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.