Work is getting done. Deadlines are (mostly) met. The team is working late.

On the surface, everything looks fine.

But underneath:

• Work keeps coming back for review

• Simple tasks take longer than they should

• Every new client feels like a stretch

And despite all the effort, you’re still behind.

That’s the disconnect.

Because what looks like productivity is often just activity.

And activity is easy to mistake for progress.

But here’s the truth:

Most firms aren’t struggling because their teams aren’t working hard.
They’re struggling because work isn’t moving efficiently.

🧠Busy Isn’t the Same as Productive

In most firms, three things get mixed up:

• Busy = doing a lot of work

• Productive = completing meaningful work

• Profitable = completing work efficiently, without rework

The problem?

Most firms only measure the first one.

• Hours logged

• Tasks completed

• Emails sent

And all of it looks like progress.

But none of it answers the real question:

Is work actually moving forward or just moving around?

Because in many firms:

• Work gets started quickly, but finishes slowly

• Tasks move, but not in a straight line

• Reviews happen, but don’t reduce future errors

So the team stays busy. But the system stays inefficient.

And over time, this creates a dangerous loop:

More work - more activity - more pressure - same problems

🧩Where the Illusion Comes From

⚠️The Hidden Cost of Being Busy

“Busy” feels productive. But here’s what it’s actually costing you:

Lower Margins

More hours go by. Revenue stays the same.

Team Burnout

Constant pressure. No predictability. No control.

No Real Capacity to Grow

You can add clients. But only at the cost of chaos.

More Rework

Errors increase. Reviews pile up. Work gets done twice.

↗️THE FINSMART POV

Besides the constant attempt of trying to be busy, this recent article explores several shortcomings of a traditional accounting firm.

The pressure points are becoming harder to ignore. Hiring is slower, retention is less predictable, clients expect faster turnaround, and partners want more room for growth, advisory work, and leadership. Yet in many firms, the operating model still depends on long hours, overextended managers, partner-heavy review, and workflows that are held together by effort more than design.

What needs to change is not the profession itself. What needs to change is the way work is structured, delivered, reviewed, and supported inside the firm.

Read to Know More

✅The Contrarian Truth

The busiest firms are not the most successful ones.

In fact, the opposite is often true.

The best-run firms don’t look busy.

They look… calm.

Not because there’s less work.
But because the work is controlled.

• Clear workflows

• Defined ownership

• Predictable timelines

No heroics required.

📈What High-Performing Firms Do Differently

They don’t just assign work.
They design how work flows.

1. They Build Workflows, Not To-Do Lists

Every task has:

• A clear stage

• A clear owner

• A clear timeline

2. They Reduce Context Switching

Instead of generalists doing everything:

• Work is batched

• Roles are specialized

• Focus is protected

3. They Create Leverage

They stop asking: Who can do this?
And start asking: Who should be doing this?

That’s where outsourcing and offshore teams come in—not as cost-saving tools, but as capacity multipliers.

4. They Measure Flow, Not Effort

Instead of hours worked, they track:

• Turnaround time

• Work-in-progress

• Rework rates

🛠 PRACTICE BUILDER

📍 Taking This Conversation Offline

If this feels familiar, you’re not alone.

This is exactly what we see across firms we speak to every week—
high effort, high activity… but work still not flowing the way it should.

That’s why we’re taking this conversation beyond the inbox.

We’ll be at the Accounting Today Firm Growth Forum.

📅 May 19-20, 2026 | 📍Mission Bay Resort, San Diego, CA

Book A Meeting

Let’s walk through how work flows inside your firm—and where it’s getting stuck.

See you next time!

The Work You Think Is Done… But Isn’t

For most accounting firms, this is how their work flows:

This goes on and on. Sometimes things get corrected. Sometimes, “it is the best that you can do.” Eventually, it gets delivered.

And everyone moves on. But in this entire process, there is something that no one tracks. And often that is the most harmful aspect for the business…

It is the number of times the same work has been touched. In most firms, one task isn’t done in one go. Two, three, sometimes four times is what it takes.

Over time, this becomes the norm.

“This just needs a quick fix.”
“Just a small change.”
“Almost there.”

But those “small fixes” are where your time disappears. The real cost in your firm isn’t the work you do.

It’s the work you redo.

🔎WHERE REWORK ACTUALLY COMES FROM

Rework doesn’t mean people are bad at their jobs. It simply means that there is something broken in the systems.

More often than not, the underlying problem is one of these:

No Clear Definition of “Done”

Things are often lost in interpretation. Every member has a completely different understanding and derivation of what “done” means.

So most of the time, when work reaches review, it is only “half-ready”.

Incomplete or Unstructured Inputs

The problem is not always with the doer. Sometimes it is with the one assigning tasks - missing documents, unclear briefs on what is expected, and so much more.

Teams end up making assumptions, and reviewers waste a lot of time correcting them.

Review = Correction, Not Validation

Reviews end up becoming fixing errors, rewriting the entire work, and redoing logic. What review should simply mean is validating the results that have already been created.

Feedback That Doesn’t Scale

On occasions where there are multiple re-do’s, feedback is verbal, scattered, and inconsistent. So the same mistakes repeat because nobody is keeping track of anything.

Rework isn’t random. It’s predictable - when the system isn’t clear.

⚠️ THE HIDDEN COST NO ONE TALKS ABOUT

The cost of rework isn’t evidently visible in your P&L. The impact is quiet yet profound.

It Eats Into Your Capacity

As a leader, you think you are making the best use of your resources in the most wholesome way. But in reality, your resources are spending so much of their time revisiting the same work.

It Burns Out Your Best People

High performers don’t mind working hard.

They mind fixing avoidable mistakes, repeating instructions, and unclear expectations. All of them, ultimately leading to acute burnout.

It Becomes a Growth Ceiling

Most firm owners think that more clients mean more work and better growth. That is not completely wrong.

But what they fail to realize is that more clients also mean more rework. So now growth starts feeling heavier.

It Pulls Leaders Back Into Execution

When quality is inconsistent, leaders are compelled to step in more.

And suddenly:

You’re not leading anymore.
You’re reviewing everything.

🧠THE SHIFT: FROM “MORE REVIEW” TO “BETTER REVIEW.”

Most firms respond to rework by increasing review.

More layers.
More checks.
More involvement.

But that’s not the solution. That’s compounding the problem.

The real shift is this:

Stop using reviews to fix work.
Start using reviews to protect quality.

A strong review system should:

• Catch edge cases

• Validate output

• Ensure consistency

Rebuilding from scratch is not a doable option. And for that to happen, the review itself needs:

• Structure

• Clarity

• Ownership

🪑REVIEWER SEAT TO SMOOTH AVOID IT ALL

Most firms struggle with reviews. But what they fail to understand is that review is not a role. It is an overloaded responsibility.

And that’s where things break.

At Finsmart, we’ve seen this across firms, which is why we built what we call:

👉 The Reviewer Seat

With the Reviewer Seat, you get:

1. Experienced Reviewers: Senior accounting professionals with 8+ years of experience ensure thorough financial oversight.

2. Enhanced Accuracy & Compliance: Reduce errors, maintain compliance, and improve financial clarity.

3. Free Up Leadership Time: Shift financial review tasks to experts so firm owners can focus on strategy and growth.

4. Streamline Year-End Processes: Get audit-ready financials and tax compliance without last-minute stress.

This isn’t about adding another step. It’s about removing unnecessary loops.

Because when the review is consistent, structured, and owned, rework drops.

And leaders get their time back.

Know more about the Reviewer Seat here: https://finsmartaccounting.com/services/cpa-accounting-firm/cpa-reviewer-seat/

🛠 THE PRACTICE BUILDER

The “Rework Audit” (Try This This Week)

If you want to see how much rework exists in your firm, try this:

1. Pick 5 Recently Completed Tasks

Any recurring work:

• Bookkeeping

• Tax prep

• Monthly reporting
  

2. Track the Touchpoints

Ask:

• How many times was this reviewed?

• How many revisions were made?

• Where did it go back?

3. Identify the Trigger

Why was it reworked?

• Unclear instructions?

• Missing inputs?

• Quality gaps?

4. Fix Just One Pattern

Don’t try to fix everything in one go. Fix one recurring issue:

• Define “done”

• Standardize inputs

• Document feedback

The goal isn’t perfection.

It’s reducing repeat effort.

🌍 A LIVE PANEL TO ADDRESS BURNOUT - A FINSMART POV

One of the major consequences of consistent re-do’s is burnout.

Most firm owners think that issues like multiple reiterations can only be resolved when the teams work for longer hours.

The debate of how many hours accountants should work is and always will continue to be a debate until we know how to do it right.

At Finsmart Accounting, we are conducting a webinar on “30-hour work week: Fantasy or a Leadership Choice?” today at 1 PM EST.

This live panel will be conducted by Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder at Finsmart Accounting, with Sharrin Fuller, Randy Crabtree, and Debra Kilsheimer, where they will talk about:

• Why most firms struggle to escape the long-hours model

• The operational decisions that determine workload and capacity

• How firm leaders rethink staffing, technology, and client work

• What changes when firms start designing for sustainability

If you still haven’t registered yet, register now: https://finsmartaccounting-242729172.hs-sites-na2.com/30-hour-work-week

If your team is busy but growth still feels hard, look closer.

You might not have a workload problem. You might have a rework problem. And the fastest way to scale isn’t doing more work. It’s stopping the same work from being done twice.

See you next time!

Why “Figuring It Out” Stops Working After a Point?

When firm owners just set out on their entrepreneurial journey, “figuring it out” mostly works.

You:

• Jump on “quick” calls

• Fix things quickly

• Make decisions on the fly

It feels alright, until it doesn’t.

Problems come back in a loop.
The same questions get asked repeatedly.
Mistakes are not a one-time thing.

And suddenly, growth feels way heavier. What firm owners don’t get is quite simple, actually.

“Figuring it out” is not a strategy. It’s a phase.

What helped you move fast in the beginning is now slowing you down. Because every time your team has to “figure something out,” you’re paying for it in:

🔎 THE HIDDEN COSTS NO ONE TRACKS

When you are doing everything on the go, the real problem isn’t chaos. It is the invisible cost of operating without clarity. Here’s where it quietly shows up.

Rework Becomes Normal

Especially when you have a team, this becomes the norm.

The same tasks get done differently by different people. Not that they are wrong. But because there is no set way to do something.

Time Disappears in Small Gaps

Five minutes here. Ten minutes there.

At the end of the day, you don’t even remember where your time is going. Your entire day is lost in clarifying, following up, and re-explaining.

It might seem small on an individual level, but for a team, quite expensive.

Your Best People Get Drained

We think it is the work, but the work isn’t what is burning out your top performers. What burns them out are:

• Unclear expectations

• Constant firefighting

• Fixing avoidable issues

Growth Feels Harder Than It Should

More clients should mean more revenue.

But instead, it feels like:

• More pressure

• More coordination

• More dependence on you

That’s not growth. That’s an unstructured scale.

⚠️THE REAL RISK: YOU CAN’T DELEGATE CHAOS

When there is too much chaos going on, firm owners assume it to be a delegation problem. But in reality, it is a clarity problem.

Because you can’t delegate:

• Unclear processes

• Undocumented work

• “Just figure it out” instructions

So what happens?

Work comes back to you. Again. And again.

And slowly, you become everything but the firm owner - the reviewer, the fixer, the fallback plan.

Growth doesn’t stall because of a lack of people. It stalls because everything still depends on you.

🧠 THE MINDSET SHIFT

From “Fixing Work” to “Designing Work”

Leaders spend a lot of their time fixing and reviewing work, instead of correcting work.

Only a handful of people spend time designing how work should happen. And that’s the shift. Instead of asking, “Who will do this?”

It’s time to ask, “How should this be done every single time”?

Because once the “how” is clear:

• Onboarding becomes faster

• Delegation becomes easier

• Quality becomes predictable

And suddenly…

You’re not managing chaos anymore.
You’re running a system.

🎧 FROM THE SMART OUTSOURCING UNIVERSE

We recently had a conversation around AI in accounting firms — hype vs reality.

One insight stood out: “Technology works best when the process is already clear.”

Firms often try to:

• automate first

• structure later

But that’s backwards.

AI can:

• Speed up work

• Reduce manual effort

• Improve output

But it cannot fix:

• Unclear workflows

• Inconsistent execution

• Missing ownership

🎥 Watch the full conversation here:

📘THE PRACTICE BUILDER

The “Stop Figuring It Out” Framework

If you want to reduce chaos this quarter, start here:

Pick One Repeating Task

Not everything. Just one.

Example:

• monthly close

• client onboarding

• review process
  

Document It Once (Imperfectly)

Don’t aim for perfection.

Just capture:

• steps

• ownership

• expected output
  

Test It With One Person

Have someone else follow it.

Watch where they get stuck.

That’s where clarity is missing.

Refine, Then Repeat

Fix the gaps. Improve it once. Then reuse it.

The goal isn’t documentation. The goal is to remove repeated thinking.

🌍A FINSMART PRESENTATION

One common consequence of “going with the flow,” especially in the accounting industry, is burnout.

The long work hours in accounting, not just during busy season but throughout the year, have been normalized for decades. The modern workforce is pushing back.

At Finsmart, we are hosting a webinar to determine whether a 30-hour workweek is really impossible or a deliberate design choice leaders can make today.

Join us for the conversation on “30-hour work week - Fantasy or a Leadership Choice?”

Date: 9th April

Time: 1 PM EST

Register now: https://finsmartaccounting-242729172.hs-sites-na2.com/30-hour-work-week

“Figuring it out” got you here. But it won’t get you to the next stage. The firms that scale don’t work harder. They stop solving the same problem twice.

What you need is an AI-powered offshore team that helps you become more productive without the overhead and the stress.

Want to know how? Book a free consultation: https://finsmartaccounting.com/free-consultation/

Why do most firms misdiagnose the bottleneck?

When a firm starts growing, here are a couple of things that start to happen:

• They get more clients

• Teams get more work

• Leaders or firm owners hire more

Yet things start to feel slower rather than faster.

Partners have more work to review than to focus on the growth strategy. Teams are busier than ever, and deadlines start to feel tighter.

The first instinct?

But often, the real issue, the real bottleneck, is something absolutely different. And that’s exactly how firms work from the inside.

Without clear workflows, defined ownership and documented processes, growth leads to friction.

Scaling firms don’t just add tools. They rebuild how work flows.

🔎 THE REAL BOTTLENECKS INSIDE GROWING FIRMS

Accounting firms, well, most of them, have a pattern. And that pattern is exposed in three bottlenecks:

1. Workflow Bottlenecks

When firms take on new clients, there’s bound to be a lot of work. But the problem often is that no one knows who owns what.

The result?

• Files waiting for review

• Tasks bouncing between people

• Deadlines getting compressed

• Increased workflow confusion
  

2. Decision Bottlenecks

In such cases, partners or firm owners are the default escalation points.

• Everything needs approval

• Everything needs review

This slows down the firms. A growing firm cannot run on founder bandwidth alone. The entire system suffers.

3. Communication Bottlenecks

This is one of the most common bottlenecks that goes unnoticed. Communication becomes a bigger problem than the work itself. Interestingly, communication is becoming a bigger bottleneck than work itself.

Often, firm owners struggle with something very simple - their inbox is a mess, and they are constantly struggling to keep up.

From client communication to constant follow-ups and information requests that have been delayed. This is not because teams are slow, but because the communication is broken.

🤖 THE TECHNOLOGY TRAP

AI alone can’t fix the bottleneck - here’s why!

With all the noise about AI, firm owners tend to assume AI will remove all their bottlenecks.

But here’s the thing…

If firm owners tried to do 100% of the work today, fixing mistakes would take more time than the work itself.

AI should be treated as an accelerator and not a human replacement.

It helps teams move faster by:

• Automating repetitive work

• Summarizing insights

• Improving analysis
  
  

But AI cannot fix:

• Broken workflows

• Unclear responsibilities

• Missing documentation
  
  

🎧 FROM THE OFFSHORING SIMPLIFIED UNIVERSE

AI for Your Firm: Fluff or Ready to Implement?

We recently hosted a live panel discussion with Ben Stein (Double) and David Lam (Abacor) to explore a question many firms are asking:

Is AI actually useful for accounting firms today?

One insight from the discussion stood out.

“AI today can take you from the starting point to the 20-yard line.
Humans still take it across the field.”

In other words:

AI doesn’t replace accountants. It removes the repetitive work around accounting.

Some practical areas where firms are already seeing value:

• Automating journal entries

• Financial variance analysis

• Meeting summaries and client communication

• Information requests and documentation

The result?

Accountants spend less time clicking and compiling and more time thinking and advising.

🎥 Watch the full webinar recording here and get all the important insights:

🛠 THE PRACTICE BUILDER

The “Bottleneck Test” for Your Firm

If your firm feels slower despite growth, try this simple test.

Ask yourself these three questions:

Where does work wait the longest?

Is it:

• Partner review?

• Client information?

• Internal handoffs?

Where work waits is where the bottleneck lives.

Which work still depends on one person?

If a process breaks when one person is unavailable, it’s not scalable yet. That’s not a staffing issue.

It’s a process issue.

What work still requires manual effort every month?

Tasks that repeat every month are prime candidates for:

• Automation

• Standardization

• Delegation

The goal of scaling is simple: Remove friction before adding more volume.

🌍 A FINSMART POV

Over the years, we’ve worked with 70+ accounting firms and 300+ clients.

And the biggest challenge we see isn’t technology.

It’s operational clarity.

Many firms struggle with undocumented workflows, unclear ownership of tasks, partner dependency for reviews, and inefficient onboarding of new team members

Once those foundations are fixed, everything else becomes easier.

Technology works better.
Teams work faster.
Growth becomes manageable.

And that’s when offshoring, automation, and AI start creating real leverage.

Want to know how to use Smart humans for your advantage? Book a free consultation: https://finsmartaccounting.com/free-consultation/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Substack&utm_campaign=Promotion

See you next time!

Why “Balance” Sounds Good — But Breaks in Reality

For decades, all of us have been fed a simple idea - you need to achieve work-life balance. A simple idea, truly.

50-50. Equal. Unconflicted and controlled.

But anyone, especially those running a firm or working in the accounting industry, knows that is not the reality.

The reality is far from the 50-50

• Deadlines don’t distribute evenly

• Busy seasons are often gruesome

• Clients can ask for clarity even at night

• Most importantly, while all this is happening at work, life doesn’t pause. There are emergencies there, too.

Some weeks demand 90% at home, and on others, you might have to pull a late-night shift.

Yet, when leaders assume unrealistic stability, that is where the problem begins.

The issue isn’t imbalance. It is building firms that don’t value their personal time as much as they value their clients.

This leads to:

• Overworked and overwhelmed individuals

• Unhappiness at work

• Burnout - acute burnout

⚖️THE REAL PROBLEM

Burnout is a simple result of unmanaged work and not hard work.

Accounting professionals tend to misunderstand burnout as:

• Long hours

• Busy seasons

• High expectations

All of that is a part of the profession. But burnout isn’t. Simply put, burnout happens when there is a lack of control and clarity. Burnout is a result of something deeper:

• Priorities aren’t clear when work keeps piling up

• Teams are busy, but are not aligned

• Leaders haven’t built teams where they can step away

• Effort increases, but output doesn’t get better

All of these lead to frustration and, within teams, that leads to attrition. Burnout is not a workload issue but a design issue.

🔍WHAT’S ACTUALLY BROKEN INSIDE FIRMS

Let’s call it out — most firms don’t struggle because of effort. They struggle because of how work is structured.

1. Everything Feels Urgent

No prioritization = constant pressure

2. Work Is Not Distributed Properly

The same people keep picking up the slack

3. No Clear Ownership

Tasks move. Responsibility doesn’t.

4. Leaders Are Still the Safety Net

When things break, everything comes back to them

5. No Recovery Windows

Busy periods end. Systems don’t reset.

This is what turns a temporary imbalance into permanent exhaustion. Teams can sustain pressure only when systems carry the load

🎙 FROM THE SMART OUTSOURCING UNIVERSE

“If we can be vulnerable, that changes everything in an organization. So, a people-first culture is important. And good mental health is an offshoot of people-first culture.”

When Randy Crabtree, Managing Partner at Tri-Merit and the torchbearer of the Bridging the Gap conference, highlighted this in a conversation with Finsmart. Talking about his own struggle with burnout and a life-changing stroke 11 years ago, he points out something very important.

Accountants have a tendency to try to have control over everything. And that he says has been negatively impacting.

The profession is short of talent, and the idea of sitting long hours and doing the same thing over and over again is pushing away young talent.

Watch the complete episode about burnout, leadership, and more:

🛠 THE PRACTICE BUILDER

Designing for Imbalance (Without Burning Out Your Team)

If the chase for balance has gotten you nowhere so far, you need something more powerful. A system that is proven and that works. A curated plan that can be amended when there are other things that need to be taken care of.

Here’s where you start:

Plan for Peak, Not Average

Don’t design capacity around normal weeks. Design for your busiest ones.

Define What “Urgent” Actually Means

If everything is urgent, none of the urgencies will ever be taken seriously - not within the teams, not with your clients.

Build Work Distribution Layers

When everything lands with the “top performers”, it is easy for them to get overwhelmed. Create a structure and delegate well.

Protect Recovery Time

After peak periods, reduce internal load, avoid immediate new commitments, and give teams the breathing space they need.

Stop Rewarding Overwork

If your best people are always overloaded, you don’t have a performance system. It is a dependency problem.

🌍 A FINSMART POV

Tax season shouldn’t feel like controlled chaos every single year. Yet for many CPA and accounting firms, the pattern is familiar.

The core issue usually isn’t technical tax complexity—it’s capacity and workflow design. When all the work is squeezed through the same onshore team, at the same time of year, bottlenecks are inevitable.

That’s where strategic offshoring comes in. Not as a quick fix or cost-cutting tactic, but as a deliberate way to rebalance workloads between onshore and offshore teams so your firm can handle peak volume without burning people out.

Read more to know how to have a better and more balanced tax season.

🎤 Join the Conversation: Our Upcoming Webinar

The right way to tackle burnout is to know what to automate, what to offshore, and what to keep with people.

While AI has become an integral part of the conversation in the accounting industry, there is still confusion.

Our next live panel is all about differentiating between fluff and reality, discarding the theory, and talking about what’s implementable in accounting firms.

Join us for

AI for Your Firm: Fluff or Ready to Implement?
Augment AI into Your Business the Right Way.

🗓️ 5th March

🕐 1 PM EST

🔗 Register now: https://finsmartaccounting-242729172.hs-sites-na2.com/ai-for-your-firm

See you next time!

Over the years, the accounting industry has grown on two things: clients and capacity. Accounting firms and leaders, who tackled well on both sides, stayed safe, and the businesses thrived.

But 2026 will be different. Systems and people need to be upgraded to make the transformations work in your favor.

• Talent is mobile.

• Technology is evolving monthly.

• Clients expect advisory-level thinking.

• Leadership decisions are more complex than ever.
  
  

With so much happening, it is almost impossible for a firm to do it all, single-handedly, while making the right decisions and succeeding.

As a result, Community has quietly become the third growth lever.

Not for referrals.
Not for visibility.

But for perspective.

In today’s continuously evolving environment, the firms that grow faster are the ones that try, fail, and learn from failures fast. What is important is to understand that learning can be accelerated only in the right rooms.

🤝 What Community Actually Means for Accounting Firms?

When leaders and owners hear “community”, the first thing that comes to their minds is networking events, LinkedIn groups, and casual meetups.

But the real community is more than that. It is about structure and an unsaid power.

Building a community that matters is based on three things:

1. Learning Communities

Where ideas move faster than trial and error. These are spaces where firms share:

• What tools are they testing

• What workflows failed

• What pricing experiments worked

This reduces the cost of mistakes.

2. Peer Communities

Spaces where founders and partners speak candidly and on topics that truly matter. Themes may include:

• Hiring struggles

• Capacity breakdowns

• Leadership fatigue

• Strategic doubts
  
  

This reduces isolation.

3. Ecosystem Communities

This helps build a network of tech partners, offshore providers, advisors, and specialists. This reduces blind spots.

The strongest firms in 2026 will not be the most independent. They will be the most connected.

🚀 What Firms Actually Gain From Strong Community

Community isn’t a soft, comfortable spot. It challenges you, your beliefs, produces measurable outcomes, and helps you become a better version of yourself both professionally and personally.

Here’s what happens when firms actively engage in the right ecosystems:

⚡ Faster Adoption of New Models

Firms don’t spend 12 months debating offshoring or CAS — they learn from someone who already did it.

🧠 Better Hiring Decisions

Peer conversations reveal where others are finding talent, what compensation structures are evolving, what Gen-Z actually prioritizes, and so much more.

📈 Strategic Confidence

When you hear five other firms facing similar challenges, decisions become clearer. Community doesn’t eliminate risk. It reduces unnecessary hesitation.

💬 Emotional Resilience

Leadership fatigue is real. A strong community provides perspective — and sometimes just reassurance that you’re not the only one navigating change.

🗓 Watch Out for the Top Accounting Conferences in 2026

For accounting firm owners planning to redesign their firms and take new approaches for growth, annual accounting conferences not only help keep up with trends, but also open platforms for important conversations. These conferences act as knowledge hubs, networking platforms, and catalysts for innovation.

If you are still unsure which accounting conferences to attend, here’s a detailed list to consider.

Get the entire list here.

🛠 The Practice Builder: Building Community Intentionally

Community does not form by accident. It requires deliberate action.

Here’s a simple quarterly reset framework:

Step 1: Audit Your Current Circles

Ask:

• Who do I regularly exchange ideas with?

• Are they challenging my thinking?

• Are they ahead of where I want to be?
  

Step 2: Add One Strategic Room

This quarter:

• Join a founder group

• Attend one niche industry roundtable

• Schedule one conversation with a firm outside your geography
  

Step 3: Empower Your Team

Encourage:

• Leaders and team members to attend webinars

• Seniors to join accounting communities

• Team members to share takeaways internally
  

Community isn’t just for partners. It’s for everyone working in the industry, no matter what role they are in.

Step 4: Contribute, Don’t Just Consume

The strongest networks grow when members:

• Share lessons

• Offer insights

• Discuss failures openly
  
  

Contribution builds credibility — and relationships.

🎤 Join the Conversation: Our Upcoming Webinar

As a part of the continuous community building, we conduct regular live webinar panels where we invite industry experts who bring their experience and expertise on topics that impact the industry.

Join us for the next live webinar on:

AI for Your Firm: Fluff or Ready to Implement?
Augment AI into Your Business the Right Way.

🗓️ 5th March

🕐 1 PM EST

🔗 Register now: https://finsmartaccounting-242729172.hs-sites-na2.com/ai-for-your-firm

See you next time!

It Starts with the Decisions You Avoid in January

The holiday season is over, and before you know it, you and your team are getting busy with tax preparation, filing, compliance, client questions, and so much more. The busy season and the accompanying stress slowly creep in.

The reason why all of it feels very sudden is because of the small compromises and ignorances that were made months earlier.

You accepted a new client without checking the team's bandwidth.
A deadline was promised because “we’ll manage”.
A role was left undefined because of “we’ll fix it later.”

By the time February arrives, the pressure becomes almost unavoidable. But the reality is: Busy season is rarely a surprise; it is an accumulation.

🔁Why Capacity Planning Keeps Getting Postponed?

Capacity planning sounds logical, but in practice, it’s uncomfortable.

It forces leaders to:

• Say no to the added revenue

• Admit the end limit

• Question how work is really flowing
  
  

So instead, firms default to what feels productive. They start hiring reactively when the season sets in, and leaders constantly ask teams to stretch “just this once”. Instead of following a system or redesigning the way the firms work, they keep hoping that things stabilize once they have reached the peak.

The irony?

The busier a firm gets, the less time it feels it has to plan — even though that’s when planning matters most.

📘 Make Your Busy Season More Survival in 2026 - A Finsmart Playbook

If your busy season feels like a predictable surprise every year, you not only have a planning problem, but also an operating model problem.

• Partners are buried in review notes, and managers are stuck in admin

• Preparers are waiting on missing documents

• Everyone is living in extension mode

The firms that are able to come out of busy season with healthier margins and teams with work-life balance don’t magically get more hours. They built a two-speed tax delivery model.

Speed 1 (Core Team): A steady, year-round capacity that owns your standards, client experience, and quality.

Speed 2 (Surge Team): This is a scalable layer that expands and contracts around peak volume - without compromising control, security, or review quality.


Read the 2026 playbook in building a 2-speed Tax Team

⚠️The Hidden Cost of “We’ll Figure It Out Later”

Poor capacity planning comes with its own share of cost. The cost doesn’t appear on the P&L, and hence, it is difficult to get a true understanding of the cost incurred.

It shows up as:

• Talented team members quietly burning out

• Top performers carrying disproportionate load

• Client frustration due to delayed responses

• Founders pulled back into execution instead of leadership
  
  

The problem is that the accounting firms often normalize this. When overload becomes a standard, firms stop seeing it as a problem until it is too late, until people stop caring and start leaving.

🌍 What to Change This Year: A Finsmart POV

One of the key challenges that accounting professionals face is acute burnout.

In a recent conversation in the Smart Outsourcing Talks podcast, Daniel Hood, Editor-in-Chief of Accounting Today, rightly pointed out that accountants love to brag about how hard they work. He says that the fact that accountants don’t get to see their families during the season, they wear it as a badge of honor.

While it was previously perceived as commitment, today’s professionals realize the dysfunction.

In this conversation, Daniel points out several changes that accounting firms need to incorporate to attain work-life balance, especially during the tax season.

Watch the entire conversation here:

🛠️ The Practice Builder

The Capacity Reality Check (90 Minutes Well Spent)

As you navigate through the busy season, set some time aside in February to do this exercise. If you have a leadership team, make sure to involve them too.

1. List your core services (tax, bookkeeping, CAS, etc.)
   
   

2. For each service, define:
   
   

   • Who does the work?

   • What decisions are involved?

   • What causes delays?
     
     

3. Identify:
   

   • One bottleneck that appears every busy season

   • One role that’s always stretched thin
     
     

You’re not solving everything here. You’re building awareness — and awareness precedes improvement.

🌍 The Offshoring Lens

Why Capacity Planning Collapses Without Support?

Capacity planning requires thinking time — something most leaders lack, especially during busy season.

This is where offshoring changes the equation.

It is neither a as a last-minute fix. Nor a cost play.

But a way to:

• Stabilize recurring work

• Remove redundancy in roles

• Free leadership bandwidth for planning and system design
  
  

Offshoring works best when capacity is intentional, not reactive. Offshoring should support planning - not compensate for its absence. This creates space to lead and not just to execute.

🔮 The Closing Thought

The busy season doesn’t test how hard your team can work. It tests how well your firm is designed.

The firms that emerge stronger won’t be the ones that survived on effort.
They’ll be the ones who built capacity before pressure peaked.

Want more bandwidth this season? Hire a tax preparation specialist now: https://finsmartaccounting.com/services/cpa-accounting-firm/cpa-usa-tax-seat/

See you in the next issue!

The beginning of a year arrives with optimism. January, for firm owners, is almost always about that. But beneath the fresh start of new planners, new goals, and new energy is an uncomfortable truth - nothing has fundamentally changed for the business.

The bottlenecks linger on, the late nights continue, and the conversations postponed from last year are quietly carried forward.

We changed the pages of the calendar. The operating model remained just as it is.

But the good thing about January is that there is still some time to reset. As a leader, what you can do now:

🔁 The Problems Firms Keep Repeating

Every year, different clients. Same chaos.

Firms hire more people, add more tools, and push harder — yet the pressure never lifts.
That’s because most problems aren’t episodic. They’re patterns.

Busy seasons don’t create dysfunction. They reveal it.

How to avoid repeating them?

• List the top 3 moments last year when things “broke.”
  

• Identify the root cause:

  • Lack of clarity

  • Ownership confusion

  • Capacity mismatch

• Instead of labeling these as “seasonal issues,” — they’re design issues
  
  

🧠 Why Is the Cost Is Higher This Year?

One of the key problems that firm owners don’t realize they are secretly adding onto is adapting the same strategy that was relevant 5 years ago - it is not sustainable.

Teams today expect clarity.
Clients expect speed.
Talent expects balance.

The margin for inefficiency is shrinking — and leadership feels it first.

What leaders can do now:

• Identify where pressure shows up fastest:

  • Turnover

  • Missed deadlines

  • Client frustration
    

• Treat pressure as a signal, not a failure

• Ask: What is this pressure trying to tell us about how work flows today?
  
  

🧩 The Real Shift Is Structural, Not Tactical

Most firms try to fix deep problems with surface-level solutions: new tools, new hires, new targets

But structure beats effort every time. If work isn’t designed well, even the best people will struggle.

What leaders can do now

• Pick one recurring task and ask:

  • Who owns it?

  • Where does it start and end?

  • What decisions does it require?
    

• If the answers aren’t clear, that’s the work — not the execution

• Shift focus from doing more to designing better
  
  

🌍What to Change This Year: A FINSMART POV

Every business is different. So are their needs, goals, and aspirations.

But one of the most common challenges that almost all accounting firms struggle with is the conversation around Sales and pricing.

When you avoid the sales conversation or keep postponing it till you can, you do more harm than good.

They show up as:

• Clients who don’t respect boundaries

• Teams are overloaded with underpriced work

• Founders stuck in delivery instead of leadership

• Growth strategies that rely on exhaustion instead of intention
  
  

Gain complete insight into why sales talks are important and how you can integrate this into your client conversations in this conversation between Carlos M Garcia, Sales & leadership Coach, and Maanoj Shah, an offshoring expert and Co-Founder at Finsmart Accounting.

Watch the complete conversation here:

🛠️ The Practice Builder: The “Stop Doing” Reset

Growth often adds work. Rarely does it remove any.

Over time, leaders become the glue holding broken systems together — until they burn out.

This year doesn’t need more effort. It needs subtraction.

Try this out:

• Write down 3 things you personally step in to “save” regularly

• Ask:

  • Why does this need me?

  • What’s missing in the system?
    

• Replace heroics with:

  • Clear ownership

  • Documented expectations

  • Better handoffs
    
    

🌍 The Outsourcing Lens: Why Change Needs Capacity

Change fails not because leaders don’t want it, but because teams are already at capacity.

When there’s no breathing room, even good decisions collapse under execution pressure.

This is where global teams can change the equation — if done intentionally.

• Separate strategy work from delivery work

• Protect leadership time for:
  

  • Redesigning workflows

  • Clarifying roles

  • Building documentation
    
    

Know how to measure success for your offshoring teams here: https://finsmartaccounting.com/blogs/metrics-for-offshore-accounting-team-performance/

🔮 The Closing Thought

Every year brings new challenges.
But the same problems only repeat when the same decisions do.

Change doesn’t come from ambition — it comes from redesign.

What leaders can carry forward

• This year, don’t aim to work harder

• Aim to build differently

• The firms that win won’t be the busiest — they’ll be the best designed
  
  

This year, aim to plan better and succeed.

We wish you a Happy New Year!

See you in the next issue.

The New Accountant Isn’t Motivated by the Old Rules

One of the major reasons why the talent shortage is increasingly growing in the accounting industry is that there is a shift in the generation.

This generation refuses to build their careers and live the same way the last one did.

No more:

• “Survive 80-hour weeks to prove yourself.”

• “Figure things out as you go — onboarding is a suggestion.”

• “Client emergencies > your life.”
  

And they’re not shy about walking away if firms don’t evolve. This shift isn’t a threat — it’s an opportunity for firms to rebuild with intention.

While there are a lot of jokes about Gen-Z as a generation, it is important to understand that they do want to make a difference and not just “get the job done”.

📊 2. Culture - A Deciding Factor for the Talent

As employers, what is important for us to understand is that Gen-Z is the first digital generation; unlike all other generations, who have been in the workforce so far. They are the first global generation, too. This could mean they also pioneer remote careers and innovate revenue streams.

When it comes to the kind of culture that Gen Z wants to work in, here are the top derivations from one of Deloitte’s surveys:

• Gen Z prefers to work in industries that they interact with in their personal lives, as opposed to industries they aren’t frequent consumers of.

• Gen Z desires diverse and entrepreneurial opportunities with the safety of stable employment, and will remain loyal to a company if it can offer this.

• They prefer independence but not isolation.

• Gen Z no longer forms opinions of a company solely based on the quality of their products/services but now on their ethics, practices, and social impact.

Read more in the report to understand Generation Z better before you hire them.

The reality is that the next generation isn’t difficult; they are simply saying out loud what the previous generations tolerated quietly.

🧱 3. Why Traditional Accounting Cultures Are Breaking?

Here’s a truth that many leaders either don’t realize or simply refuse to acknowledge.

It’s not the work that’s hard.
It’s the way the work is structured.

Here’s what’s causing friction inside firms today:

1. Rigid Hierarchies Aren’t Working Anymore

Newer accountants expect mentorship, involvement, and clarity — not “wait 5 years to have a voice.”

2. Under-Documented Processes Make Onboarding Painful

When everything lives in someone’s head, new hires feel defeated before they feel confident.

3. Reactive Communication Exhausts Teams

Next-day client expectations + unclear ownership lead to stress spiraling.

4. Burnout Is Now a Talent Problem

Teams are resisting the old “push harder” culture… and they’re right to.

The firms that evolve fastest are the ones acknowledging that culture is infrastructure — not an HR accessory.

🌱 4. What Today’s Accountants Really Want?

We have said this before, and we will emphasize this again. This generation is different, and whether it is in-house or offshore teams, here’s what the Gen-Zs are chasing.

Clear Systems

SOPs. Playbooks. Checklists. Clarity beats chaos — every single day.

Real Growth & Exposure

Today’s accountants want direct client work, global opportunities, ownership over deliverables, and a visible career path.

Not just reconciliations and cleanup work.

Human-Centric Leadership

Not transactional.
Not fear-driven.
Just leaders who guide, communicate, and support.

A Culture That Protects Well-Being

Time off.
Predictable schedules.
Fair deadlines.
Boundaries that are respected.

Modern, Distributed Workstyles

Async-friendly.
Documentation-first.
Clear expectations.
Flexible work.

The new generation isn’t “entitled.”
They’re just unwilling to exchange their life for your client list — and honestly, that’s healthy.

🌍 5. The New Firm Model: From the Smart Outsourcing Universe

Here’s what we’re seeing across the 300+ firms we’ve supported.

The firms winning the cultural shift are the ones embracing global teams not as cheap labor, but as a strategic culture enabler.

How Offshoring Improves Culture (Unexpectedly):

• Reduces overload during tax season → teams breathe

• Forces creation of documented processes → onboarding improves

• Creates global exposure for junior accountants → higher retention

• Balances workloads → less burnout

• Normalizes async work → fewer emergencies, more clarity

A while ago, we sat down with Kenji Kuramoto, the Founder of Acuity. He has redefined how offshoring can transform a firm for the better.

For Kenji, offshoring wasn’t just a third-party service provider. As a leader, he ensured he was truly connecting with the teams, online or face-to-face. At his firm, even offshore team members have emerged as leaders.

Watch the complete conversation to understand how redefining culture, even when offshoring, can change the way your firm operates and succeeds:

Want to build a people-first culture without overwhelming your in-house team?


We’ve helped 300+ clients build global teams that reduce burnout, improve documentation, and create healthier, happier workflows.

Want to know how? Watch our clients speak: https://finsmartaccounting.com/testimonials/

Stay tuned for the next issue!

See you next time!

Why Fast-Growing Firms Break Before They Scale

“We’re growing fast… but everything feels harder.”

This is a common feeling that growing accounting firms face every day.

More clients = more chaos.
More team members = more confusion.
More revenue = somehow, more pressure.

It’s not a failure. It’s physics.

Growing firms break because the systems they have built aren’t designed to handle the post-growth reality. This is what we call:

But the reality is harsh. In reality, there are:

• Unclear processes

• Scattered responsibilities

• Founders who are doing a whole lot and not getting the time or life they desire

• Inefficient onboarding

• Reactive client management
  
  

The good news is when things break, it’s a sign your firm is ready for the next stage — not that you did something wrong.

The shift you need is:

Stop fixing fires. Start rebuilding foundations.

Scaling isn’t about hiring more. It’s about rethinking how work happens.

📌 THE CHANGING TREND

The norm of “doing more in-house” is fading — fast.

Accounting, although, is an integral part of any business, the discrepancies and challenges across the industry continue to linger, leading to the persistent shortage of the right talent.

• Despite the debate around the 80-hour work week, accountants are still clocking in for 60-80 hours, especially during the busy season. This is one of the key reasons for burnout. (https://ln.run/d6_5F)

• 80% of tax and audit professionals are working 51+ hours a week, yet have unpredictable workflows, leading to stress.

• Burnout is now among the top 3 reasons why accountants quit. This is a leadership problem. (https://ln.run/OrYlA)

• Stress peaks when teams are compelled to work with unclear processes and poor documentation(https://ln.run/_G6dC)

The assumption that “pressure = productivity” is outdated. Unlike boomers or even millennials, the new generation wants clarity, not chaos.

This rising need to break out from patterns that lead to burnout gives rise to offshoring, where you get access to plug-and-play, English-speaking talent. This allows the firm owners to focus on more strategic work, while the operational jobs are being taken care of.

The more the business leaders and firm owners acknowledge this and become ready to make the shift, the better they can handle talent and retain them effortlessly.

Want to know more about the state of accounting and what can change the future? Here’s an interesting take: https://23224411.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na2.net/hubfs/23224411/The%20State%20of%20Accounting%202024-1.pdf?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=Promotion

🛠️ THE PRACTICE BUILDER

The “5-Minute Expectations Reset” (Try this to reduce the holiday season stress)

The holiday season is exciting for all of us. But when even the changing weather of fall, pumpkin spice latte, and holiday season decorations don’t compel that one client to leave you alone, you need to take charge.

Here’s what we want you to do this week.

1. Pick that one client who’s constantly stretching you.

2. Send a short email that says:

“To make sure we are aligned and everything moves smoothly, here’s how we’ll handle delivery and communication going forward…”

Proceed with outlining:

• Response time

• Document turnaround timeline

• Tools you will use

• Review cadence

• Who handles what

3. This will take 5 minutes of your time, but it will save you 5 hours of unnecessary back-and-forth every week.

   Don’t forget to let us know how it works out!

🎧 FROM THE SMART OUTSOURCING UNIVERSE

“Accounting and creativity are two very different dimensions. How do you blend it? It’s not easy! The right brain and the left brain don’t like to work in community. They have conflicting views.”

Accounting has always been considered a boring profession, and that is one of the key reasons that the new generation, despite having an accounting degree, is steering away from it. But this conversation between Scotty Scarano, President at Padgett NC & a rapper, and Maanoj Shah, Offshoring expert and Co-Founder & Director at Finsmart Accounting, showcased that it all depends on how we perceive a profession.

Scotty has moved away from traditional accounting. He has a team that looks after the technical part. Scotty has been focused on building a workspace, a culture that, when clients look for a fun accountant, he emerges as the one. He also ensures his team, a part of which is offshored and the other part is based in-house, has fun constantly when working.

Curious to know how Scotty has been doing it for all these years? Watch the complete conversation:

🌍 A FINSMART POV

At Finsmart, we have worked with about 70+ accounting firm owners, serving about 300+ clients. And over the years, if there has been one thing they have struggled with consistently is streamlining their workflows.

Some of the common challenges they face include:

• Lack of SOPs, which leads to struggles in handing over work or training a new member, in-house or offshore

• Lack of documented processes, streamlined communication channels

• Lack of visibility, accountability, and task management

• Lack of efficiency and lost time

• Client friction and delays in onboarding

We wanted to help ease these daily struggles. And that is why we present to you a downloadable workflow template that will help make things easy from Day 1.

DOWNLOAD THE CUSTOMIZABLE WORKFLOW TEMPLATE HERE

The Smart Shift is simple:

Better systems + better distribution of work = better firms.

If offshoring is part of the next step you’re considering, we share real playbooks, not theories.

👉 Stay tuned for the next issue — it might have the solution just for the challenge you are looking for!

Happy Thanksgiving in advance, and we will see you next time!

“I tried to run my business creatively. It would show in the different ways I would show up and the things I would do, and the clients could resonate with. We had a photo shoot where everybody brought their personality with them. Just the things I did attracted the people that didn’t like the perception of accounting being boring, and they wanted to work with a fun accountant,” says Scotty Scarano, President of Padgett and the host of the Accounting High podcast.

In his latest conversation with Maanoj Shah, offshoring expert and Co-Founder of Finsmart Accounting, at the Smart Outsourcing Talks, Scotty revealed an important aspect - the perspective with which the accounting industry is viewed. We keep talking about the talent shortage. What we often fail to realize is the outlook that the new generation of accountants has towards the industry.

Same boring work with no scope for innovation or newness, accountants being tied to their desks - all of it can seem quite repelling for Gen-Z and Gen Alphas. Scotty has been doing his bit to break this view of the industry. The accounting work, in itself, can get quite repetitive. The way we work is what can bring about the change. Scotty talks about his own struggle as to how it took him time to become better at what he does.

“I was terrible at it in the beginning. I was interrupting people, and I didn’t know what I was doing on the podcast. I was just learning. I was learning to be a better listener, too. That was such a thrill, the early days. And then I started being recognized at the conferences and hearing that I was helping and inspiring people. So that’s what fueled more of the growth and creativity.”

Watch the complete conversation here:

📚 What We’re Reading

Many accounting firms face turmoil with their clients. Sometimes the engagements even go off. But often, there is no one single reason for the partnerships to take a downturn. However, there is one key reason that emerges - the client readiness gap.

It is the struggle that firms experience in collecting and validating all the necessary information from their clients to complete engagements efficiently.

This article explores how firms can effectively close the readiness gap, and we are hooked.

Read The Entire Article Here

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

AI or offshoring?

Are you one of those firms that is torn between choosing which is the best solution for your business? Well, many argue, it’s best to remove as many people as possible and adapt to technology, while for others, the human touch is more important than ever.


The most successful firms are the ones that do a blend of AI and offshoring for their business. It is not AI vs. offshoring; they go hand-in-hand.

Know more about how you can blend the two in this Finsmart article

💰 Free Growth Resource

Will you actually reap the ROI that your offshoring partner tells you?

Instead of believing what someone else tells you, it’s time to calculate it all yourself. This offshoring ROI calculator helps in navigating the intricacies of the individual components that are involved in offshoring.

Download the offshoring ROI calculator now

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Account Managers, Shweta Katkar.

• With 2 years of experience in US Accounting, Shweta is a detail-oriented individual

• She has a strong foundation in Accounts Payable & receivable and ensures all financial transactions are processed smoothly and efficiently

• She has a keen eye for accuracy and a commitment to maintaining seamless operations

😄 Funsmart Corner

📅 What’s Coming Up

Finsmart Accounting will be attending upcoming accounting conferences to discuss accounting, offshoring, and more. We hope to see you there!

1. Name of the event: CCH Conference
   Date: 20-23 October
   Location: San Diego
   Event Highlights:
   
   - Meet Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder and Director of Finsmart Accounting, and an offshoring expert.

• Meet Sharvari Gandhi, US Tax VP of Finsmart Accounting
  - Engage in conversations about accounting, offshoring, and more.
  
  
  

• Name of the event: Intuit Conference
  Date: 27-29 October
  Location: Las Vegas
  Event Highlights:
  
  🌍 The Global Edge
  
  “I tried to run my business creatively. It would show in the different ways I would show up and the things I would do, and the clients could resonate with. We had a photo shoot where everybody brought their personality with them. Just the things I did attracted the people that didn’t like the perception of accounting being boring, and they wanted to work with a fun accountant,” says Scotty Scarano, President of Padgett and the host of the Accounting High podcast.
  
  In his latest conversation with Maanoj Shah, offshoring expert and Co-Founder of Finsmart Accounting, at the Smart Outsourcing Talks, Scotty revealed an important aspect - the perspective with which the accounting industry is viewed. We keep talking about the talent shortage. What we often fail to realize is the outlook that the new generation of accountants has towards the industry.
  
  Same boring work with no scope for innovation or newness, accountants being tied to their desks - all of it can seem quite repelling for Gen-Z and Gen Alphas. Scotty has been doing his bit to break this view of the industry. The accounting work, in itself, can get quite repetitive. The way we work is what can bring about the change. Scotty talks about his own struggle as to how it took him time to become better at what he does.
  
  “I was terrible at it in the beginning. I was interrupting people, and I didn’t know what I was doing on the podcast. I was just learning. I was learning to be a better listener, too. That was such a thrill, the early days. And then I started being recognized at the conferences and hearing that I was helping and inspiring people. So that’s what fueled more of the growth and creativity.”

  Watch the complete conversation here:

  📚 What We’re Reading

  Many accounting firms face turmoil with their clients. Sometimes the engagements even go off. But often, there is no one single reason for the partnerships to take a downturn. However, there is one key reason that emerges - the client readiness gap.
  
  It is the struggle that firms experience in collecting and validating all the necessary information from their clients to complete engagements efficiently.

  This article explores how firms can effectively close the readiness gap, and we are hooked.
  
  Read The Entire Article Here
  
  

  🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

  AI or offshoring?
  
  Are you one of those firms that is torn between choosing which is the best solution for your business? Well, many argue, it’s best to remove as many people as possible and adapt to technology, while for others, the human touch is more important than ever.
  
  
  The most successful firms are the ones that do a blend of AI and offshoring for their business. It is not AI vs. offshoring; they go hand-in-hand.
  
  

  Know more about how you can blend the two in this Finsmart article

  💰 Free Growth Resource

  Will you actually reap the ROI that your offshoring partner tells you?
  
  Instead of believing what someone else tells you, it’s time to calculate it all yourself. This offshoring ROI calculator helps in navigating the intricacies of the individual components that are involved in offshoring.
  
  Download the offshoring ROI calculator now

  🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

  At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.
  
  In this issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Account Managers, Shweta Katkar.
  
  

  • With 2 years of experience in US Accounting, Shweta is a detail-oriented individual

  • She has a strong foundation in Accounts Payable & receivable and ensures all financial transactions are processed smoothly and efficiently

  • She has a keen eye for accuracy and a commitment to maintaining seamless operations

  

  😄 Funsmart Corner

  

  📅 What’s Coming Up

  Finsmart Accounting will be attending upcoming accounting conferences to discuss accounting, offshoring, and more. We hope to see you there!

  1. Name of the event: CCH Conference
     Date: 20-23 October
     Location: San Diego
     Event Highlights:
     
     Meet Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder and Director of Finsmart Accounting, and an offshoring expert.

  • Meet Sharvari Gandhi, US Tax VP of Finsmart Accounting.

  • Engage in conversations about accounting, offshoring, and more.
    
    

  2. Name of the event: Intuit Conference
     Date: 27-29 October
     Location: Las Vegas
     Event Highlights:
     
     Meet Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder and Director of Finsmart Accounting, and an offshoring expert.

  • Meet Sharvari Gandhi, US Tax VP of Finsmart Accounting.

  • Engage in conversations about accounting, offshoring, and more.
    
    

  See you next time!Meet Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder and Director of Finsmart Accounting, and an offshoring expert.

  • Meet Sharvari Gandhi, US Tax VP of Finsmart Accounting
    - Engage in conversations about accounting, offshoring, and more.
    
    

See you next time!

“As accountants, we self-induce so much stress on ourselves. I have to do this, I have to control everything, I have to be the one touching every tax return, I have to analyze everything. That’s where we get into the cycle of 80 hours a week or 100 hours a week,” says Randy Crabtree, Co-Founder of Tri-Merit and the key behind the Bridging the Gap conference.

In this latest conversation with Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder of Finsmart Accounting and an offshoring expert, Randy shared his journey of stepping back from his role as the Managing Partner after a life-threatening stroke. He realized why sometimes you can’t do it all yourself, and the importance of seeking help.

In this conversation, Randy touches on another critical aspect of why many accountants are still not inclined to join the industry. What he believes is the perception of stress, along with long hours, being tied to the desk, and very little scope to do something they love, as reasons for the shortage of skilled accountants.

The well-being charity for ICAEW members found that about 56% of the surveyed employees said they were suffering from stress and burnout. What is interesting here is that most of this is untrue. Accountants, today, can choose only to provide accounting services and refrain from tax services and so on.

Accounting is as stressful as we make it out to be. Watch the complete conversation to know all about striking a work-life balance and doing what you love to do in accounting:

📚 What We’re Reading

Are you missing the fundamental point of what value is? Is that one of the most critical reasons why you are not being able to become a “trusted advisor” for your clients?

You are not alone!

Value is complicated. It is not fixed. It is not a number in a spreadsheet or a feature in your service offering. Since there are many factors, such as clients’ business needs, emotions, priorities, fears, and context, it makes value pricing subjective.

Wondering why clients won’t pay for your advisory services? You might find some answers here.

This Article Has Us Hooked

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

Do you have clients that you dread speaking to? Do you always end up doing more than what you charge these clients for?

The problem of leaving problems like these unaddressed is that this feeling can do a lot of harm:

• Drain your team’s energy, time, and morale

• Disrupt your systems and workflows

• Delay work for the good clients

• Damage profitability and reputation

If you are struggling to tackle difficult clients in your firm,

This Article is for You!

💰 Free Growth Resource

Are you looking for Senior Account Managers to manage your clients and ensure seamless processes?

Right from the onboarding, your clients need you to support them in their journey. If you are a growing firm, having a dedicated resource to attend to client queries and demands can go a long way in ensuring a successful partnership.

If you are looking for a Senior Account Manager, here is a job description template to help you get started.

Download Now

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Team Leaders, Sweeti Mane.

• With over 5 years of experience in US Accounting and an MBA in Finance, Sweeti has a deep understanding of the industry’s nuances.

• Her expertise lies in Bookkeeping, reconciliations, and financial reporting.

• She is proficient in QuickBooks Online and Desktop, ensuring accuracy and efficiency.
  

😄 Funsmart Corner

Now, this issue cannot truly come to an end unless we add a little dose of fun to your inbox.

See you next time!

“Pricing is a mindset challenge for people. Most people aren’t charging enough. You either see value in what I offer for you, but I always tell people I am the most expensive accountant you will ever hire.” Dawn Brolin, the Designated Motivator and one of the most influential accounting leaders, said in a conversation with Maanoj Shah at the Smart Outsourcing Talks podcast.

Watch the complete conversation here:

Pricing is something that accounting firm owners have always struggled with. One of their worst fears is that if they increase the price, they would lose clients. But Dawn brings in a fresh perspective here. She talks about a client, a real-life example, where they had raised their prices from $800 to $1800 when they were certain about the value they were getting in return.

It is not easy to have the discussion. But what is important for accounting firm owners is to know their worth. It is important to know exactly how much value addition they are doing for the clients. It is not easy, but it is worth the effort. Being upfront about it, Dawn says, not only establishes trust but also reaffirms the firm’s ability to be the right partner.

“You know demand is only going to go up. There are fewer practitioners, and that’s going to continue,” says Dawn.

The talent shortage in the accounting industry is real. Businesses are struggling to find talented accountants who can not just get their books done, but also be a part of their scaling journey.

If you are struggling to find the right resources for your accounting firm, offshoring might be the answer to your capacity challenges.

📚 What We’re Reading

Quality management is an essential part of accounting - it is important for ensuring compliance with professional standards and delivering high-quality services by identifying risks and improving processes. The new standards they follow are AICPA’s SQMS 1 and 2, which is a risk-based approach that requires continuous monitoring and improvement of the firm’s quality systems.

Firms that conduct audits, reviews, or compilations have a little more than four months to implement the new risk-based quality management standards. If you need to set up your QMS by December 15th, this 8-step guide will help.

Read the Article to Know More

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

Offshoring, for many accounting firm owners, continues to be a gray zone. From data security to who exactly is working across the geography remains a major concern.

Covering many miles, taking a solo trip to India, and meeting the offshore team, Patricia Hendrix, VP of Communities at Woodard, talks about how she was able to overcome a lot of her inhibitions simply by meeting the team in person.

We understand, this is not possible for many firm owners based in different parts of the world. That is exactly why, at Finsmart Accounting, clients get to work directly with the team members who work on their account.

Read this exclusive blog where Patricia addressed many of the apprehensions that accounting firm owners have.

💰 Free Growth Resource

Are you expanding your in-house accounting team and looking for a Director of Accounting?

From driving financial strategy to overseeing compliance, managing high-level accounting functions and being the leader your team needs - there are a lot of requirements that you might need to lay out.

Finding the right candidate, especially at a senior level, can be challenging. There is an acute dearth of accountants at the leadership level. So, when you get started, you cannot go wrong with the job description.

Download the Customizable Director of Accounting Job Description Template Here

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Team Leaders, Devender Singh.

• With over 12 years of experience and an MBA degree, his expertise lies in Bookkeeping, financial reporting, and cash flow management.

• His understanding across several accounting functions ensures that he helps businesses operate with clarity and precision.

• His expertise in accounting and financial tools, as well as workflow automation tools, allows making processes smoother and more efficient for his clients.

• He leads with a structured and data-driven approach that empowers businesses, giving them seamless accounting solutions.
  

😄 Funsmart Corner

Now, this issue cannot truly come to an end unless we add a little dose of fun to your inbox.

See you next time!

Building a Remote Global Team? Get Important Insights from Someone Who’s Done it All!

Accounting firm owners, especially the first-time business owners, often are in a constant chase to build the “perfect teams”. When building a strong business, it is not about building a “perfect” team. They will reciprocate the energy exactly as they receive from you. To understand if you are on the same page, it is important to build processes that allow both employers and employees to understand each other.

The success of a business depends on how well leaders understand their teammates and vice-versa. It is not just the good things that they should be able to talk about. It is also the downs, and the concerning things that need to be addressed.

“It’s an informal conversation, where each manager has one of their staff members, and they say ‘hey, this is what you are great at, and this is not what you are doing great at.’ But also, I want to know as a manager, what am I good at, what am I not good at, where can I improve, or what are the challenges right now, is there anything that’s causing friction for you or upsetting you, that we need to improve on.” Says Shahram Zarshenas, CEO of Financial Cents, when he sat down with Maanoj Shah, talking about Cultivating a productive remote work environment.

If you are building a remote team and facing challenges in choosing the right tools and platforms and creating the right culture that aligns, watch the full episode here:

📚 What We’re Reading

Billy Long, the IRS Commissioner, had said that the tax filing season will open mid-February. However, the IRS said on Tuesday that an official start date has not been set yet.

Even if the official dates are not out yet, if you are a tax practitioner or tax preparer, the ideal course of action is to stay prepared for the upcoming tax season. This will not only help you reduce stress but also make sure that you are prepared for unfavorable circumstances.

Know more about what’s going on with the dates for the new filing season.

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

As accounting firm owners, like you, begin to plan for the next tax season, where do you stand? Do you want it to be smoother and less stressful than the previous year?

Well, if you haven’t planned it out yet, you must! It shouldn’t be about anxiety, long hours, and burnout.

But how do you do that? With offshoring!

Reduce your seasonal load as you prepare for the tax season

💰 Free Growth Resource

One of the key areas why many businesses fail is cash flow - or the inconsistency in it. To make sure the processes are streamlined and seamless, what you need is an Accounts Receivable Specialist. With the piled-up unpaid invoices, collections become messy. This not only helps hampers streamlined collections, but also tackles jeopardizing relationships and cash flow issues that slow down business growth.

The journey of hiring the right Accounts Receivable Specialist starts with a customizable job description template.

Download the AR Specialist JD template now

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Team Leaders, Pinal Patel.

• With 4.5 years of experience in US Accounting and a degree in Bachelor of Commerce, she has meticulous attention to detail.

• She tackles all the operational challenges with a problem-solving approach.

• Her expertise lies in cleanup, where she ensures that the financial records are always accurate and tax-ready.

• Pinal is proficient in a wide range of tools and software, including QBO, Xero, Bill.com, Keeper, and Microsoft Dynamics 365

• With her proactive approach and strong client communication skills, she is committed to providing strategic support that helps in business success.

😄 Funsmart Corner

Now, this issue cannot truly come to an end unless we add a little dose of fun to your inbox.

📅 What’s Coming Up

Live Webinar

Topic: From Burnout to Bandwidth - Smart Ways to Build Capacity in Your Firm
Date: 19th August
Time: 1 PM ET

Topics we’ll cover:

• What’s causing today’s talent shortage in accounting?

• How are firms handling client work when capacity runs out?

• What are the early signs of burnout every leader should watch for?

• What unconventional tactics are helping firms increase bandwidth?

• How do you maintain high client standards while scaling your team?

Speakers:

• Maanoj Shah, Offshoring expert, Co-Founder of Finsmart

• Patricia Hendrix, VP, Woodard

• Kelly Porter, Director at Arrow Bookkeeping

• Isaac Perdomo, Founder of Opzer and an automation specialist

  Register Now

See you next time!

When it comes to hiring talent, accounting firm owners are often torn between whether they should keep it in-house or offshore. What they are worried about is the quality of the talent. This is one of the aspects that Patricia Hendrix, VP of Communities at Woodard, spoke about in the first episode of the Smart Outsourcing Talks Podcast.

“You have a requirement that is much higher than an average bookkeeper in the US. Most of your people are equivalent to a CPA. They have a Masters in Accounting. Many of the bookkeepers I work with in the US are self-taught. They are not necessarily trained as accountants,” she said.

Many accounting firms that have never offshored often have this apprehension. But the truth is, when you offshore, you get access to global talent at a much lower price than in the US.

Patricia spoke about several other apprehensions, like data security, that she had before she offshored, as well as factors that other accounting firm owners are worried about.

The first episode of Smart Outsourcing Talks with Patricia Hendrix is live now. Watch the complete conversation here:

📚 What We’re Reading

Threats of Cybersecurity in the Age of Digitalization

Digitalization and the advancement of AI have done so much good for the accounting industry. These new-age tools and tech have not only helped automate tasks and increase the speed and productivity, but have also eased the lives of the accountants.

Despite all the good things, the cybersecurity threats continue to persist. Many times, small firm owners end up thinking, “This won’t happen to me” until it does. Once an attack has happened, it feels like doomsday.

On this note, Accounting Today talks about protecting your firm from cybersecurity exposures, and we have been gripped.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

Smart Outsourcing Talks Podcast is live now!

Smart Outsourcing Talks Podcast, a Finsmart presentation, is now live. This podcast is not just another talk show, but an in-depth conversation about what is trending in the industry, what the challenges are, and how leaders and influencers are overcoming them.

We have had the opportunity to sit down with some of the imminent leaders of the industry, like Randy Crabtree, Terrell Turner, Dawn Brolin, Scotty Scarano, Shahram Zarshenas, Veronica Wasek, Loren Fogelman, Patricia Hendrix, and Kenji Kuramoto, and we have many others lined up.

Our first episode with Patricia is live now, and we are releasing one episode every week on Thursdays. Join the conversation and be the change.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel and get notified when new episodes are out.

💰 Free Growth Resource

Free Job Description Template

If you are looking to bridge the gap between the firm and the clients, you might be looking for a Senior Account Manager. These individuals are responsible for understanding the challenges that clients face and helping solve them promptly.

To find the right candidates, the first step is to design a job description that resonates with them and helps them assess if the role is the right fit for them.

DOWNLOAD THE CUSTOMIZABLE JOB DESCRIPTION TEMPLATE

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Team Leaders, Nitin Gupta.

• He has 5 years of experience in US Accounting and an MBA degree

• His expertise lies in bookkeeping, financial reporting, month-end closings, and reconciliation

• He helps deliver financial insights to optimize accurate decision-making

• He is also proficient in QuickBooks, Xero, Teams, and Keeper

• He has a deep understanding of accounting workflows, which enables him to streamline processes and improve financial visibility for clients

😄 Funsmart Corner

📅 What’s Coming Up

Burnout, lack of work-life balance, and building frustration - all leading to poor mental health - are common phenomena in the accounting industry. But when it comes to smart scaling, can we beat the burnout?

We are hosting a live webinar where Maanoj Shah, an Offshoring expert, Co-Founder of Finsmart and the host of the session will be joined by Patricia Hendrix, VP, Woodard, Kelly Porter, Director at Arrow Bookkeeping, Isaac Perdomo, Founder of Opzer and an automation specialist, where they will talk about “From Burnout to Bandwidth - Smart Ways to Build Capacity in Your Firm”.

Date: 19th August
Time: 1 PM ET
Register Now

What will you learn?

• Discover real-world strategies to ease team overwhelm

• Hear from firms who’ve successfully scaled capacity—without sacrificing quality

• Learn how to spot (and stop) burnout before it spreads

• See how tech, offshoring, and smarter systems fit into the picture

• Walk away with actionable tips, not sales pitches

Who Should Attend?

Accounting firm owners | Managing partners | Operations leaders | Practice managers | Anyone looking to scale sustainable

REGISTER NOW

See you next time!

Creating an Inclusive Culture In Cross-Border Teams

“Those memories of spending time in the country with our teams will be something I cherish forever. It is very very fulfilling when someone you have spent years working with, maybe through a screen and you finally get a chance to meet with them, have a meal with them, share a beer with them, sing karaoke with them, it’s a really really powerful impact,” says Kenji Kuramoto, Founder of Acuity, in the 2nd episode of the Smart Outsourcing Talks podcast.

When Kenji sat down with Maanoj Shah, an offshoring expert and Co-Founder of Finsmart Accounting, he emphasized breaking the boundaries, especially in cross-border teams. Whether you do this in person or through screens, such rituals allow leaders to build stronger teams, take more ownership, and, most importantly, be aligned with the goals.

At Finsmart Accounting, that is the kind of rapport that we have built with our clients over the years. We are not just a third-party service provider; we are deeply integrated and embedded into their values, beliefs, and systems.

📚 What We’re Reading

Why Accounting Firms Are Focused on Using AI Agents

AI Agents, across industries, have become the centre of attention. The accounting industry is no exception. AI Agents are not just another automation in progress; they are way more than that. These agents are already streamlining practice management in forward-thinking firms.

While this latest piece focuses on the accounting industry in Australia, the growth, acceptance, and adoption of AI agents in accounting is reaching beyond a certain geography.

We are hooked here!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

Accelerate Growth. Be Finsmart.

At Finsmart Accounting, we are committed to making offshoring accounting simpler and more convenient. As we move ahead in our growth journey, we believe our brand should reflect strongly who we are, what “Be Finsmart” means for our teams, clients, and partners.

We are thrilled to present to you a fresh look at our brand new website, which represents us just the way we are, but in a better way.

We would love to hear what you think about our new look.

Check out our new website.

💰 Free Growth Resource

Looking for the Right Accounts Receivable Specialist?

Finding the right candidate is not just about technical skills, cultural fitness, ability to take ownership, etc, plays a huge role!

The search for the right candidate begins with a customizable, easy-to-adapt, sharp job description template.

If you are looking for someone to handle your Accounts Receivables, here is a downloadable template that will help you get started.

DOWNLOAD NOW

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

We present to you one of our Team Leaders, Manjiri Bhole.

• With 10 years of experience in US Accounting and an MBA Degree in Finance, Manjiri is a results-driven leader.

• Her keen eye for detail and strategic mindset have helped derive successful process transitions, stabilize operations, and introduce automation for workflows.

• Her expertise lies in global accounting, month-end processing, reporting, and quality control. She also has a strong command of Accounts Payable (AP) and Accounts Receivable (AR).

• She is also highly skilled in advanced Excel and presentation techniques, making complex financial insights understandable for clients.

• As a leader, she manages each engagement with precision and efficiency.

😄 Funsmart Corner

Now this issue cannot truly come to an end unless we pour just a little dose of fun into your inbox.

📅 What’s Coming Up

Finsmart Accounting will be attending upcoming accounting conferences to discuss accounting, offshoring, and more. We hope to see you there!

Bridging the Gap

• Date: 22-24 July

• Location: Denver

• Meet Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder and Director of Finsmart Accounting, and an offshoring expert.
  

See you next time!

Looking for Skilled Talent with the Right Expertise? Offshoring is Your Answer!

“Offshoring teams have internal requirements much higher than the average bookkeeper requirement in the US. Most of the teams are equivalent to a CPA; they have a Master's in Accounting. A lot of bookkeepers that I work with are self-taught; they are not necessarily trained as accountants,” says Patricia Hendrix, Head of Coaching at Woodard, in a podcast with Finsmart Accounting.

Here’s a common thing that accounting firms often don’t understand about offshoring - it is not just a means to reduce costs. The amount of global expertise they get access to when they offshore with the right partner is immense. Offshoring partners such as Finsmart Accounting often have more stringent requirements; they avoid hiring absolute freshers, and there is a methodological training system in place.

This helps accounting firms reduce time to hire and train resources, and these resources are ready to be deployed in just a few weeks.

The global accounting outsourcing market is expected to reach USD 56.42 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 8.9% between 2023 and 2027. This number is indicative of the impact that offshoring is making. This also indicates that more and more accounting firms now look beyond their apprehensions and pre-conceived notions and utilize offshoring to its maximum potential.



📚 What We’re Reading

Check out the brand-new innovations that QuickBooks is bringing!

As accountants, QuickBooks is often one of the most commonly used software. Your go-to tool is becoming better now. Your expertise will now get virtual help, allowing you to make more time for your clients, simplifying the daily tasks, and enabling you to provide more accurate and timely advice.

These powerful AI agents, integrated in QuickBooks, are here to make your lives easier.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

Leaping offshoring can be challenging. Especially if you are thinking about it for the first time. One of the most common challenges that accounting firms often face is not knowing when to switch from an internal team alone to an offshore team. But you are not alone! It happens to the best of us.

If growth and scaling up are in your plan for 2025, it might be time to get the additional hands, access to global expertise, and the convenience to switch up and down swiftly.

Our latest piece explores when it is the right time to choose offshore bookkeeping.

💰 Free Growth Resource

Are you struggling to find the right candidate to streamline your cash flow? Do you constantly face challenges in following up for payments all by yourself? All you need is the right Accounts Payable Specialist. And the search begins with the right job description.

DOWNLOAD OUR CUSTOMIZABLE JOB DESCRIPTION TEMPLATE

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with the accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this fourth issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Team Leaders, Shalvi Bobade.

• An accomplished finance professional with an MBA in Finance and 2 years of experience in Global Accounting.

• Her areas of expertise include audit, daily and monthly accounting, AR & AP processes, tax assistance, and financial planning and analysis (FP&A).

• She is proficient in Exact, Xero, Zoho, Vantage Point, Lucanet, Basecone, and Tally.

• She excels in streamlining processes and enhancing financial efficiency for businesses.

• As a leader, she ensures that each engagement is handled with meticulous attention to detail.
  

😄 Funsmart Corner

Now this issue cannot truly come to an end unless we pour just a little dose of fun in your inbox.

📅 What’s Coming Up

Finsmart Accounting will be attending upcoming accounting conferences to discuss accounting, offshoring, and more. We hope to see you there!

1. Name of the event: Bridging the Gap
   Date: 22-24 July
   Location: Denver
   Event Highlights:
   
   - Meet Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder and Director of Finsmart Accounting, and an offshoring expert.
   - Engage in conversations about accounting, offshoring, and more.

See you next time!

Overwhelmed Accountants and the Blessing of New-Age Tools & Technology

“One of the biggest challenges across the board was visibility. They didn’t know who was working on what, what the status of the work was, or whether they were meeting the deadlines. They wouldn’t figure out until the client called them and was like, ‘Hey, you didn’t get my work done.’ That was a challenge so painful for them because they would probably lose the client, they were embarrassed, and they were stretching out at night. We saw what a big problem that was and that gravitated us towards practice management,” says Shahram Zarshehnas, CEO of Financial Cents, in a recent podcast with Finsmart Accounting.

The best thing about tech is that accounting firm owners can use it for their specific use case - automating processes, resource scarcity, keeping up with the evolving needs of customers, and much more.

While technology and Artificial Intelligence continue to gain a massive power over the accounting industry, it is interesting that 60% of respondents in an online survey said that they have somewhat disconnected software systems, inconsistent processes, and an absence of standardized workflows.

Tech and tools have become the need of the hour if you want to stay ahead in this extremely competitive industry. However, in case you are struggling with the adoption of the tools or lack the means to include them in your systems, the right offshoring partner can help.

Watch the full podcast here.

📚 What We’re Reading

How AI Can Help Solve Talent Shortage?

AI is no longer the “new” thing. It has become a household name, and the accounting industry is no exception.

This article reveals that automating tasks like bookkeeping and data entry, review and audits, tax preparation and research, analytics and forecasting, accounting professionals, and leaders can not only save time, focus more time and energy on revenue-generating activities, but also address the pressure on talent, which is one of the key reasons of professionals quitting the industry altogether.

To know in detail, the correlation between AI and talent shortage, keep reading.

Read the full article here.

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

The talent shortage in the accounting industry is real. Yet, leaders and hiring managers tend to keep undermining the importance of an appealing job description, the ones that stand out.

Why do you need a great job description?

1. To find not just technically fit team mates but culturally fit as well

2. To streamline hiring and onboarding

3. Reduce burnout through defined roles and responsibilities

Our latest piece explores how the right Job Description template can help address it all.

💰 Free Growth Resource

We complain about an overwhelming tax season, but one of the key reasons continues to be the lack of preparation. From missing documents to severe discrepancies, followed by clients chasing down late at night - this is the truth of tax professionals.

Even when we know we will need an additional pair of hands, especially during the busy season, we don’t look for the right professionals unless we are drowning.

It is better to build a talent pool well in advance, rather than not being able to find the right candidate during the tax season. Start looking for the right fit today!

DOWNLOAD OUR CUSTOMIZABLE TAX ACCOUNTANT JOB DESCRIPTION HERE.

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with the accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this third issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Team Leaders, Abhijeet Tyagi.

• A results-driven professional with an ACCA qualification

• 4 years of experience in US Accounting

• His expertise lies in financial reporting, reconciliations, transaction categorization, month-end and year-end closings, and process optimization, with a focus on accuracy and efficiency in every client management

• He is proficient in QuickBooks Online (QBO), NetSuite, Xero, Sage, Bill.com, Financial Cents, Canopy, and Microsoft Excel

• As a Deputy Team Leader, he focuses on precision and compliance

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much,” - Hellen Keller.

😄 Funsmart Corner

Now this issue cannot truly come to an end unless we pour just a little dose of fun in your inbox.

📅 What’s Coming Up

Finsmart Accounting will be attending upcoming accounting conferences to discuss accounting, offshoring, and more. We hope to see you there!

1. Scaling New Heights
   Date: 22-25 June
   Location: Orlando
   Event Highlights:
   
   - Meet our team at Booth 75
   - Join Maanoj Shah and Veronica Wasek at the main stage session on 24th June June 24, 2025, from 9-10:40 am ET on “From ‘Did We’ to ‘We Did It’, Making Offshoring a Scalable Reality”
   - Check your offshore readiness in a workshop with Maanoj Shah, Rebecca Brocard Santiago, and Jane Watkins on June 25, 2025, at 8 am ET
   

See you next time!

Hire Directly or Use a Partner Firm - What is the best Offshoring model for you?

“When we’ve had to bring on additional projects, Finsmart assigned additional staff to help us during that process,” said Elizabeth Bergen, an accounting firm owner and a user of Finsmart’s embedded offshoring model.

While many clients prefer to hire their team of offshore professionals, others just want to ensure the work gets done while they focus on growth. Such firm owners leave the rest to the partner firm. One of the interesting benefits of the Embedded offshoring model is that you get ready-to-deploy resources - you do not end up spending time looking for the “perfect” candidate or in training.

When your offshore team is all set within a week, you are ready to leap into advisory, strategy, and more.

In the 2024 State of Tax Professional Report, 45% of mid-size firms said that their firms are currently offering business consulting, and 23% more are considering it. More than half of the small firms, or 52% of respondents, said that their firms either already provide the services or are considering it.

Before deciding on whether you need to hire directly or use a partner firm, consider some of the common factors like budget and cost effectiveness, time investment and scalability, risk and compliance concerns, and quality control and training.

Read this article from Finsmart Accounting to know more about what’s best for you.

📚 What We’re Reading

Real-life Ways Accountants are Using AI

AI is the talk of the town! Like almost every other industry, even the accounting industry has been overwhelmed by the use of AI. While AI has become important to keep up with the competition and to stay relevant, accountants sometimes are not quite sure of where to integrate AI into their daily lives. Some of the common real-life uses of AI include:

• Snap Mail Automation

• Technical accounting memos

• Marketing the business

• Data analysis with AI-assisted code

• Brainstorming and research

• Audit automation and assistance

To know, in detail, about how AI is helping accountants transform the way they look at their business, read this piece in the Journal of Accountancy that caught our attention.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

One of the most common reasons that accounting firms hire offshore partners is to save costs. Although that is not the only reason, it is a major one. While you can save costs with offshoring, how much does it cost to hire an offshore partner?

Before you get into the actual costing, it is important to understand what the factors are that guide the pricing of the outsourcing services. Understanding what the different pricing options are and how they impact your business can go a long way in ensuring that you know what you are signing up for, the costs that are included, and so on.

Our latest article delves deep into the cost of outsourcing different finance and accounting services to help accounting firms negotiate better rates and plan their resources efficiently.

💰 Free Growth Resource

Operational efficiency survives on a steady workflow. Bookkeeping and accounting standard workflow templates offer a structured approach to manage a plethora of tasks and processes. They act as the foundation for routine operations, ensuring every task is executed with precision and uniformity, regardless of who’s in your team.

Need a workflow template?

DOWNLOAD THE FREE WORKFLOW TEMPLATE TODAY

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with the accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this second issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you Sharvari Gandhi, US Tax VP.

• A seasoned tax and accounting expert with 17 years of experience in US taxation and compliance.

• She is a CPA and MS in Accounting, and brings extensive expertise in corporate and individual tax preparation, sales and payroll tax, state and local compliance, company formations, 501(c)(3) compliance, and 401(k) audits.

• She has proficiency in ProConnect, ProSeries, Lacerte, UltraTax, QBD, QBO, Xero, Oracle NetSuite, Sage Intacct, and FP&A tools like Workday Adaptive and Planner CS

• Sharvari also has hands-on experience with Avalara, Bill.com, Concur, Expensify, and Salesforce, ensuring seamless tax planning and compliance management for clients.

• As the VP, she plays a pivotal role in guiding businesses through intricate tax landscapes while optimizing compliance and financial strategies.

• Under her leadership, you can expect strategic tax planning, proactive compliance support, and expert guidance tailored to your business needs.

“The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have someone on your side,” Margaret Carty.

😄 Funsmart Corner

Now this issue cannot truly come to an end unless we pour just a little dose of fun in your inbox.

📅 What’s Coming Up

Finsmart Accounting will be attending upcoming accounting conferences to discuss accounting, offshoring, and more. We hope to see you there!

1. AICPA Engage
   Date: 9-12 June
   Location: Las Vegas
   Event Highlights:
   
   - We are a Classic Sponsor of the 3^rd Annual AICPA Foundation Golf
   - Meet Maanoj Shah, Co-Founder and Director of Finsmart Accounting, and an offshoring expert, and Sharvari Gandhi, US Tax VP, at the event
   - Engage in conversations about accounting, offshoring, and more.
   

2. Scaling New Heights
   Date: 22-25 June
   Location: Orlando
   Event Highlights:
   
   - Meet our team at Booth No. 75
   - Join Maanoj Shah and Veronica Wasek at the main stage session on 24th June June 24, 2025, from 9-10:40 am ET on “From ‘Did We’ to ‘We Did It’, Making Offshoring a Scalable Reality”
   - Check your offshore readiness in a workshop with Maanoj Shah, Rebecca Brocard Santiago, and Jane Watkins on June 25, 2025, at 8 am ET

See you next time!

Hire Clients to Make Money or Bleed Money to Get a Team?

“In small businesses, especially, it is difficult to hire people and lose them - they have family and obligations. Once I hired someone from my church, I had to let them go, and then I had to see the family every Sunday. It was hard”, recalls Veronica Wasek, Founder of Mavency, and 5MB, and a key influencer in the accounting community, in an episode of Smart Outsourcing Talks podcast.

This is not just Veronica’s reality, it is common to many small firm owners who are still struggling to choose between hiring a team and bleeding money to get work client work done or hiring clients, doing it all on their own to make money.

Offshoring, here, emerges as a viable solution. “I have a great business, I have processes in place, but what happens when key teammates leave?” The talent crisis continues to be a setback for firms, as the accounting talent shortage in the US is ripe. That is why so many firm owners like Veronica turned to offshoring to meet these needs.

Since 2019, over 300,000 accountants have left the profession. With baby boomers retiring, a new generation of accountants is less inclined to join the profession. Besides that, with the disruption by AI, new-age technology, and innovation, finding skilled accountants is harder than ever.

The right offshoring partner will have just what you need, in terms of people, processes, and platform, ensuring growth and scalability.

📚What We Are Reading

Why Have Over 300,000 CPAs Left the Profession in the US?

Culled from the Accountant Journal

The talent shortage problem has continued to worsen over the past few years. There are about 3,40,000 fewer accountants than it was five years ago. The talent pipeline is continuing to dry up. Some of the key reasons include:

• Accounting is perceived as a boring profession

• The field has lower starting salaries as compared to finance or tech

• The rising cost of the extra year of training to acquire the 150 credit hours

As the talent shortage continues to worsen, it becomes inevitable for accounting firms to figure out a way to find a solution that works. A strategy that helps find skilled talent from different parts of the world, while reducing costs, instead of increasing overhead and more.

To find out how offshoring is helping accounting firms pivot, delve deeper with us in this piece that has caught our attention lately:

Read the full article

🔦 Finsmart Spotlight

Top Countries for Finance and Accounting Outsourcing: India vs. The Philippines

In the context of accounting offshoring, there is always a common debate. “Which country is better- India or the Philippines”?

People are still measuring the pros and cons, instead of sending out the work to just anyone. Because offshoring is not just about getting a third-party service provider. It is a partnership, preferably a long-term one, and hence, accounting firm owners want a culturally-compatible country; they look for a team that can resonate with them, understand their goals and vision, and ultimately, help them grow.

Read this latest piece by Finsmart Accounting, where we compare the pros and cons of partnering with any of these two countries

💰Free Growth Resource

Is hiring a team in-house more cost-effective, or is it better to outsource?

Mulling over the question for a long time? We have got you covered! Download this free Outsourcing ROI Playbook that helps you gain insights into exactly how much you would be saving with offshoring:

🧑‍💼 Meet Your Future Team

At Finsmart Accounting, our teams work directly with the accounting firms (clients) from Day 1. We hire experienced professionals who are fully capable of tackling crises and are always prepared to put their best foot forward to solve their clients’ problems.

In this first issue of The Outsource Insider, we present to you one of our Team Leaders, Sangeetha S.

• A seasoned accounting professional with 13+ years of experience

• She has a degree in MBA and M.Com

• Her expertise spans General Ledger Maintenance, Accounts Receivable & Accounts Payable, Financial Review & Reporting Reconciliation, Sales Tax, Preparation and Post of Year-End Journal Entries, Payroll Management (Live & After-the-Fact), Intercompany Loan Reconciliation, Depreciation & Inventory Handling, Revenue Recognition & Deferred Revenue Review.

• She has experience ranging from all major accounting tasks and tools, including QBO & QBD, Xero, Wave, Sage, Zoho, Quicken, Freshbooks, Netsuite, and MYOB.

• At Finsmart, she manages a diverse portfolio of clients and a team of 15 accountants, reviewers, and bookkeepers

• She is a process-oriented individual who has been training her team to be excellent at what they do.

• In her leisure time, she travels, cooks, and surfs the internet.

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs

😄 Funsmart Corner

Now this issue cannot truly come to an end unless we pour just a little dose of fun in your inbox.

📅 What’s Coming Up

The accounting conference season is officially here! Here are the events that we will be attending in May:

AICPA Engage

June 9-12 at Las Vegas, NV.

Scaling New Heights

June 22-25 in Orlando, FL.

See you next time!