Running a growing business means juggling countless responsibilities. Between managing your team, serving customers, and developing your product, accounting often becomes something you know needs attention but would rather delegate.
We spoke with Matthew May, who has spent two decades in the accounting industry, about why outsourcing your financial operations might be one of the smartest strategic moves you can make. As a leader at Acuity, he has seen firsthand how modern outsourced accounting helps businesses operate more efficiently and scale with confidence. In this article, we explore how outsourced accounting helps businesses scale without adding complexity, strengthens financial control, and leverages technology while allowing leadership teams to stay focused on what matters most.
How can outsourced accounting help businesses scale more efficiently?
The foundation of successful scaling is simple: entrepreneurs should focus on their core competencies. Unless you started your business specifically because you love financial reconciliation, accounting probably isn’t where you add the most value.
Having specialists handle each critical business discipline makes operational sense. The reality is that most entrepreneurs can’t afford full-time specialized staff for every business function, and they shouldn’t need to.
Technology has fundamentally transformed back-office operations in recent years. Functions like HR, accounting, and IT have become so specialized and technology-driven that managing them in-house often doesn’t make economic sense. Outsourced accounting provides access to professionals who specialize in financial management, allowing business owners to concentrate on growth and innovation.
What are the common challenges companies face when managing accounting in-house?
The challenge with in-house accounting comes down to an impossible equation.
Most companies budget for one accountant. But that single person needs to handle daily transactions, manage complex accounting requirements, and provide strategic financial projections. This workload actually represents three distinct roles that should be handled by a team, not an individual.
This staffing constraint creates two equally problematic scenarios. Companies can hire someone affordable at a junior level, then expect them to deliver strategic insights they’re not qualified to provide. Or they hire an experienced professional at a premium rate and then have them spend valuable time on basic data entry tasks.
Neither approach makes efficient use of resources. With current accounting technology capabilities, maintaining traditional in-house accounting teams has become increasingly inefficient for most companies.
How does outsourced accounting improve financial control and accuracy?
Smaller teams often rely on institutional knowledge rather than documented processes. This isn’t a criticism of their capabilities. It’s simply how small departments typically function.
When one or two people manage your books, procedures often exist primarily in their heads. They remember what they did last month, they develop their own systems, and everything works until someone takes a vacation, gets sick, or leaves the company. Suddenly, the continuity is gone, and critical knowledge walks out the door.
Outsourced accounting firms operate on a different model entirely. They document procedures, follow established protocols, and create repeatable processes that exist independent of any individual team member. This standardization creates a sustainable accounting operation that delivers consistent results regardless of personnel changes.
The real value comes from building systems that maintain accuracy and continuity over time, not just individual expertise.
What role does technology play in outsourced accounting solutions?
Modern accounting services rest on three foundations: people, process, and technology. As technology improves, it reduces the manual effort required to maintain accurate financial records.
The accounting industry has experienced multiple transformational shifts over the past two decades. The evolution from paper-based systems to desktop software, then to cloud-based platforms, and now to AI-powered solutions has continuously eliminated manual tasks and created new efficiencies.
This technological progression follows a predictable pattern of exponential improvement. Successful accounting operations must continuously adapt by reducing manual labor as technology capabilities expand.
The advantage of working with an outsourced provider is immediate access to these technology benefits without managing the implementation yourself. Your accounting partner continuously updates their technology stack to remain competitive, and you gain those advantages automatically without capital investment or training overhead.
How should leadership teams decide what to outsource and when?
The decision framework is straightforward: outsource functions that fall outside your core business operations.
Technology companies should keep customer-facing activities and product development in-house – these are competitive differentiators. Back-office functions like accounting, HR, IT, and legal should all be evaluated as strong outsourcing candidates.
The question isn’t whether you could handle these functions internally. With sufficient resources, most companies could manage them. The strategic question is whether you should. Is this the optimal use of your team’s time and your capital?
For most businesses, accounting represents a clear opportunity to leverage external expertise while freeing internal resources for revenue-generating activities.
Key takeaways: Why this matters
Outsourced accounting provides a more scalable approach to financial management that addresses the fundamental challenges of growth.
You gain specialized expertise without the overhead costs of full-time employees. You get documented processes instead of knowledge that exists only in someone’s memory. You access current technology and industry best practices without building that infrastructure internally.
Perhaps most valuable, you free up time and resources to focus on activities that directly drive business growth.
Technology will continue advancing, processes will keep evolving, and successful companies will be those that focus on their core strengths while outsourcing specialized functions to experts. The question for growing businesses isn’t whether to outsource accounting but rather how quickly they can make the transition.
