Finally, an Outsourced Accounting Firm That Gets Your Business

Learn More About Outsourced Accounting

Short answers to the questions business owners and nonprofit leaders ask before they outsource their accounting.

What is an outsourced accounting firm?

An outsourced accounting firm runs your finance function from the outside: bookkeeping, AP and AR, payroll, the monthly close, reporting, and financial controls. You don’t hire the staff. Accountix has done this work since 2015 for more than 150 businesses and nonprofits across the country.

The category answers to a few names. Outsourced accounting companies, finance and accounting outsourcing companies, virtual accounting firms: the same arrangement in each case, where a specialist team handles the accounting for a recurring fee instead of a salary, on cloud systems you can open whenever you want.

What do outsourced accounting firms actually do?

Day to day, the firm keeps your books current and closes them each month with financial statements you can act on. As you grow, the same team adds budgeting, forecasting, internal controls, and board reporting, and a good firm also manages your financial systems so the numbers flow without manual rework. Our outsourced accounting services page lists what is included at each level of support.

Where is Accountix based?

Accountix is a Santa Barbara-based virtual accounting firm providing outsourced accounting, bookkeeping, and fractional CFO support for growing businesses and nonprofits across California and the U.S.

We manage day-to-day accounting, reporting, financial systems, and oversight without the cost and complexity of building an internal finance department. For local clients, see our Santa Barbara County service areas.

When should you hire an outsourced accounting firm?

Businesses usually reach that point when revenue is growing faster than the systems behind it. The signs are familiar: the books close late, numbers differ between platforms, leadership is making decisions from a bank balance instead of a report, or one person holds every financial process in their head. Nonprofits feel it when grant reporting, restricted funds, and audit requests outgrow a part-time bookkeeper, which is when outsourced accounting for nonprofits pays off. If hiring a full-time accountant feels premature but the work is already more than bookkeeping, that is the window.

Most organizations outsource a year later than they should. The trigger is usually a crisis: a failed audit, a bookkeeper who quit without notice, a bank asking for financials nobody can produce. It goes better when the trigger is a plan.

How do you choose an outsourced accounting firm?

Scope is what separates one firm from another. Some handle transaction processing and stop there. We keep going, through controller-level oversight and into fractional CFO strategy, so you can start with clean books and add forecasting, budgeting, and board reporting later without switching providers or rebuilding your systems.

Ask any firm you’re weighing who will actually touch your books, what they’re credentialed to do, and who covers the work when they’re out. If the answer comes back as one name, that’s an answer too. Our guide lists the questions to ask before you commit.

What happens when you switch to an outsourced accounting firm?

Getting started is short. A 30-minute intro call, a discovery session on your workflows and your headaches, fixed pricing built to your scope, then onboarding. Most clients go live inside four weeks, and we keep oversight running through the switch so nothing goes dark. If the books are behind, catch-up work comes first, so the regular monthly close starts from clean numbers.

If you’re weighing the change, our guide to moving from in-house bookkeeping to outsourced accounting walks through the handoff, the data transfer, and a realistic timeline.

Does an outsourced accounting firm do my taxes?

No. Your CPA or tax accountant prepares and files the return. We keep your books tax-ready all year and coordinate directly with them, so tax season starts from reconciled accounts and a clean year-end close instead of a cleanup project.

Do you work with nonprofits?

Yes. Nonprofits are a core part of our practice, and they get the same three levels of support, built around fund accounting, restricted grant tracking, board reporting, and audit and Form 990 readiness. Our nonprofit clients include the Bruce Lee Foundation, Ganna Walska Lotusland, and Women’s Economic Ventures. Start with nonprofit accounting services for the overview, then see nonprofit bookkeeping for clean, fund-level books or fractional CFO services for nonprofits for forecasting, reserves, and board-ready reporting.

Is outsourcing cheaper than hiring an in-house accountant?

Usually, though not always, and we’d rather say so up front. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median accountant wage at $83,680 (May 2025) before benefits, taxes, software, and training. Most growing businesses pay us a fraction of that loaded cost. If you’re pre-revenue, or your transaction volume genuinely fits into one afternoon a month, hire a good bookkeeper and revisit next year. We’ll tell you that on the intro call.

The other difference is coverage. An in-house hire is one person, with one skill set and gaps when they are out. An outsourced firm gives you a team with layered expertise, from transaction processing to controller-level oversight. We compare cost, control, and risk in outsourced accounting services vs. in-house.

Do I need bookkeeping or outsourced accounting?

Bookkeeping tells you where the money went. Outsourced accounting tells you what it means and what to plan for. Bookkeeping keeps transactions entered, accounts reconciled, and the books ready for taxes. Outsourced accounting adds weekly bookkeeping, bills and receivables, payroll, a full monthly close, and a monthly review of your reports, and budgeting, cash flow forecasting, and controller-level support can be added as you grow. Our outsourced bookkeeping services page shows what sits at each level, side by side.

What does outsourced accounting cost?

Price follows your transaction volume, complexity, and the level of oversight you need, not headcount. Bookkeeping starts at $200 a week, outsourced accounting at $350, and fractional CFO support at $350. A full accounting department, with controller-level oversight and accrual financials, starts at $1,000 a week for organizations above $3 million in revenue. We set a fixed price after a discovery session and bill it flat, not hourly, so you can start small and add services as you grow. See every tier on our pricing page.

Every engagement starts with a 30-minute intro call.