Outsource your bookkeeping or payroll administration?

What does administration and HR administration cover?

By administration, most people mean two things: the financial administration and the HR administration. Both mix specialist work with gathering work.

• Financial: processing purchase invoices, sending sales invoices, reconciling bank transactions, expense claims and the month-end close.
• Tax: the VAT return, the annual accounts and the returns that go with them. That's specialist work for a bookkeeper or accountant.
• HR: contracts, starters and leavers, leave, sickness absence and employees' questions about policies.
• Payroll: gathering changes, running payroll, payroll taxes and the payroll tax return.

The specialist work is mostly on the tax side and in payroll. The gathering work is everywhere: chasing documents, retyping data and checking whether everything is complete.

Outsourcing, hiring or an AI employee: what's the difference?

When you outsource, an accounting firm, bookkeeper or payroll bureau does the work for you. When you hire, someone sits in your own team. An AI employee does the gathering and checking work in your own package, such as Exact, AFAS or Twinfield, and passes exceptions to a person.

• Expertise

  Outsourcing

  Sits with the firm: tax, payroll, annual accounts

  Hiring someone

  Depends on who you find

  AI employee

  No tax or legal judgement; works with rules you set

• Getting started

  Outsourcing

  The firm has to learn your organisation

  Hiring someone

  Someone has to learn your packages and agreements

  AI employee

  Set up on your package and your rules, alongside your team at first

• Availability

  Outsourcing

  As agreed, often per period

  Hiring someone

  Working hours, holidays and sick days

  AI employee

  Keeps working outside office hours, within the limits you agree

• Supplying documents

  Outsourcing

  You supply them, on time and complete

  Hiring someone

  Your colleague collects them

  AI employee

  Chases missing documents and flags what's missing

• Visibility and control

  Outsourcing

  Through reports and periodic figures

  Hiring someone

  Direct

  AI employee

  You see what happened at each step; exceptions come to you

• What stays with a person

  Outsourcing

  You remain responsible for what you supply

  Hiring someone

  Everything

  AI employee

  Approval, judging the figures, tax advice and the collective agreement

When is hiring someone the best choice?

• Your administration is daily work closely tied to your organisation, such as project administration or purchasing.
• You need someone who answers colleagues' questions straight away.
• Your processes haven't been written down yet. You need someone to put them in order before you can automate or outsource.
• You're growing and want to build the expertise in-house.

When is outsourcing bookkeeping or payroll administration the best choice?

• You don't have the tax expertise in-house for VAT, annual accounts or tax returns. A bookkeeper or accountant does that better.
• Payroll needs knowledge of payroll taxes and your collective agreement, and you have too few employees to hire someone for it.
• You want an independent view of your figures.
• Your bookkeeping is small and straightforward. Outsourcing is then often the simplest option.

Outsourcing doesn't remove the gathering work. The firm still needs your invoices, receipts and payroll changes, on time and complete. That's exactly where an AI employee can help, even when the rest is outsourced.

What does an AI employee take over, and what not?

An AI employee does the work before the judgement: reading data, checking, preparing and asking for what's missing. For administration there are a few:

• The Invoice Checker reads purchase invoices, matches them to orders and flags discrepancies.
• The Expense Claims Processor checks receipts against your expense policy and only puts the exceptions forward.
• The Month-End Close Assistant tracks what's been supplied and prepares the standard checks.
• The HR Helpdesk answers questions about policies, with the source attached.
• The Sickness Absence Administrator tracks the deadlines around sick reports, without medical data.
• The Payroll Assistant gathers the month's payroll changes and prepares them in Loket, Nmbrs or AFAS.

To be clear about the Payroll Assistant: it processes payroll changes, it doesn't run your full payroll. Running payroll, the payroll tax return and advice on payroll taxes or the collective agreement stay with your payroll administrator or payroll bureau.

What does outsourcing your administration cost?

Accounting firms and payroll bureaus charge by the hour, by subscription or per payslip. What it costs you depends on your number of transactions, your number of employees and what you supply yourself. We don't quote an average: it says little about your administration.

Do work out what the gathering and checking work costs you now, within your own team. That part often remains, even when you outsource.

How do you start?

1. 1List every administrative task and mark it: specialist work or gathering work.
2. 2Outsource the specialist work you don't have in-house, or leave it with whoever does it well now.
3. 3For the gathering work, see which part goes the same way every month. That part is suitable for automation.
4. 4Check whether your packages can be connected. With Exact Online, AFAS, Twinfield, Loket and Nmbrs, they can.

Frequently asked questions