How does Botkeeper compare to Outsourced Bookkeeping?

BOOKKEEPING SERVICES

Technology

Botkeeper leverages proprietary machine learning technology to handle labor-intensive bookkeeping tasks by processing and categorizing transactions at an incredibly high accuracy level. This goes FAR beyond static rules—our global models are continuously refining, while your client's specific model improves with each transaction successfully coded or updated. This is smart tech that adapts.

As an end-to-end bookkeeping solution, Botkeeper integrates with QBO and Xero, auto-categorizing and matching transactions, surfacing exceptions, automatically reconciling bank and credit card accounts and recording of principal/interest loan splits. It also offers centralized communication, task and project management, secure password management, and a close tracker that helps you see at a glance how closing is proceeding.

Interacting with your team and even your clients is made simple with Activity Hub, a central space for all comments made anywhere across the platform, while Client & User Management helps you control access and permissions, customize your portal with your logo and favicon, and more. Botkeeper's Documents feature incorporates a secure portal for document storage, exchange, and review—it even includes version tracking and a customizable folder structure. And all of it is super-secure, with 256-bit encryption that's SOC 2 Type 2 accredited.

Outsourcers could use tech... or not. When they do, understanding what it is and whether it complies with your security needs could be extremely difficult.

COST OF OWNERSHIP

Cost of ownership is a key consideration when choosing the right solution for your firm as it’s a way to assess the long-term value of the solution for your firm. However, despite its importance, it’s not the only cost you should consider when it comes to choosing a solution.

Regarding cost, outsourced bookkeeping services present several challenges. Firstly, outsourced bookkeepers often don’t have predictable and transparent billing practices. The costs of outsourced bookkeeping services can vary based on supply and demand. For instance, during tax season, when demand is much higher, you’ll end up paying a lot more. These higher costs filter down to you and impact your bottom line. In other words, you often won’t know what you’ll need to pay for their services which means scope creep can impact both you and your clients.

Also, outsourced bookkeepers mostly require set contracts where you bring on a bookkeeper in terms of the contract. This, unfortunately, means if you work for a new client and need more outsourcing support, you would need to hire another full-time outsourced employee even if the new client doesn’t justify a full 40-hour workweek.

Botkeeper’s pricing for our Infinite (tech-only) package is $69/entity/month, and that includes everything the platform can do. Use it as a tech solution that can multiply what your on-staff bookkeepers can handle by may times, or add services to bring professional accountants into the fold for those clients with even more complex needs. It goes beyond mere outsourcing to provide a customized, streamlined solution that saves you both time and money.

Training & Support

When your firm streamlines its bookkeeping with Botkeeper, your support and training needs will be unique.

To accommodate all needs cases, Botkeeper offers different service tiers. While everyone gets in-app step-by-step guides, access to our comprehensive Knowledge Base, live chat, monthly group training  webinars and access to Botkeeper University (our vibrant user community), we also offer additional options:

Our Enhanced Onboarding & Support tier adds our four-week Essentials training course, a quarterly strategy consultation, and an assigned client success associate. This plan is included when adding 11-50 entities, but it available for a one-time fee if you are adding fewer than 11.

Choose Premium Onboarding & Support to add your own outreach concierge and everything in the Enhanced plan. This plan is included when adding 51 or more entities, but it available for a one-time fee if you are adding fewer than 51.

Support from outsourcing providers will vary—if your resources are outside the country, there might not be an option that aligns the resource to U.S. time zones. Language barriers could come into play. Getting your questions answered on tight timelines could be an issue. Botkeeper's support is U.S.-based, meaning we can step in when you need us to make sure everything is copacetic.

SECURITY

Let’s face it, financial data is some of the most sensitive data there is. Simply put, you don’t want data like bookkeeping records, bank and credit card account information, tax data, and other financial information to fall into the wrong hands.

Moreover, the stakes are extremely high with the type of sensitive information your firm manages. As a result, not having the highest security standards leaves your firm and clients exposed to the risk of general mismanagement, failure to comply with governance guidelines, and having data exposed and breached.

And here, there are several security challenges and risks outsourced bookkeepers pose for accounting firms and their clients, especially in the areas of privacy management and regulatory compliance.

For one, when working with outsourced bookkeepers, awareness and validation around security practices, qualifications of employees, the infrastructure of systems and access, and the storing and transferring of sensitive data is often not clear or communicated sufficiently.

As a firm, you want to ensure that your clients' personal and financial information is held in the strictest confidence. Before choosing a solution, ask about the level of security employed and whether the vendor's security standards are in line with those of your industry.

Botkeeper’s automated bookkeeping solution takes security seriously, with industry-standard SOC 2 Type 2 accreditation, two-factor authentication, and 256-bit encryption for data at rest and data in transit.

SOC 2 Type 2 accreditation means: