Any experience with outsourcing?

In doing so you will be putting 3 people out of work, think long and hard about that.

"Carol" wrote

Remember, you are still liable for the quality of the work that "you" do, and by that I mean your clients will hold you responsible.

Secondly, you have a duty to secure your clients private financial data. Are you sure you accomplish that by outsourcing their private financial data to someone you don't have control over?

And third, you have a legal obligation under federal law to disclose to your clients that you plan to send their private financial data to a third party.

Frankly, you will find that when you explain to your clients who will actually be doing the work, and who will actually have their data in hand, and that you actually aren't doing what they think you are doing for the fees you are charging................

I wouldn't do that to them.

"Barrnabas Collins" wrote

You ask.

It could be the person across the desk from you.

ASK.

Thanks for your comment. These people have become my friends too, so what I thought to do was to only outsource new work, and work peaks for now. IF the service really works AND IF one of my people leave for their own reasons, only then might I consider reducing my in-house work force. Does that seem resonable?

Yes, very!

My hat is off to you for being one of the good employers. :-)

Thanks for your comments, Paul. I am responsible today for the work my bookkeepers do, and I check their work closely. Nothing changes there.

I've read the AICPA Ethics Rulings, and agree with them entirely. Note that this outsourcer will NEVER have overall access to my client's books, so I'm being even more careful than the AICPA requires.

Trust is the Core of an Accountant's business, so I would NEVER risk my client's trust to lower my cost. If I give this a try. it will be only with the full knowledge and approval of select clients.

Your final comment "I wouldn't do that to them" is moving... What would they get from this? My hope is to pass a portion of my savings back to them.

The lower costs outsourcers enjoy is scary: If this works I would turn outsourcers from potential enemies into potental allies. What do you think?

There was a trend toward outsourcing (not necessarily off-shore-- there are companies in the US that take that kind of work, too). In many cases it turned out to be very difficult to factor work in the office so that it can be done in isolation and without supervision according to a standard recipie, and a lot of that work was returned to the parent company, and from what I recall reading the trend has slowed or reversed a bit. Bringing it offshore has additional problems with communication, verification, and security.

I haven't saved any of the articles I'd read about it. But researching this should certainly go beyond a Usenet query.

I musta read over a year ago the reason for accountantsinindia.com isn't cost but that USA students would rather study finance these days.. and with a lot of new regs, the chap in India, is, well, more objective..

With XML and natural language processing, a lot of the outsourceable work might end up being done by machine anyway.. Some computerised call centers are now so good most folks don't know they're not human..

And fundamentally, the developed world is headed for a major labor shortage (post-boomer-retirement) that could lead to a repeat of the Great Depression (fourthturning.com).. we need all the help we can get..

- = - Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bio$trategist BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian

---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Guilty conscience produces extremism] [Urban sprawl confounds terror] [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]

....

I have not seen the characteristics of an actual labor shortage. I have seen the concept used as a sales tool to drive down the cost of labor and as a self serving excuse for management failures.

You won't get or find that cause and effect anywhere in history. The Great Depression was triggered by American tariff practices and spurred on by reckless speculation in the capital markets. The only reason it lasted so long was the sheer incompetence of the Frank Roosevelt and administration of idiots.

Accounting and Audit were very bad in those days and people were not getting a clear picture of what the Federal Government was actually doing. Today we have much more transparency, although we still have the idiots.

My business *is* outsourcing. For companies that need to add to their staff without committing to hiring a new employee. We offer IT, data/telecom, PC support/repair, printer repairs, bookkeeping, accounting & training services.

There's more to outsourcing than canning your employees and hiring a contractor for 1/2 the money, or farming out your support centre to India, which is the typical view of what outsourcing is.

Stephanie Wells, AICIA Durham Bus>

Typically the contractors cost twice as much, where the outsourcing company costs half as much or less... as compared to employees.

Those employees affected by outsourcing all have the same view... they lost their jobs due to it.

Not necessarily. You pay the contractor for the actual time they work, and not for warming a desk chair. You also don't pay a contractor for breaks, lunch, vacation pay, stat holiday pay, employer expenses like Workers Comp, unemployment, pension, group health and dental plans, training and any other benefits.

And often, the contractors wages are less per hour than the salaried employee *because* they get benefits and vacation.

Depends on *why* and *how* the employer is outsourcing. If they are

*eliminating* the positions yes, unless they offer contracts to the people *in* the positions they are eliminating. If they need to augment or add to their current staff, or divide responsibilities for security, then no.

Which is why contractors usually charge double the rate of an employee.

Unfortunately, without my designation in hand, I am actually *underpaid* for the type of work I do. In an employer/employee situation I make $21.50 per hour, but if I were a registered CGA student I'd have the equivalent of a

3rd level student and I'd be getting something like $40 or $45 per hour. I only charge $30 to $35 per hour for contract work. I do charge $65 per hour for training and software/computer related work (troubleshooting, software installation/upgrades, hardware installation/upgrades, repairs, technical support).

Most contractors I've met charge less per hour than salaried employees get. They're just able to charge more hours.

When I was an IT person and did contract work, I typically charged $500/day and up depending on the work