FAQs
We are always happy to answer your questions.
FAQ About Oak Services Group, Inc.
Questions about the company:
The Oak Services Group expert team has more than 500+ years of combined industry experience, with deep skillsets in delivering accounting, controllership and CFO services.
Yes, while a significant portion of our business is serving ongoing clients for as little or as much services as they need, we are happy to take on project work.
This often is due to special circumstances such as but not limited to: startups, audits, capital raises, M&A, consolidations, system migrations and integrations.
We do find that relationships transcend transactions and we highly value ongoing relationships as we believe the best value, coming from insights and analysis, is gained by those that allow us to work with their business over time.
Yes. We find that outsourcing the accounting function in full leads to high levels of independence and accountability and is a strong way for clients to get the most from managed services.
It is our firm's mission to eliminate your back-office and administrative burden by providing efficient and effective services such that owners and business leaders can spend their time focused on growing their core business.
Outsourcing the department/function enables the client to fully benefit from our services.
Yes, our services enable our clients to fully scale up or down throughout the year.
This scalability is not just in terms of full time personnel, but can be thought of in fractional terms, based on job function. e.g. "I need 25% of a person for A/P".
Scalability has another benefit in that you are a managed services client of the firm with full access to our team. We can bring in specialized expertise, where, when, and as needed, and scale back down when that need has diminished.
While we don't offer a "trial service" per se, we do operate in a friendly manner for those looking to engage our services.
Our services permit clients to structure our services to use as little or as much of our services as needed, with short term cancellation provisions (typically 30-90 days depending on size and scope of the engagement).
We typically establish an initial retainer with our clients for the onboarding process, which can be fully applied to ongoing services. This retainer just guarantees that we will have the time to get to know your business operations during an initial assessment period.
To make our relationship delivering exceptional results, we require:
(1) regular scheduled, feedback and communications;
(2) ongoing check-ins, at a cadence TBD, which will allow us to stay focused on leaderships current wants, needs, goals and initiatives to fine tune our analysis and reporting based on changing organizational needs and preferences.
The more our clients can communicate specific wants, needs, and preferences, the more we can tailor the outputs to best serve your team.
Although we are not a "CPA Firm" and do not perform attestation services directly (ie.. signing off on financials or independent audits), we are experienced controllers, CFOs and accountants who serve private and public companies. Members of team often have CPAs, MBAs, CFAs, MS in Accounting and Finance.
FAQ About the Managed Services Industry
Questions about the managed services industry in general:
The managed outsourcing business fundamentally delivers cost-savings and efficiency gains.
To understand this fully, one needs to look beyond base salary and understand all of the costs the organization undertakes supporting employees.
This includes but is not limited to: Salary, Benefits, Recruiting/Replacement, Training, Vacation Time (and managing coverage), Raises, Career Path Development, Idle Time (yes your employees have some too), Management Time (reviews, oversight), Employment related issues (HR problems and challenges) and many more factors.
When considering this, the only costs born in outsourcing that are not related to employee work, is really the profit margins for the outside firm.
Most firms find, when factoring in additional benefits, that these overcome this marginal difference. These additional benefits include:
- The ability to deploy fractionally and eliminate efficiency based on specific job functions and needs rather than FTEs. This allows the organization to engage in a more efficient (and measurably so) staffing model.
- Enhanced focus of the senior team on the core business. Eliminating employee-related time-sinks by having all of this burden born by the outside firm.
- Managing accounting and finance professionals is not your core business, so by allowing them to have a career path provided by us, you have greater continuity and less team turnover.
- You gain access to specialized expertise on an as-needed basis, whenever you need it.
- You gain an independent viewpoint for accounting and finance.
- The ability to scale efficiently, often important for high growth companies (fractionally or very quickly if needed).
Not necessarily. Having a structured senior team, with the appropriate oversight can lead to enhanced control over your operations. We work with clients of all types and understand how to establish the necessary controls to make our clients feel comfortable.
This is frequently done through standardization of procedures, frequent reporting, approval processes that can be as complex as necessary and through delivery of consistent and exceptional results over time.
We find concerns in this area often subside as we make it through the first couple of close cycles, or engagement deliverables.
Transitions can occur in any business. They have the most significant impact when expertise and delivery are concentrated in one point of failure.
We mitigate your risk in this area in several ways. First, we have multiple people on each engagement team, eliminating the single point of failure. Multiple individuals will be cross-trained on your operations.
Second, we document all of your process and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). We document all workflows and systems. We are responsible for replacing any personnel and so our processes have us ready to train new hires very quickly on systems and procedures.
FAQ / Outsourcing Considerations for Small to Medium Size Businesses
Questions about the managed services industry in general:
- Areas outside of the core business of an organization (e.g. often including Banking/Financial Services, Compliance Services, Audit, Tax Services. These are often areas where two sets of eyes are beneficial and independence is valued.
- Accounting is one area that can be effectively outsourced, particularly if:
- You are having difficulty attracting and retaining senior level accounting talent and/or don't have a strong accounting lead.
- If your struggle with retention and/or management of senior level accounting or finance staff.
- Whenever an employee is taking 25 hours/week or more on a dedicated task where there time could be freed up.
- Any time that Introducing efficiency into the business is possible by optimizing time allocations, allowing increased focus on the core business.
(For example, if you are doing your own books, is this the most efficient use of your time? During this time, who is running and building your business?)
- Any time that Introducing efficiency into the business is possible by optimizing time allocations, allowing increased focus on the core business.
- Whenever you need budgeting, forecasting, controllership or CFO functions but don't need them full time.
- Whenever you need expertise at fractional levels, allowing you to get the best possible talent at a fraction of the price.
- When you are outsourcing, you need to have clear communications, objectives, milestones, roles, responsibilities, and budgets/planning for it to be highly successful.
- As a small to mid-size business owner you should not be thinking of this as 'giving up control over your books' but instead be thinking about where your value can most benefit the company. Systems and processes are there to mitigate/control against fraud.
- Depending on your situation, you might think of outsourcing the whole accounting department. If your goal is to get something off your plate, this effectively does that and assures full accountability for the numbers and reporting from the firm delivering the services rather than split responsibilities. We are happy to work in any fashion, but this is a reason why outsourcing the full accounting function is often a good choice.
- While there are lots of variables and not all companies and situations will fit in this range, a typical rule of thumb is that accounting should cost 1-3% of total revenue, depending on industry, size/scale, and current efficiencies. If it is costing more there may be efficiencies to be had.