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Fortune 500 companies have been off shoring the financial and accounting business processes (BPO) to countries like India, Philippians, China, etc. These companies have big budgets and a big team of consultants who analyzes the total cost and ROI of sending their financial and accounting work to the service providers in offshore locations. Though smaller companies have started off shoring their financial and accounting work to offshore locations but like big corporations small businesses do not have huge budget to hire consultants to identify the total cost of off shoring their financial and accounting work to offshore locations. But small businesses can still perform their due diligence in calculating total cost of their offshore engagement and gain critical knowledge in finding ROI of sending their financial and accounting work to offshore locations. In this report we will go through all of the hidden costs of offshoring financial and accounting business processes.

1. Different Costs of Offshoring Financial & Accounting Work

Small businesses mainly consider offshoring their work, they will consider only the hourly rate they need to pay to the offshore vendor for various accounting works like bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. There are several other additional hidden costs small business have to face in their offshore outsourcing engagement. Typically a small business goes through following offshore accounting work cycle in their offshore engagement:

• Selecting an offshore accounting vendor

• Sending the work to the offshore vendor

• Answering questions for the offshore vendor

• Receiving the finished work from the offshore vendor

• Verifying the finished work from the offshore vendor

• Monitoring the quality of the finished work from the offshore vendor

2. Cost of Selecting offshore accounting vendor

The cost associated with selecting an offshore accounting vendor will be small compared to other costs. Most of the time small businesses can find a qualified offshore accounting vendor simply by searching in Google or by contacting other small businesses those who are already using an offshore vendor, for detailed discussion on this topic read Offshore Accounting Success. This cost is the one time cost and it will be similar to selecting an onshore vendor.

3. Cost of sending the work to an offshore vendor

Small businesses must consider various types of cost like Scanner, High speed Internet, Backup Server, etc, to send their financial and account documents to an offshore vendor, but the good news is that it will be a one time investment and most of the small businesses will have these in place already. There are three different offshore accounting models you can use to send your accounting and financial work to the offshore vendors and for these you will incur following one time cost.

3.1. Scanner & Scanning software

Most of the accounting and financial data will be in your accounting software like QuickBooks, Peachtree etc, but there will be other documents like Bills, Checks, Invoices, Goods received notes, etc will be on paper and these should be digitized using a scanner and a scanning software to convert it into PDF documents which will be stored in your computer. Once the documents are in your computer then you can give access to the offshore vendor to view the PDF documents or they can retrieve it from your computer to perform their work in the offshore location.

Most of small businesses already have a scanner, if not a scanner (scanning software comes with the scanner) can be purchased for less than $1000.00. The cost of the scanner will go up based on the volume of accounting and financial documents to be scanned in a given day. It will be a one time cost for the small business and also by scanning all their paper based accounting documents; you can improve the efficiency of overall accounting process.

3.2. High speed Internet Connection Cost

You need to have high-speed Internet connection to send and receive the work to and from offshore location. Again all most all small businesses already have DSL/T1 Internet connection if not they can get a DSL Internet connection for $60-100/month.

3.3. Secure FTP software

If small businesses are using Application Service Provider (ASP) like Quickbooks online, cpaasp.com, etc, then it is possible for offshore vendors to directly access your accounting data directly from the ASP vendor. In this case there is no need to use secure FTP software.

3.4. Backup Server

Once small businesses start digitizing their accounting documents for their offshore vendors, they need to start planning for the backup server to backup all their accounting documents. Most of the small businesses will have this feature already, if not it is a good investment to have a backup server to backup all their accounting and financial data from their main computer to the backup server. For any business “Business continuity” is a vital task and the backup server will help the small businesses to recover all the accounting data in case of main computer failure.

3.5. Additional Accounting software License cost

Small businesses use various accounting software packages like QuickBooks, MYOB, Microsoft Office Accounting etc, for doing all their accounting and financial work. When they offshore the work the offshore vendor will use the same accounting software to do the work. It is very difficult for the small businesses to find an offshore vendor who already owns the licenses for all the accounting software. As described in the offshore accounting models if small businesses decides to use Remote Server or ASP then there is no additional cost for small businesses. On the other hand if the small businesses decided to use Secure File Transfer then small businesses needs to buy additional accounting software license for the offshore vendor to use. Small businesses will incur this cost even if they outsource the work to onshore vendors. This cost is truly soley based on the accounting software package used by the small businesses. Accounting software packages comes with various flavors types of software licenses like concurrent users, fixed number of users, CPU based, Network based etc., Some times small businesses can completely avoid this cost altogether.

4. Managing Financial & Accounting offshore vendor

Once you send your accounting and financial work to the offshore vendor, you need to constantly mange and monitor the quality of finished work that comes back from the vendor. Initially you may need a full-time person educating the offshore accountants and bookkeepers about your accounting process and preparing proper instructions for them to follow in their work. Once you and the offshore team are comfortable in the working relationship then all you need is to verify the work periodically. Basically you need to consider the offshore team as your virtual team and educate them in your accounting processes and procedures, once you are comfortable with their work your own employee(s) will spend less time with the offshore vendors.

5. Offshore vendor wage

For the accounting and financial work performed by the offshore vendor, small businesses will pay either an hourly rate or a monthly rate to the offshore vendor. This will be the actual direct cost small businesses will pay to the offshore vendor and all other costs are indirect cost of sending the work to offshore vendor. Typically the wage cost will be 50-70% less than the cost paid to the onshore accounting and financial vendor. For small businesses this cost savings is one of the major reasons to use the offshore vendor for their financial and accounting work.

Small businesses need to consider several costs in their financial and accounting offshore engagement. As shown in the table Small business F&A offshore outsourcing – Fixed Cost Vs Monthly Cost some of the costs are fixed and some of them are monthly expanses incurred by the small businesses. Among the monthly cost only the offshore vendor wage is the direct cost paid to the offshore vendor. While performing ROI analysis small businesses must consider all these costs to find the Total Cost of doing business with offshore vendors. As shown in the table, for certain items finding out the exact cost may not be possible and it is highly based on the individual small businesses and the type of accounting and financial work that has been sent to offshore locations. The total cost may not be a fixed amount and it can change from month to month. For example in some months there will be more questions from the offshore vendor in clarifications and in other months there will be less questions, this cost will vary from month to month.

What steps must you take to start your business internet money online opportunity to make money online for a purpose filled life?   I could think of hundreds but will discuss 5 very basic and initial steps you must take in order to begin.   If you are new to this process you need to begin somewhere.  If you have been around for several months, then pass these basic steps on to a friend who wants to learn.

Here are 5 steps you must do to get started.

(1)  Take a computer course.

Even before you own a computer, you really need to understand what it is.  A computer course will explain the terms operating system (OS) and how to navigate the internet, often referred to as the world wide web (www).  Computers have been around a long time but the past 40 years they have evolved from mainframes through minis to micros and even cell phones are computers to access the internet.  It is worth your time to take a basic course on computers and you will learn a lot about what they do and how they work.

(2)  Buy a computer.

If you don’t have a computer, then you need to pick up a book and read about them to learn what they do and how they do it and what you need to buy one that works for you.  A book on computers is a good start.  Once you have read this book you will then know what a mouse is, a keyboard, random access memory (RAM), hard disk space and many more acronyms or terms that are part of the computer language.  Before you buy a computer, go to the library or a friend who has one and learn all about that computer.  When you are ready to buy a computer don’t spend a lot of money.

(3)  Get an Internet Service Provider or ISP.

Once you’ve taken a course and have a computer, you need to get an internet service provider or ISP.  The ISP will be your link from your computer, through your telephone line or cable box or device to connect it to the internet.  Remember that your telephone line is much slower and also less expensive than using your cable service provider or even a DSL (digital subscriber line) provider.  Both these are more expensive but will provide the state-of-the-art speeds.

(4) Learn about the internet and specifically affiliate marketing.

Learning about the internet is such a generic statement that I added specifically affiliate marketing.  Learning about the internet is about like saying, learn about the encyclopedia Britannica.  There are so many areas of knowledge on the internet; you need to focus on affiliate marketing.  Do a Google search on affiliate marketing and start from there.  You will get a lot of information and still have to choose what area of affiliate marketing.  I recommend article marketing as a start.

(5)  Work on your computer daily.

This is the most important of the 5 steps.  If you aren’t ready to buy a computer, go to the public library and use theirs for free.  The key is to do it every day so you aren’t intimidated by the movement of the mouse or typing on the keyboard.  Once you get into a comfort zone you will find yourself falling in love with it and your ability to use it will rapidly move forward.

Convert any article to video with Article Video Robot. Article Video Robot is a simple to use internet based program, not a desktop app and can be accessed from any computer to create customized videos you can upload to sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Dailymotion and many more. Video sharing is a very popular form of social media marketing and people are more likely to share videos they watch than articles they read.

Video is a very affordable way to advertise online, Youtube is the second most searched web site and there are more than a billion videos viewed daily. This makes advertising very cost effective and quickly gets your information in front of the people in your target market. Video has a better opportunity to go viral than articles which will spread your message to many more interested people.

Most people just skim text articles whereas video grabs the attention of the viewer. With Article Video Robot you can customize your message with available options such as speech artist, audio soundtracks, images and more. Additionally, the video you create will get indexed and listed on the search engines very quickly. In most cases there is no review process like there is with article marketing.

You will find that video creation generates more than viewers but also a significant number of back links which contributes to a higher page rank and better listing in the search engines. Typically you will find that a video uploaded to the many sites available to you as an advertiser will get listed within hours on the search engines for your keyword target. Images of videos listed on search engines have a higher click through rate over a text hyperlink.

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Online Forex Trading Business

Forex trading is one of the fastest growing business niches that we can do from home. With in couple of hours you can bag thousands of bucks and that even without leaving your cozy home. You need not to go to door to door to sell or market something and you are free from a hectic, long hours job as you can earn the same or even more profits with forex trading. The latest trend of work from home has widened the scope of this field. Online Forex Trading Business

However most of us are naive in this field and need to learn it. One can learn this from the variety of sources which are explained as under:

1. Internet
Off course internet is a source of limitless information where you can find almost everything that you need. Internet can give you extensive information pertaining to forex trading from home and you can learn a lot from it. However the information on net is mostly outdated and you find yourself helpless in searching out the most needed points from this ocean of knowledge.

2. Books/ Magazines
Going to the book stores and finding the most suitable forex trading book which you can easily comprehend is an easier option. Apart from it you also subscribe the annual or monthly subscription of the financial magazines which will keep you updated to the prevailing market conditions and the best course of action to get over it. Online Forex Trading Business

3. Training Modules
Taking admission in to a practical training class and attending their special modules related to forex trading can give you better insight of it. You can learn the easy and instant ways of earning huge profits through training modules. These training modules are comprehensive and specially designed to cover all the relevant aspects of forex trading.

4. Social Networking
Experience is the best teacher and the experienced people who are indulged in forex trading at home can turn out to be an asset for you. Through your social networking skills you can connect to the people currently in this field and can learn the required tactics of the business. They can guide you about the process, ins and outs and ways to excel in forex-trading.

5. Live or Interactive Tutorials
Another way to learn about the forex trading is the interactive tutorials which have live videos directing you the ways of trading online. They have a voice based program recorded with live video that guides you about the different aspects of doing online trading from home.

Above are some of the sources using which you can get ample information about online forex trading from home. They will instruct you’re the scratch level basics to excel in this field. Online Forex Trading Business