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Professional Service Accounting & Finance Industry Overview

Professional service firms have long since realized the benefits of evaluating and improving their finance and accounting systems. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for accounting practices can greatly impact a firm's bottom line as well as business lifecycle management.

Professional service firms are being challenged unlike ever before to produce more with fewer resources. Economic pressure has never been greater as flattening revenues and increasing costs are predicted to hurt profits industry wide. Many professional service firms are noting increasing costs due to rising employee salaries and premium commercial property costs.

In addition, increased requirements on internal and external finance and accounting groups have resulted in several common characteristics among firms, including:

  • A distributed business model across geographies with small branches operating in multiple languages
  • Non-standardized processes across practices and branches
  • Highly people- and paper-dependent processes
  • Individual resources handling multiple processes
  • High dependency on clients/partners

As a leader in the industry, Sutherland provides true end-to-end solutions with our integrated BPO model, which utilizes a blend of people, process, and technology. Our methodology will streamline operational efficiency, create a scalable environment, and increase your bottom line.

Sutherland's BPO services for the Legal Firm Industry include:

Accounts Payable

  • Foreign/domestic invoice processing
  • Emergency checks
  • Wire transfers and BACS
  • Expense reports paid via ACH
  • Cash/wire/ACH/EFT processing
  • 1099 preparation & distribution, including W8 (foreign) mailings

Cash Application & Escrow Accounting

  • Cash recorded at client/matter detail
  • Escrow accounting
    • Maintain sub-legers for all client-owned funds
    • Monthly reconciliation of trust and retainer sub-ledgers
  • Exchange rate management
  • Cash flow reporting
  • Lock box management and cash application
  • Period & year-end closing
  • Reporting

Fixed Assets

  • General ledger reconciliation
  • Capital project management
  • Tax / book reconciliations

General Accounting

  • Daily cash reconciliation between bank and ERP
  • Bank account reconciliation and balance sheet analysis
  • Sale data import/reconciliation
  • Foreign & domestic journal entry processing
    • Accruals
    • Allocations
  • Monthly employee personal accounts reconciliation
  • Accounts Receivable sub-ledger reconciliation
  • Account & bank reconciliations
  • Fiscal period & year-end general ledger closing

Financial Reporting

  • Internal
  • Statutory
  • Analysis

Technology

  • CMS open expertise
  • Disbursement research system hosting and management
  • Proprietary workflow tool

The Sutherland Advantage

  • Your focus is on your core business
  • Your time is spent on strategic issues rather than on tactical activities
  • Your organization will be financially optimized