Outsourcing bookkeeping is a familiar idea. Outsourcing the entire finance function — accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, management accounts, treasury, compliance, the lot — is less familiar and, for the right business at the right stage, far more powerful.
This is what we mean by Finance BPO (Business Process Outsourcing): not a bookkeeper plus a bit, but a full finance operations function delivered by a specialist team on subscription.
Where Finance BPO sits in the maturity curve
A typical UK business evolves through five stages of finance function:
- Founder DIY — usually fine up to about £250k turnover, painful above that.
- Bookkeeper plus annual accountant — common to about £1.5m turnover.
- In-house finance assistant + outsourced senior support — works to £5m or so if the senior support is high-quality.
- Full in-house finance department — finance director, financial controller, two finance assistants — usually £10m+ turnover.
- Finance BPO model — replaces stages 3 and 4 entirely with an outsourced team delivering the same outputs.
The Finance BPO stage applies particularly well to scale-ups between £2m and £25m turnover where the demand is for a sophisticated function but the volume does not justify the fixed cost of building one in-house.
What Finance BPO actually delivers
A full BPO engagement typically covers:
- Accounts payable — supplier onboarding, invoice ingestion, approval workflows, payment runs, supplier statements
- Accounts receivable — invoice issuance, credit control, debtor management, dispute resolution
- Bank operations — reconciliations, FX management, treasury reporting
- Payroll — full lifecycle including auto-enrolment and benefits
- Month-end close — fully reconciled trial balance, accruals, prepayments, management accounts
- VAT and corporation tax — preparation, filing, payment scheduling
- Year-end accounts — statutory accounts and CT600
- Management reporting — KPI dashboards, board packs, variance analysis
- Virtual CFO oversight — strategic review and decision support
The point is not that one piece is outsourced — it is that the entire process operates as one integrated function, with one accountability point and one set of SLAs.
The economics, honestly
A fully-built in-house finance function for a £10m business typically costs:
- Finance Director (part-time or full): £80,000 – £140,000
- Financial Controller: £60,000 – £85,000
- Two finance assistants: £60,000 – £80,000 combined
- Software, recruitment, training, management time: £20,000 – £30,000
Fully loaded: £220,000 – £335,000 a year.
An equivalent PushDigits Finance BPO engagement at the same scale typically runs £80,000 – £160,000 a year — a 50% to 65% saving, with no recruitment risk, full team continuity, and access to senior reviewers we could never afford to put on a single client full-time.
What you give up
This is the honest part. BPO trades some things for others:
- Physical presence in the office. The team is remote. If you want someone walking around chasing invoices in person, BPO is not it.
- Bespoke unwritten knowledge. Process needs to be documented, not in someone's head. This is usually a benefit, but it requires investment in the first 90 days.
- Pure ownership of the function. You manage a relationship with a partner, not direct reports. Some founders find this harder than others.
If those trade-offs feel like deal-breakers, hire in-house. If they feel like reasonable prices for what you gain, BPO is almost certainly the right model.
What good Finance BPO looks like
The signals of a credible BPO provider:
- Named senior reviewer — an ACA/ACCA partner who is accountable for the whole engagement.
- Documented process library — every routine task has an SOP that survives staff changes.
- SLA-backed deliverables — month-end accounts by day 10, payment runs Tuesday/Thursday, debtor reports weekly. Predictable, measurable.
- Integrated technology stack — Xero/Sage as ledger, Dext for ingestion, ApprovalMax for workflow, Fathom or similar for reporting.
- Quarterly business reviews — not just delivery, but strategic conversation.
How to evaluate it for your business
If you are running a £2m to £25m business and finance feels like it is consuming founder/CEO bandwidth disproportionate to the value it returns, a 60-minute scoping conversation with us is worth your time. We will be honest if your stage suggests in-house instead — sometimes it does. Send us a note or book directly.