Outsourced Accounting and Payroll: Frequently Asked Questions

Four steps: scope and engagement letter, access setup, a documented cutover, then a parallel period where we reconcile alongside your current process. A typical engagement is fully live in 2 to 4 weeks. A single entity on QuickBooks Online with current books can be live in about 10 business days. Multi-entity groups on NetSuite or Sage Intacct, and files with several unreconciled months, take longer, and we tell you that before you sign.

No. We work in your file, on your chart of accounts, with the apps you already pay for. That includes QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Xero, NetSuite and Sage Intacct for the general ledger, Bill.com and Ramp for payables, Gusto, ADP and Paychex for payroll, and Expensify for expense reports. If your current setup is holding the work back, we will say what we would change and why, then leave the decision to you.

Yes, as a defined cleanup project rather than part of the monthly fee. We rebuild the period one month at a time: every bank and credit card account reconciled to the statement, undeposited funds and stale open items cleared, miscoded expenses and owner draws fixed, payroll tied back to the filed Forms 941 and W-2 totals, and a corrected trial balance produced for each month. You get a written summary of what changed, which is what your CPA will ask for at tax time. Cleanup is quoted as a flat fee once we have seen the file.

No. We do the accounting work all year. Your CPA prepares the tax return and any attest work. At year end your CPA receives a closed, reconciled trial balance with supporting schedules instead of a box of receipts in March. With your written permission we work with your CPA directly and deliver the year-end package.

No. That setup usually works well. Your in-house person keeps what needs someone on site, such as vendor relationships, opening the mail and chasing a customer for a purchase order. We take the volume work: transaction coding, reconciliations, AP processing, payroll runs and the month-end close. Ownership of each task gets written down, so nothing sits in the gap between the two.

Yes. We take overflow bookkeeping, write-up, payroll and close work for CPA firms, billed to the firm and delivered under your naming conventions and workpaper formats. The client relationship stays yours, and we sign a confidentiality agreement covering every file we touch.

You get a named lead accountant who owns your file, a preparer who handles daily processing, and a reviewer who signs off on the close. The same lead is on your calls and your emails. You are not routed into a shared queue where you explain your business again every week.

The engagement is built so no single person carries your file in their head. Every client has a written procedures file, a reviewer already familiar with the account, and all work lives in your systems rather than on a personal desktop. If the lead changes, we introduce the replacement, overlap them with the outgoing lead through a full close cycle where timing allows, and keep the same reviewer in place during the transition.

Email, phone, and Slack or Microsoft Teams if that is where your team lives. Routine questions get an answer the same business day. Anything that would stop a payment run, a payroll or a filing is handled the day it reaches us. There is a standing review call after each month-end close, and a weekly check-in during onboarding or a cleanup project.

We cover US business hours, Eastern through Pacific, so you have live coverage during your workday wherever your offices are. Payroll cutoffs, approval deadlines and filing dates are tracked on your local calendar, not ours.

We prepare, you approve. Invoices are captured into Bill.com, Ramp or your existing AP tool, coded to the right account, class or job, matched to the purchase order or receiving document where you use them, then routed to your approvers at the dollar thresholds you set. Release is done by your authorized signer. We hold no signing authority, and the full approval trail stays in the system for your CPA or auditor.

Every close runs through a reviewer who is not the preparer, against a standing checklist: bank and card reconciliations tied to statements, balance sheet accounts supported by schedules, accrual cutoff tested against the AP aging, payroll tied to the Form 941 and the state filings, and a month over month variance review on every income statement line above your materiality threshold. When something does slip through, we correct it in the right period, explain in writing what happened, and change the procedure so it cannot repeat.

Your month-end package lands within 10 business days of period close: profit and loss with prior period and budget comparison, balance sheet, statement of cash flows, AR and AP aging, reconciliation reports for every bank and credit card account, and a short written summary of what moved and why. We add job costing, class and location reporting, department statements and unit level reporting for multi-location operators. Weekly cash reporting and a 13 week cash forecast are available when cash timing is tight.

You do. Your accounting file, documents, payroll records and supporting schedules are yours during the engagement and after it. Wherever possible the work happens inside your own instance of QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite or Sage Intacct, so the records never leave your control. If the relationship ends, everything stays where it is and we hand over the procedures file, open item schedules and reconciliation support within 10 business days.

Yes. A mutual NDA is part of standard onboarding paperwork, and we will sign your version instead if your counsel prefers it. Confidentiality obligations extend to every person assigned to your account.

Through encrypted channels only. A secure client portal is the default, and we can work inside your SharePoint, Google Drive, Box or Dropbox if you would rather keep everything on your side. Bank statements, payroll registers and anything carrying account numbers or Social Security numbers never move as plain email attachments. Access is granted by role and removed the day a person rolls off your account.

Only at the level you grant, and read-only access is enough for most of the work. Reconciliations run off bank and credit card feeds or statement uploads. Payments move through your AP platform, under your approval, released by your signer. We do not initiate wires, ACH transfers or check runs on our own authority.

A fixed monthly fee for a defined scope, quoted after we see your actual volumes. You know the number before the month starts and it does not move because a week got busy. Project work such as a cleanup, a software migration or a year-end catch up is quoted separately as a flat fee. Payroll runs and sales tax filings are priced by run and by jurisdiction, so you pay for what you actually file.

Most clients run their back office for 40 to 60 percent less than a comparable in-house team, once salary, employer payroll taxes, benefits, software seats, training, and coverage for vacation and turnover are all counted. Treat that as a planning range to test against your own numbers, not a guaranteed result. Your figure depends on scope and volume, which is why we quote after we see both. The fair comparison is also not one bookkeeper against one of our staff. It is one bookkeeper against a preparer, a reviewer, a payroll specialist and a lead accountant working the same file.

Month to month after an initial 90 days. You cancel with 30 days written notice. The first 90 days covers the setup work done before the engagement reaches a steady state. There is no exit fee and no penalty for leaving. We finish the close in progress, document open items, and hand the file back so your next team or your CPA can pick it up cleanly.

One call, about 30 minutes. Bring a recent trial balance or your last month-end reports if you have them, and be ready to talk through entity count, transaction volume and payroll states. We follow up with a written scope and a fixed monthly price at no cost and with no obligation. Call (209) 456-5966 or email info@yfgconsultants.com.