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Outsourcing has become a practical growth strategy for modern businesses. It allows companies to rely on external specialists for selected functions, helping reduce operational costs, improve efficiency, and free up internal teams to focus on core business priorities.
For CPA firms, this approach is becoming increasingly relevant. Firms today are under constant pressure from heavier workloads, staffing challenges, tighter deadlines, and rising client expectations. Trying to manage every function in-house can stretch resources thin and make it harder to deliver consistent quality.
That is why many firms are rethinking which services truly need to stay internal and which can be better handled by outside experts. When done strategically, outsourcing can help CPA firms gain specialized support, improve turnaround times, reduce overhead, and create more room to focus on advisory, client relationships, and business growth.
To explore this topic, Ace Cloud Hosting spoke with Seth Fineberg, founder of Accountants Forward, and a well-known accounting industry consultant, content strategist, and speaker. With more than 30 years of experience covering the accounting profession, Seth has closely observed how firms are evolving their operations and service models to remain competitive.
In this video, Seth shares three services CPA firms should consider outsourcing and explains why doing so can make strong business sense in today’s accounting landscape.
Transcript
Hi again, Seth Fineberg, on behalf of Ace Cloud Hosting. Another conversation I’d like to have with accountants is really on the three services that I feel that CPA firms should at least be considering outsourcing, and why it makes the most business sense.
#1: IT Infrastructure and Cloud Hosting
At this point, if you are doing all of that in-house, you should know, and no disrespect, that you are making things more difficult than they need to be. With all that is available in the managed service realm for you to be able to do with regard to your own IT infrastructure. Looking elsewhere might be the way to go.
CPA firms are not IT companies. We know this. But they handle, I would say, some of the most high-risk and sensitive data out there. Managed servers. Managing servers, uptime, and remote access really increases liability across the board. Outsourcing your IT now starts to shift the risk to specialists who pretty much do this 24/7, 365, provide compliance-ready infrastructure, and again, 24/7 support.
So, don’t even need to think about it. A great example is hosting. If you still have some desktop products like QuickBooks Enterprise or even some tax software, going to someone like Ace Cloud Hosting, whether it is Ace Cloud Hosting or another resource that’s out there that offers managed services, that’s really where you need to be thinking these days. Such a provider has a specialized setup and dedicated team to help you manage all of your infrastructure on your behalf.
So, you pretty much have time to not have to hire full-time IT staff or at least maybe even reimagine how your IT staff can work, and they’re not necessarily, you know, having to do that for you.
#2: Cybersecurity and Compliance Management.
Cybersecurity really has moved from a kind of IT team or individual concern to more of a regulatory and insurance, you know, insurance requirement. Perhaps some of you are already in the tax world and have a WISP, a written information security plan, as a requirement in the IRS.
But outside of that, you know, most CPA firms tend to lack in-house security expertise. Yet they’re, you know, still, again, they’re the prime targets for ransomware, data breaches, on and on, real ugly stuff. Outsourcing these things, like cybersecurity and compliance management, reduces your audit risk, protects client trust, helps firms meet insurer and regulator requirements, and client security expectations.
So, what’s outsourced there? Well, endpoint security, for one, email security, vulnerability monitoring, incident response, and of course, WISP documentation, as I mentioned before, as well as compliance reporting.
#3: Marketing and Lead Gen
Now, I know this is maybe not something that you’re thinking is a high priority, but I’m telling you to consider outsourcing. That is definitely something that should be on your radar once things may even start to calm down a little bit. Marketing really requires consistent effort, specialized skills, and data analytics.
Most CPA firms rely on referrals, or maybe someone is already wearing a couple of hats inside your firm, but they struggle to build predictable growth engines. Internally, outsourcing this will create a steady lead flow for you, strengthening your niche positioning. If you have one, if you’re digging into one, highly recommend outsourcing them. It frees partners and staff time from having to do sales and marketing.
And also things like website management, SEO, things you might not necessarily specialize in or have people who do specialize in, content marketing, email campaigns, CRM automation, the works.
So, outsourcing these three things, again, IT infrastructure and cloud hosting, cybersecurity compliance management, marketing, and lead gen. Those are my top three services that I think CPA firm leaders and accounting firms across the board should consider outsourcing as the year progresses and going forward. Thank you.
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