What is the difference between bookkeeping and outsourced accounting?

• Bookkeeping: recording income and expenses, coding transactions, reconciling bank accounts, keeping receipts and invoices in order.
• Outsourced accounting: everything above, plus month-end reporting, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, BAS and tax returns, and someone to ask what the numbers mean.
• Bookkeeping answers "what happened". Accounting answers "what does it mean, and what do we owe".

If you have an accountant you're happy with and the problem is that the books arrive late and messy, you need bookkeeping. If nobody internal owns the finance function, or the owner is doing it at night, you need outsourced accounting. Many businesses start with the first and grow into the second.

Whoever prepares your BAS for a fee should be a registered BAS agent or tax agent, and whoever prepares tax returns a registered tax agent. Both can be checked on the Tax Practitioners Board's public register before you sign. Outsourced accounting: what to check before you sign covers the rest of the due diligence.

Bookkeeping is the most automatable part of finance, so its cost is falling fastest. Providers that automate the recording well spend their hours on the reporting and advice instead. That is the model behind AI bookkeeping: agents do the coding and matching, and people handle the exceptions and the judgement.

• Outsourced Accounting: what transfers well to a provider, and what to check before you sign.

Sources

• TPB: BAS agent registration
• TPB: Tax agent registration