Make in-house and outsourced accounting work together

Shared accounting works best when a handoff has a recognizable finished state. An internal employee might prepare a billing file, an external team might post and reconcile it, and a controller might review the result. Problems arise when the agreement merely says both teams support accounts receivable.

Describe each task as an input, an action, and an output. The person receiving the work should know what has been completed and what they are expected to do next. This is more useful than a broad division between strategic work and day-to-day work, because important judgments can appear inside either category.

CPA.com's CAS glossary includes responsibility mapping as a practice tool. For a shared engagement, take that idea down to the recurring tasks. A department-level chart will not reveal that both teams assume the other has reconciled a clearing account.

Choose one complete process and follow it from the business event to the reviewed report. Ask who owns the source, who prepares the entry, who checks completeness, and who resolves differences. Include work performed by another system or service, since an automated transfer can still require review.

The following illustrative map is deliberately specific. It does not prescribe how every company should allocate these activities. Its purpose is to expose the point at which one party hands a usable result to another.

Set acceptance criteria for each boundary. A file may need the correct entity, a complete period, an agreed format, and approval from the source owner. A reconciliation may need a tie-out, an explanation of differences, and a named owner for anything unresolved. Avoid accepting a task solely because a document exists.

A receiver who finds a problem should return a precise exception. State which criterion failed, what evidence is missing, and what can proceed meanwhile. Sending the entire task back with incomplete as the only explanation forces another investigation and encourages both teams to defend their boundary.

For an illustrative failure, internal staff send a revenue file after adding a final invoice, but the provider imports an earlier version. The fix is a controlled approved version and an import tie-out. Another reminder to communicate better does not address the cause.

Outsourcing a task should not make a necessary approval disappear. GAO's Green Book discusses oversight of service organizations and retained management responsibility within its federal framework. A private company can use that distinction when designing its own arrangement: identify what the provider does and what the company must still do.

Pay particular attention to combinations of access and authority. Someone who can create a supplier, change payment details, and release funds may have broader control than either team's task list suggests. Review the combined process rather than assessing each organization's permissions in isolation.

Where staffing is limited, discuss practical alternative checks with the responsible finance professional. Do not describe an informal second look as equivalent to an independently performed control. Record the check that will actually happen and the evidence it produces.

Two capable teams can still create duplicate entries if they both act on the same request. Specify who posts each class of adjustment, how proposed entries are approved, and how posting references return to the other team. A shared tracker should distinguish proposed, approved, posted, and reviewed work.

Apply the same discipline to previously closed periods. An internal employee correcting a transaction should know when the provider must be told, which reports need refreshing, and whether an established approval is required. Do not let one team discover a historical change only when a later reconciliation stops tying.

Keep a named owner for unresolved differences between the teams. The owner may seek input from both parties, but should have responsibility for assembling the facts and obtaining a decision. Joint ownership without a next action tends to preserve the disagreement.

Walk one representative task through the full route. Include a missing input or rejected item, because a process that only works when everything is perfect has not been tested meaningfully. Observe whether the receiving person can locate evidence and whether the exception returns to someone with authority.

After the first complete period, inspect a small selection of finished outputs and unresolved items. Look for duplicate work, silent assumptions, and review that happened too late. Update the task map where the real workflow differed from the plan.

The aim is a shared service that can explain its work from source to report. Add capacity or specialist support where the map exposes a genuine gap, and remove repeated checks only after confirming which control purpose they serve.