What does a standard accounting firm look like?

When it comes to accounting firms, they come in all shapes and sizes, so it can be kind of hard to understand what a standard accounting firm looks like.  

There is no doubt that COVID-19 (yes, we still talk about it many years later) impacted accounting firms and shifted the way they do business. We are in a world where work-from-home and hybrid working is becoming much more commonplace—even if some companies try to mandate full–time work in the office.  

But thanks to our annual Accounting App Report, we have the insights!  

Accounting firms are jumping on this trend embracing remote working, on a global scale. We notice this particularly in the US who choose to augment their workforce with offshore, or near-shore workers.  

By embracing a global staffing approach, firms are accessing qualified talent, who are still qualified. In fact, in the Philippines accountants can now take and qualify for the US CPA exam. This is particularly noticeable in the data, particularly from our US firms who have grown by over 30% within the last year in our userbase and are happy to adopt offshoring to augment the staffing shortage. 

Overall, we know that Practice Protect has been used in 83 different countries over the last year. However, there are three key countries that represent the offshoring trend. 

Quite simply, global sourcing is becoming a standard. For the modern firm, this has many more benefits rather than negatives as it helps you to service clients better, faster, and cheaper. 

To quote our report – “why would I want my A-players doing admin? I would rather they worked directly with our clients improving their business.” 

With the staffing shortage firms cannot risk losing their best staff because of mundane reasons.  

But there can be a downside to offshoring as we cover in our report. It is indeed a very attractive prospect, qualified staff at a fraction of the cost, who wouldn’t want that? However, it is not the right use case for every accounting firm. This is why it is so hard to understand what an accounting firm looks like – it changes based on the individual firm!  

Offshoring can be a fantastic solution for many firms but be aware it is not always a silver bullet to your problem; you need to work with a company you can trust and fully integrate into your business to achieve success.  

Want to know more? Check out the Cloud Accounting Report to see exactly how firms are running their businesses.