Solutions · Businesses
Your accounts off your desk, reviewed before they reach you
Growing businesses reach a point where the books need a full-time function, but not yet a full-time hire.
Saramis Global runs bookkeeping, reconciliations, and month-end close as one connected engagement, checked by a second qualified professional before anything reaches you.
Book a discovery call, or see how the monthly rhythm works below.
The problem
What piles up before a business calls in help
Three things tend to slip at once. Rarely just one.
The founder's view
Founders and ops leads notice it first as a feeling: the books are technically fine, but nobody could say exactly where the business stands this month without a few days of digging.
The internal team's view
A small internal finance team feels it differently. The bookkeeper or accountant already in place is stretched across entries, reconciliations, and reporting at once, with no second reviewer to catch anything before it goes out the door.
Books fall behind
Whoever manages the ledger also runs the business. Entries queue up behind everything else, and bank feeds go unreconciled for weeks at a stretch.
Month-end slips
Close happens whenever time allows rather than on a fixed date. The figures for one month land somewhere in the middle of the next.
Reporting arrives too late to act on
By the time a report reaches the person who needed it, the month it describes is already over. The decision it should have shaped got made without it.
The checklist
Six signs a business has outgrown ad hoc accounting
All six in one line: reconciliation lag, key-person dependence, deadline scrambles, unreviewed figures, founder-coded invoices, and a cash position read from the banking app.
One of them is an annoyance. Three together form the pattern that precedes a missed filing or a mispriced decision.
- Reconciliation lag. The bank feed runs weeks ahead of the ledger. Until the two reconcile, the accounts show a cash figure the bank disagrees with, and nobody can say by how much.
- Key-person dependence. One person carries the entire finance picture. A resignation, a holiday, or one sick week stops invoicing and payroll on the same day.
- Deadline scrambles. GST, VAT, or annual filing dates live in someone's memory rather than a filing calendar. Each deadline arrives as a sprint, and the sprint cuts closer to the line every quarter.
- Unreviewed figures. Numbers go to the bank, the board, or a lender exactly as one person drafted them. No second professional checks the pack before it leaves.
- Founder-coded invoices. The founder still approves, codes, or chases invoices personally. Those are hours spent inside the ledger instead of in front of customers.
- Bank-app accounting. The cash position comes from the banking app rather than the ledger. The app shows a balance; it says nothing about uncleared payments, unbilled work, or the VAT sitting inside that number.
What you get monthly
A fixed reporting rhythm, every month
The people doing this work are qualified, and checkable: the delivery team draws on a team of 9 Chartered Accountants, supported by MBA and BCom professionals, including part-qualified ACCA and CPA members, and nothing reaches you before a second qualified professional has reviewed it. The same review structure described on the Quality & Security page applies to every business engagement, from the first close.
Full detail on how reconciliations and close work sits on Bookkeeping & Accounting. Below is what a growing business specifically gets each month.
Where a small internal finance team already exists, the engagement adds capacity around that team rather than replacing it: extra hands at month-end, plus the second reviewer the team did not have before.
The same four pieces, every cycle
The engagement runs on the same four pieces every cycle, not a different scope each time depending on who has capacity.
Reconciliations
Bank, accounts payable, and accounts receivable reconcile against their source every cycle rather than getting a once-a-year spot check.
Month-end close by day 5
The books close within 5 working days of month-end, checked by a second reviewer before anything moves forward.
A reporting pack
A management report and the cycle's reconciliations arrive together. No raw export to assemble yourself.
Queries in 4 business hours
A question about a figure gets answered within 4 business hours, not held for the next scheduled call.
Who checks the work
Three people touch every deliverable before you see it
All three sit inside your engagement team and hold credentials from the mix named above. Most providers in this category write "qualified staff" and stop; the review chain here is named layer by layer, because a chain you can name is a chain you can hold to account.
Preparer
Drafts the deliverable first: the entries, reconciliations, and figures that make up the working paper or report.
Qualified reviewer
Ties each figure back to the underlying records before anything moves forward, catching what a first draft misses.
Engagement lead
Confirms scope and format before anything leaves your desk, so what reaches you matches what was agreed.
How it starts
From first call to first close
Onboarding runs in a fixed window. No open-ended handover dragging into the first few closes.
- 1
Discovery call
Share the state of the books today: the software in use, the backlog, and where reporting has been landing late.
- 2
Onboarding within 5 business days
Access is set up, the chart of accounts reviewed, and opening reconciliations run before the first cycle starts.
- 3
Software connects
Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, Zoho Books, or your existing software. Migration to a new platform is not required to start.
- 4
First close
The first reporting pack lands on the same working-day commitment as every cycle after it, not a slower one while things bed in.
The cost question
What a full-time finance hire costs, fully loaded
A full-time accountant in the United States earns a median $81,680, and salary is roughly 70% of what the employer pays. Grossed up for benefits, the position costs close to $116,500 a year before recruitment, software, and training.
Cost pages in this market usually quote a savings percentage with no source attached. The three figures below carry theirs.
Accountant, US
$81,680
Median annual wage for accountants and auditors, May 2024, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Grossed up for benefits: close to $116,500.
Bookkeeper, US
$49,210
Median annual wage for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks, May 2024, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Grossed up: about $70,200.
Accountant, UK
£50,062
Median full-time pay for chartered and certified accountants, per the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025. Employer National Insurance at 15% (GOV.UK rates) adds roughly £6,760 before pension contributions.
The gross-up basis
The gross-up rests on one public number: benefits average 29.9% of total employer cost for private-industry workers, per the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release covering December 2025.
What Saramis Global charges
The fully loaded figure buys a full week of one person's time. A growing business rarely fills one.
Saramis Global publishes no price list. Each engagement is priced to its own workload, in a written scope structured as fixed fee, block hours, dedicated staff, or part-time staff.
When you outgrow it
When outsourced support becomes a dedicated team
At some point, a shared bookkeeping engagement stops covering the need. A finance leader gets hired. Headcount grows. Reporting becomes a constant requirement rather than a once-a-month one.
A named team assigned to the business
That point calls for a different arrangement: a named team assigned to the business, with the same faces on it month after month. See Tailored Finance Solutions for how that team gets built and scaled as the requirement changes.
Toward a full function or a GCC
Businesses moving toward a full internal finance function, or weighing a Global Capability Centre, follow a related path. Finance Leaders & GCCs covers the middle ground between fully outsourced support and building the function from scratch in house.
Leaving
Exit terms, agreed before the engagement starts
Exit terms go in writing before the first cycle runs: end the engagement at any point, for any reason, and every record returns to you complete, in the structure your own records already follow.
What comes back
The handover is itemised. Access shuts on the final day, and nothing waits behind a renewal conversation.
- Working papers
- Reconciliations
- Correspondence
- A closing note flagging whatever remains open
No lock-in by omission
Providers in this category publish onboarding pages, not exit pages; lock-in hides in that gap. The full handover terms sit on Quality & Security, item by item.
Questions
Outsourced accounting for businesses, answered directly
How fast do you close the books each month?
Within 5 working days of month-end, every cycle. Before the pack goes out, a second qualified professional has been through the close, so what you read has already survived one review.
How quickly do you answer a query about a figure?
Within 4 business hours. The window applies to every query, whether it is one line about a single figure or a longer question about the whole pack.
How long does onboarding take, and which software do you use?
Onboarding takes 5 business days: access, a chart-of-accounts review, and opening reconciliations, all before the first cycle. On software, the engagement fits around whatever you already run, Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, or Zoho Books included; nobody asks you to migrate first.
What's in the monthly reporting pack?
A management report and the full set of reconciliations for that cycle, bank, accounts payable, and accounts receivable, arrive together as one pack. Prior-period comparisons are included once an engagement has run for more than one cycle.
What happens when we outgrow outsourced bookkeeping?
Growth eventually pushes past what a shared engagement covers, and a standing team assigned to the business starts to make more sense. Book a discovery call to talk through whether that moment has arrived, or whether the current arrangement still fits.
When does an in-house hire make more sense than outsourcing?
When the finance workload fills a full week, every week, and part of it only happens on site: daily cash calls, walk-up queries from operations, physical stock counts. At that point the fully loaded cost of the hire, close to $116,500 a year for a US accountant on Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, buys something an outsourced engagement does not replace. Short of that point, it buys idle capacity.
What does switching from our current bookkeeper look like?
Your current bookkeeper hands over closing balances and the reconciliation history, and opening reconciliations run against those balances inside the same software file. No history moves platforms; nothing gets retyped. The switch fits the standard onboarding window of 5 business days, and the first close arrives on the full commitment, not a slower settling-in cycle.
What does outsourced accounting cost compared with an in-house hire?
The in-house side of the comparison is public: a US accountant carries a fully loaded cost near $116,500 a year on Bureau of Labor Statistics medians, and a UK accountant a £50,062 median salary before employer costs on ONS figures. Saramis Global prices each engagement against its scoped workload, in writing, after the discovery call. Whether that beats a hire depends on how much of a full-time week the books actually fill; for most growing businesses the honest answer is a fraction of it.
What happens to our records if we end the engagement?
Every record comes back complete: working papers, reconciliations, correspondence, and a closing note naming anything still open. Access shuts the same day. The terms are agreed in writing before work starts, and an early exit gets the same handover as a completed one.
Get the books off your desk this month
Tell Saramis Global where the books stand right now, backlog included. A written scope comes back; no chase calls follow.
Talk to us
Book a Discovery Call
Tell us your requirements: bookkeeping, audit support, or a tailored finance solution. We'll suggest the right way to work together.
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