well you prevent the delay of message relaying. To execute this, your teams can utilize tools like accounting software that’s designed for faster coordination among every accounting department. Through this, you avoid miscommunication that’s possibly costly, too.
While some firms delegate a particular set of tasks to their team and follow a particular workflow or process (and they find that this works best for them), accounting firm owners and/or managers can also explore more collaborative approaches when it comes to assigning roles to every accounting department.
Alternative Business Models
Business models like offshore accounting have proven time and again that they’re cost-effective, industry-relevant, and globally competent. As most accounting firms are struggling to stay afloat due to the widespread talent crisis in the States, alternative business models have been making waves in recent years, specifically offshoring.
While there is skepticism surrounding offshoring, most of it is due to rumors and misconceptions that have been debunked. With this said, it’s ideal for your firm to work with a finance team that’s not only efficient and competitive, but also helps your practice significantly retain its budget and conserve resources as well.
Some areas that alternative business models can help your accounting firm with include ensuring timely payments, creating financial statements, managing the accounts receivable and accounts payable departments, tracking and reconciling financial records, implementing risk management techniques, and even areas beyond accounting, like improving your firm’s hiring process or organizational structure.
Should You Offshore Your Accounting Team?
We’ll be honest — there are too many benefits you’re missing out on if you’re not considering offshore accounting right now. Our sales pitch? Honesty. With offshoring, you increase your capacity by having less in-house staff, you receive high quality outputs and services from a highly trained accounting team across the globe, and you reduce your operational costs through offshoring your accounting team from territories with lower labor costs.
Your Dream Accounting Team is Here!
Partnering with a firm that provides accounting staffing services is the answer you’ve been looking for all this time, and TOA Global has just what you need. We work with thousands of accounting firms that need an all-star offshore team to handle their day-to-day operations. From crafting financial statements to managing the accounts payable and accounts receivable departments to getting your very own offshore CFO (chief financial officer) advisory and consultancy services, we’ve got the perfect team for your practice.
Your dream team is waiting for you. Talk to us today for a free, no-obligation strategy call.
