thebears

Chinese accounting firm have claimed they expect to pick up around 85% of the current accounting work performed by Australian and New Zealand accountants. They claim they have the scanning software to produce detailed accounts in real time.

Comments?

bru

This is the future. Eventually this will happen. I doubt about outsourcing Accounting to China. Outsourcing to subcontinent is a good possibility similar to what is happening in US. Systems Accountants will have a good demand.

Outsourcing of Accounting is not only about the cheapest rate that you can get. It will be a mix of rate plus the quality of work. Privacy of data will be a key issue.

I do this for some US companies in Thailand. I have had discussions with some Accounting firms in Australia over this possibility. According to them, it is very new and non-of their clients have requested for such a service. Nevertheless, they said that they would keep my details. I am also not sure about any regulations preventing companies using such services.

thebears

I visited a "processing centre" in China recently that performs the processing for a major European based Manufacturer. This particular manufacturer operates a small plant in China with larger plants still in Europe - however it now performs all of its accounting functions at the chinese site.

They process 60,000 invoices a week (both AP and AR). They have French and German accountants (3) who simply review the draft accounts before "weekly submission" to the European based board. The system has already been set up to automatically accrue and prepay based on info contained within the invoice. They said in the first month they got 90% rejections because of supplier problems - missing purchase orders etc. Month 2, 5% rejections.

The scanning tech is so slick in automatically updates change of address - including delivery locations. The only key staff they need for processing are the mail room to load into processing unit.