Outsourcing is a control decision, not a cost decision
Most finance teams start looking at outsourcing right after a reporting season goes badly. A filing date slips, a key person leaves mid-close, or the auditor comes back with a list of questions nobody has time to answer.
That is a fair trigger but a poor brief. What you are really deciding is which parts of the process still need your team’s judgement, and which parts are mechanical work someone else can do to a fixed standard every period without being chased. Get that split right and the cost question answers itself.
What we see across 34 client engagements
LQ Services prepares financial statements for commercial companies, SPVs, holding companies and investment funds — which is where the questions below come from.
Seven questions to ask before you hand over a set
Ask these in the first conversation. The answers tell you more than any capability deck.
What tools do they use to prepare your statements?
Ask to see the actual production process. Purpose-built reporting software leaves an audit trail and rolls forward cleanly between periods; a folder of linked spreadsheets does neither, and you feel the difference in year two.
Which framework, and who signs off?
The standard — IFRS, US GAAP, Lux GAAP, UK GAAP or a local framework — is your call, and responsibility for the numbers stays with you. A preparer works to your framework. They don’t choose it for you.
Have they handled your entity type?
An SPV, an investment fund and a trading company are not the same job. Ask how many of your entity type they prepare each year, not how many clients they have in total.
How will you know where things stand?
There is a wide gap between a live status view, a weekly progress email, and silence until a draft lands. Agree which one you are getting before the engagement starts, not in the middle of the close.
Can they hit statutory dates, not just “a few weeks”?
Turnaround should be expressed as dates on a calendar, tied to your filing deadlines. Ask what happens when your data arrives late, because sometimes it will.
Will the output survive your auditor’s expectations?
The test is not whether the statements look right. It is whether the file behind them holds up: disclosures in the expected form, references that tie back, and answers ready for the questions your auditor asks every year.
How is your data handled?
Encrypted transfer rather than email attachments, access limited to the people actually on your engagement, and an NDA signed before anything is sent.
None of these questions are about price. Work through them first and you will know which providers can genuinely take the work off your desk — and exactly what you still own once they do.
