u/9figs

Hi guys. I'm building an outsourced bookkeeping and fractional CFO business. I'm not a bookkeeper, CPA or fractional CFO. I'm a sales and marketing guy who sees a ton of potential in this industry and know's how to get customers. Currently, I outsource all our work to another bookkeeping company. We have a white-label relationship. All the work is branded by my company, and customers pay my company. They don't know about the other company. They pretty much do what we do. We're just better at marketing.

My issue is this: I have no idea how I should be looking at this from the fulfilment/systems perspective. I have no idea if pawning off leads to this guys business is efficient, scalable, etc. Our margins are tight, because we're outsourcing to a business.

My question is this: What would you do in my situation? Again, I have no accounting backround at all. I'm just good at marketing and sales.

A few paths I'm weighing:

1. Stay with our current white-label partner (overseas team, sub 50% margin, when industry standard margins are over 80%)
2. Hire one US bookkeeper or controller, give profit share, call him a partner and let them sit on discovery calls to help with sales (since i don't know the language) and do the fulfilment. add more as we scale.

As operators, what would you guys do in my position?

Hi guys. I'm building an outsourced bookkeeping and fractional CFO business. I'm not a bookkeeper, CPA or fractional CFO. I'm a sales and marketing guy who sees a ton of potential in this industry and know's how to get customers. Currently, I outsource all our work to another bookkeeping company. We have a white-label relationship. All the work is branded by my company, and customers pay my company. They don't know about the other company. They pretty much do what we do. We're just better at marketing.

My issue is this: I have no idea how I should be looking at this from the fulfilment/systems perspective. I have no idea if pawning off leads to this guys business is efficient, scalable, etc. Our margins are tight, because we're outsourcing to a business.

My question is this: What would you do in my situation? Again, I have no accounting backround at all. I'm just good at marketing and sales.

A few paths I'm weighing:

1. Stay with our current white-label partner (overseas team, sub 50% margin, when industry standard margins are over 80%)
2. Hire one US bookkeeper or controller, give profit share, call him a partner and let them sit on discovery calls to help with sales (since i don't know the language) and do the fulfilment. add more as we scale.

As operators, what would you guys do in my position?

Hi guys. I'm building an outsourced bookkeeping and fractional CFO business. I'm not a bookkeeper, CPA or fractional CFO. I'm a sales and marketing guy who sees a ton of potential in this industry and know's how to get customers. Currently, I outsource all our work to another bookkeeping company. We have a white-label relationship. All the work is branded by my company, and customers pay my company. They don't know about the other company. They pretty much do what we do. We're just better at marketing.

My issue is this: I have no idea how I should be looking at this from the fulfilment/systems perspective. I have no idea if pawning off leads to this guys business is efficient, scalable, etc. Our margins are tight, because we're outsourcing to a business.

My question is this: What would you do in my situation? Again, I have no accounting backround at all. I'm just good at marketing and sales.

A few paths I'm weighing:

1. Stay with our current white-label partner (overseas team, sub 50% margin, when industry standard margins are over 80%)
2. Hire one US bookkeeper or controller, give profit share, call him a partner and let them sit on discovery calls to help with sales (since i don't know the language) and do the fulfilment. add more as we scale.

As operators, what would you guys do in my position?

Hi guys. I'm building an outsourced bookkeeping and fractional CFO business. I'm not a bookkeeper, CPA or fractional CFO. I'm a sales and marketing guy who sees a ton of potential in this industry and know's how to get customers. Currently, I outsource all our work to another bookkeeping company. We have a white-label relationship. All the work is branded by my company, and customers pay my company. They don't know about the other company. They pretty much do what we do. We're just better at marketing.

My issue is this: I have no idea how I should be looking at this from the fulfilment/systems perspective. I have no idea if pawning off leads to this guys business is efficient, scalable, etc. Our margins are tight, because we're outsourcing to a business.

My question is this: What would you do in my situation? Again, I have no accounting backround at all. I'm just good at marketing and sales.

A few paths I'm weighing:

1. Stay with our current white-label partner (overseas team, sub 50% margin, when industry standard margins are over 80%)
2. Hire one US bookkeeper or controller, give profit share, call him a partner and let them sit on discovery calls to help with sales (since i don't know the language) and do the fulfilment. add more as we scale.

As operators, what would you guys do in my position?

As you can see from the title, I’m building an outsourced bookkeeping company. I’m really not sure how to approach the infrastructure aspect of this business. I am personally a sales and marketing guy, not a CPA or bookkeeper. I currently have a fulfilment partner who is credentialed and great and what he does, but he has his own business we’re outsourcing the work to.

My questions is: how should I approach building my own version? Should I partner with a CPA/bookkeeper? Should I outsource overseas? Should I partner with a different CPA/bookkeeper in multiple state, and forward leads we generate to each of the individual states?

How would you guys approach this if you were in my shoes?

I do mainly bookkeeping and cleanup + catch up work. How should I be approaching CPA’s/accountants if I’m trying to build a referral network? Anyone have any approaches they prefer to receive? What would you want to hear from someone like myself to be happy sending me opportunities?

Does anyone have any recommendations or strategies on getting referrals from accountants/CPA’s? I cold call CPA’s that don’t offer bookkeeping as a service but I find it incredibly challenging to get them to actually send over opportunities.

What do you guys think about outsourcing bookkeeping work to overseas talent? Do any of you do this and if you do, do you find it hurts your ability to get clients or referrals from other professionals? What are our general thoughts on this

Genuine question because I've been going back and forth on this for months. Just had another discovery call with a contractor whose books haven't been touched in over a year. They have personal Venmo charges mixed in with business, no reconciliations done since 2024, and his CPA hasn't even started last year's taxes.

The recurring work after would be solid, but I keep getting stuck on the cleanup itself because every file is different, every quote is a guess until I'm three hours in, and I burn out on cleanup work way faster than on the monthly recurring stuff I actually signed up to do.

So I'm curious where everyone else has landed on this. Do you take every cleanup that walks in the door and just price it high enough to make it worth your time? Do you push the prospect to clean it up themselves and come back when they're current? Do you have a rule about how far behind is too far behind to take on? Or do you have a separate cleanup-only pricing structure that's different from your monthly work?

Also genuinely curious if anyone actually likes cleanup work, or if everyone secretly hates it and just tolerates it because the recurring relationship is what we're really after.

Genuine question because I've been going back and forth on this for months. Just had another discovery call with a contractor whose books haven't been touched in over a year. They have personal Venmo charges mixed in with business, no reconciliations done since 2024, and his CPA hasn't even started last year's taxes.

The recurring work after would be solid, but I keep getting stuck on the cleanup itself because every file is different, every quote is a guess until I'm three hours in, and I burn out on cleanup work way faster than on the monthly recurring stuff I actually signed up to do.

So I'm curious where everyone else has landed on this. Do you take every cleanup that walks in the door and just price it high enough to make it worth your time? Do you push the prospect to clean it up themselves and come back when they're current? Do you have a rule about how far behind is too far behind to take on? Or do you have a separate cleanup-only pricing structure that's different from your monthly work?

Also genuinely curious if anyone actually likes cleanup work, or if everyone secretly hates it and just tolerates it because the recurring relationship is what we're really after.

Genuine question because I've been going back and forth on this for months. Just had another discovery call with a contractor whose books haven't been touched in over a year. They have personal Venmo charges mixed in with business, no reconciliations done since 2024, and his CPA hasn't even started last year's taxes.

The recurring work after would be solid, but I keep getting stuck on the cleanup itself because every file is different, every quote is a guess until I'm three hours in, and I burn out on cleanup work way faster than on the monthly recurring stuff I actually signed up to do.

So I'm curious where everyone else has landed on this. Do you take every cleanup that walks in the door and just price it high enough to make it worth your time? Do you push the prospect to clean it up themselves and come back when they're current? Do you have a rule about how far behind is too far behind to take on? Or do you have a separate cleanup-only pricing structure that's different from your monthly work?

Also genuinely curious if anyone actually likes cleanup work, or if everyone secretly hates it and just tolerates it because the recurring relationship is what we're really after.

If you're a CPA, do you enjoy doing them or would you prefer that someone else takes them on for you so you can focus on the recurring work? And what are some of the reasons businesses typically need a cleanup or catch up?

I only do cleanups, and want more of them!

How often do CPA's and bookkeepers actually do cleanups? And if you do, do you enjoy doing them or would you prefer that someone else takes them on for you so you can focus on the recurring work?