Accountancy offices’ errors - how to avoid them and eliminate problems

Accountancy offices are partners, who can relieve companies of their bookkeeping obligations.

Such cooperation involves undoubtedly a lot of advantages, but it can also generate all sorts of problems. Below we present how we work in MDDP Outsourcing to completely eliminate these problems.

Employees are not properly qualified.

In MDDP Outsourcing we care about our employees’ qualifications very much. This is not just an empty slogan – unlike many accountancy offices, our clients are companies expecting the highest quality, with international transactions, reporting to parent companies, listed on stock exchanges, audited, etc. Working with such clients makes us employ Statutory Auditors, ACCA members and persons with many years of experience in accounting. In addition, in our team we have focused on specialization, which results in having high class specialists in selected fields. This is basically impossible in case of companies, where each employee is responsible for a wide range of accounting affairs.

All a client asks for is prepared by an accountancy office – which takes time and costs.

In our practice, wherever possible, we focus on self-service solutions. Thanks to them, a client can perform many activities on its own, immediately and free-of-charge. Examples: online approval of documents, online preparation of reports, holiday applications and many more. For clients who prefer to receive finished products we can of course offer such solutions.

Any task takes more time than a client expects.

In MDDP Outsourcing we have departed from a model, in which each employee performs Client’s each order, as this is just the cause of inefficiency. Firstly, because dealing with all orders without specialization brings no proper efficiency. Secondly, because if someone today is working on a financial report and we order him/her making payments, he/she inevitably will not be able to do both things. We have divided the accounting service into independent specialized processes that are carried out by dedicated teams. Thanks to this work is performed more effectively, accurately, and various orders are processed in parallel. This breakdown of the processes does not, however, exclude cooperation with one contact person, as described in the following paragraphs.

No responses to emails, delayed responding.

In cooperation with our clients we apply a variety of systems and procedures – not only accounting, but also supporting communication ones. Therefore, each client receives a mailbox with access provided to the whole team dedicated to support it. Emails in the mailbox are processed in a special way, prioritized and sorted to catalogues and impossible to delete. This makes us respond to all emails in a timely manner.

No online access, no systems to manage tasks, correspondence, etc.

Long ago we have realized that the traditional service through an accountancy office makes sense only for a small-size entities, which can pack their documents to one envelope and pass it once a month and have no other expectations in the course of a month. For demanding Clients such solutions do not work. That’s why we build and develop tools that facilitate and speed up the work, such as the Electronic Document Circulation, Electronic Personal Folders, remote access to data, reports, as well as systems that are not visible to a Client (still improving his work), as dedicated mailboxes and communication management systems, systems for drawing up financial statements, etc.

Belief that a client must provide documents, data, signatures and ask about everything. The main cause of passivity rightly complained about by clients.

In MDDP Outsourcing we understand that this is not the way to build a long-term cooperation with organizations with high demands, developing, relying on technologies. Therefore, not only we can say that we try – we do a lot more. We have built solutions for Electronic Document Workflow, self-service solutions, we provide systems, documents and reports online, we take over the workflow of documentation and many, many more.

Many accountancy offices keep accounts for small entities. Their size does not result from a size of clients they support, but rather from a number of smaller companies.

In MDDP Outsourcing we do not focus on a low price and a number of clients. Of course, we want our solutions to be competitive, but our main goal is to provide high-quality services. This in a certain natural way selects clients, and those, who come to us, indeed expect the highest quality reports, timeliness, are listed on the stock exchange, hold a variety of companies, or for other reasons look for a provider ensuring a very high quality. That’s why we have experience primarily in the suppoting such entities.

A large part of accountancy offices’ clients are Polish companies operating only in Poland.

Among our clients there are, of course, Polish companies, with a completely Polish capital. However, most of our clients either has an international capital or performs operations abroad – selling their services or even purchasing goods. Therefore, we have extensive experience in handling such transactions.

Employees of typical accountancy offices usually do not speak fluent English.

Our clients work in an international environment, have foreign owners or are themselves owners of foreign companies selling their products abroad and purchasing abroad. That’s why we focus on communication in English and build teams to freely communicate with clients in that language.

Posting, which do not affect taxes (e.g., valuation of assets, reserves), are performed only once a year or, which is worse, are not performed at all.

In MDDP Outsourcing we know in practice the difference between the accounting and tax approaches, which sounds trivially, however, as experience shows, is not trivial. We record all transactions individually in the tax and accounting approaches, of course, as long as there are differences between the approaches.

Transferring paper documents, without the system support, increases the loss of documentation risk.

We scan the entire documentation, so even in case of a loss of an invoice we are able to re-create it on the basis of a scan. However, above all, we act preventively and encourage clients to send documentation to our address, and after receiving it directly from contractors, we immediately scan and store it. No one refers to paper documents anymore, unless it is required to do so by an external institution, e.g. the revenue office.

Depending on the issue, a day of the week or other unspecified variables – the client is forced to talk to different people.

We use a process approach described in the sections above, however, we understand how important it is for the client to have a contact person, who will have a view of the whole. Such a person in MDDP Outsourcing is the Team Leader, whom the client talks to and who within the framework of MDDP refers tasks to appropriate persons or departments.

In case of an employee’s leave or sickness the client must either wait or work with a person who does not have any information about the client’s activities.

We never work with the client on the basis of a one person team – a team always consists of 2 persons plus specialized departments (described at the beginning), and often even more. Thanks to that in case of a leave or sickness, the client’s affairs do not have to wait for return of the only right person, but are processed as usual.