Staying on top of everything finance-wise while also running and growing your business is a daunting task. One small miscalculation can come back and bite a sizable chunk of your financials, effectively throwing a wrench in your operations and causing losses.
An oversight or a poor financial decision could have long-term consequences, so it’s essential for your accounting department to be properly staffed. As businesses grow, small and medium businesses have the option to either grow their in-house accounting team or simply outsource the accounting work to a third-party accounting firm.
If you choose the latter route, this guide will provide you with tips for choosing the best NetSuite accounting firm so that you can dedicate more time and focus to running and growing your business without having to worry about whether all your finances are in order.
What Is NetSuite Accounting?
NetSuite is the world’s leading cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, that helps businesses manage their customer relations, operations, human resources, manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, finances, and much more.
The comprehensive nature of NetSuite as a software system allows businesses to consolidate all of the previously mentioned operations, including accounting, into a single, cloud-based platform. This helps businesses gain real-time insight into their operations, allowing managers and leaders to make data-driven business decisions and enhance the business’ effectiveness.
However, NetSuite is a robust software, and its comprehensiveness can be overwhelming to untrained personnel, regardless of how well they grasp the accounting principles. It’s essential for your accountants to have NetSuite knowledge that enables them to use the software suite effectively.
A NetSuite accounting company employs professional accountants with NetSuite expertise who can use the software suite to ensure that all the financial responsibilities of your business have been addressed. They can also provide you with performance and KPI analysis, allowing you to make data-driven decisions.
Key Considerations When Choosing a NetSuite Accounting Firm
There are some really important factors you need to consider before choosing a NetSuite accounting firm. You need to know specifically what you want, so consider the following:
Identify Your Accounting Needs
The first thing you need to do is to analyze and identify your accounting needs; not all businesses are the same, and NetSuite isn’t a universal solution. However, NetSuite is highly customizable, so by identifying your accounting needs, your accounting firm can customize NetSuite to better fit the needs of your business.
The Associated Costs
Understanding the costs associated with building an in-house NetSuite team vs outsourcing your accounting work is really important for budget planning. Building an in-house team implies hiring, onboarding, training, ongoing office supply costs, and software expenses which can significantly add to your overhead costs..
On the other hand, outsourcing your work and hiring a NetSuite accounting company might prove to be a more cost-effective solution, so it’s really important to consider both the needs of your business and the costs associated with in-house teams vs. outsourcing your finances.
How to Evaluate a NetSuite Accounting Firm
When choosing the best NetSuite accounting firm for your business, you want to be confident in their ability to adhere to the accounting best practices, stick to SLAs, work well with your in-house team, and understand your underlying business strategies.
However, there are key considerations that go beyond mere essentials, and the company you choose should have the proficiency to ensure timeliness and offer guidance on best business practices in the context of financial management. Here’s what you need to consider:
Qualifications
For starters, you’ll want to look at firms that have a deep bench of CPAs, so you can rest assured that your assigned team members are experienced and familiar with accounting principles such as GAAP. Further, don’t forget to check the accounting company’s NetSuite certifications during your selection process. Certification programs are developed and offered by NetSuite itself; certified experts are NetSuite-accredited and thus have all the necessary knowledge and skill, on top of accounting, to help you manage the financial aspects of your business. NetSuite offers the “BPO Provider” certification at the company level, and has financial certifications at the individual level such as the “Financial User” certification.
A Culture Fit
Your outsourced accountants will be deeply ingrained into your business, so it’s important to know that you’ll be able to work together effectively.. The idea here is to select a team that will be able to work with your employees in a manner that promotes a productive and complementary working relationship without any issues. You’ll want to understand what their working hours are, what channels they use for communication, and how responsive they are.
Industry Experience
While not 100% necessary, it’s preferable to choose a NetSuite accounting company that has some previous experience within the industry you operate in. This means they’re familiar with all the nuances and specific requirements of your industry and can often implement features and functions you didn’t even know you needed. A $10M manufacturing firm will have different financial challenges than a $150M software company. Ask your potential NetSuite accountants about their experience in your unique operating environment.
Benefits of Hiring a NetSuite Accountant
There are numerous benefits to hiring a NetSuite accountant, though the biggest hiring factor seems to be cost-effectiveness and efficiency, but there are other benefits as well:
Expertise
NetSuite is a rather comprehensive ERP solution, and understanding all of its features requires expertise and extensive specialized knowledge of the software’s functions. This knowledge allows NetSuite accountants to streamline your financial management and enable you to focus on the growth and profitability of your business.
Customized reporting and analysis
NetSuite also includes powerful reporting and analysis tools. Unfortunately, their complexity only underscores the need for a specialized NetSuite accountant. Accountants with deep NetSuite experience can build robust reports, saved searches, and dashboards to optimize visibility, planning and forecasting.
Regulatory compliance
Compliance with regulatory requirements is one of the biggest challenges in finance, but hiring a NetSuite accountant can eliminate the worrying associated with potential compliance issues. With firms focused full-time on NetSuite accounting, they know the ins and outs of unique industry regulations, geographical regulations, and have experience configuring governance, risk and compliance controls in NetSuite.
Streamlined financial processes
Hiring a NetSuite accountant means that you can now leverage their expertise and knowledge to streamline and automate the time consuming manual processes, along with providing faster and more accurate data analysis and management and better risk mitigation.
Cost-effectiveness
Keeping an in-house team may end up being pricier than simply outsourcing your accounting to a third party. NetSuite accounting companies are a much more cost-effective solution since they automate your financials, minimize errors, increase the efficiency of your business, and help you avoid scaling issues, all for a fraction of the cost.
Summary
While hiring a NetSuite accounting company alleviates many troubles associated with in-house accounting, there are certain key factors you should consider when making a selection. We hope our guide provided you with enough information to help you make a knowledgeable decision. If you need help during your selection process, contact ScaleNorth.