The approach to training is the same for all three groups – we train all of them directly. I’ve been out several times to do training with the teams in the Philippines. You cannot expect good quality work if you aren’t training them and if you train them well then the review work you do will be easier. One team is ultimately employed by the outsourcing provider we use.

We directly employ the members of our bookkeeping team in the Philippines so that team is an offshored Ecommerce Accountants LLP office. We initially recruited the team using virtual job posting boards. Now whenever any vacancies arise, we ask the current team if they have any friends or family interested and we’re also connected with an accounting course provider that sends potential candidates our way.

The cost of overseas outsourced staff depends on the country and its cost of living – the cost of living in South Africa is lower than that in the UK, and the cost of living in the Philippines is lower than that in South Africa. Going forward we’re going to focus on staff in the Philippines but since we have invested so much in the South African team, we’re going to keep them as well.

It may seem unusual to have three separate teams split over two countries, but part of the reason was that we didn’t want to have all our resources in one country in case a geopolitical situation arose which would then cause massive disruption to our practice. The other part was that we wanted to see if there would be any difference in the quality of work between different countries but there hasn’t been any. 

Some people might worry that the quality of work from outsourced or offshored staff might be less but what I’ve personally found is that generally it is no different to that produced in the UK – which can be hit and miss. We’ve struggled to recruit in the UK which is why we’ve ended up looking overseas. 

In the Philippines the cost of living and therefore the cost of outsourcing and offshoring is a third of that in the UK so we haven’t needed to give the teams there the same workload as a UK staff member.  Because of that we’ve found that the quality has gone up. They’re working with fewer clients so they’re much more responsive and they’re working through things more quickly and they can spend more time getting to know the client rather than someone in the UK that is trying to churn work out. Quality can be a bit lower initially but it’s the same as with a UK employee – you still have to train them, you still have to get them to follow your processes and review their work.

We’re transparent with clients and when they join, we tell them we have a UK team and an offshore team. The offshore team are mainly the bookkeepers to keep it cost-effective, and we let them liaise directly with clients. As with any new employee in the UK, you start off by reviewing their emails until you are confident that they can handle it.

The UK team is spread across the country so there is little difference in the way they interact with the outsourced/offshored team which is via Slack. We’re all using the same platforms and it doesn’t matter that we aren’t all in the same location.

We now have 20 outsourced/offshored staff but when we hired the first three 2 years ago, two of us flew out there to meet them face to face to do some training. They’re smart, talented individuals who are hard-working and want to do well. We went out again last year and met a few more of them and did some team-bonding over dinners.

We make them all do AML training – making sure they’re looking out for fraudulent transactions, high value transactions, how to identify if an SAR needs to be submitted and letting the MLRO know, etc. We have an onboarding checklist so any team member has to complete that training whether they’re in the UK or not.

All of the team have unique logins for our software and we have an audit log of what access they’ve had. All of our software has 2FA enabled and everything is via Google which is always updating its security.

Top tip

My top tip is that you should treat them like anyone else. Even if you only ever see them through a screen, it is a person at the other end. Don’t treat them like they’re any less of a person just because they are not in the UK. They’ll leave! And all that training you’ve invested in them will be wasted.