IWhen clients call
Services / 06 — Accounting & outsourcing
Bookkeeping is where audit problems are born.
Bookkeeping, IFRS financial statements, payroll, management reporting and outsourced CFO — maintained to the standard the next reader will apply, whoever that turns out to be.
Most accounting problems are discovered by somebody else: an auditor, a lender, an acquirer's advisers, a tax officer. By then they are expensive. We keep books as though they will be examined, because in our experience they usually are.
Books months behind?
Catch-up work is normal and we do a lot of it. Tell us how far back it goes and what triggered it — a financing round, an audit, a notice — and we will scope the reconstruction properly rather than guessing.
Our bookkeeper left and nobody knows where things stand.
We establish the current position first — what is reconciled, what is not, and what is missing — before touching anything forward.
Investors are about to run diligence.
Unreconciled balances and undocumented revenue recognition cost valuation long before they cost the deal.
Our auditor keeps raising the same points every year.
Recurring audit findings are usually a bookkeeping process problem, not an audit problem. They are fixable once.
We cannot tell whether we made money last month.
Management reporting that answers the question the owner is actually asking, on a fixed date each month.
Payroll is taking a day a week and we are still unsure it is right.
Salary tax withholding, EOBI and social security contributions handled as a process rather than a monthly scramble.
We need a finance function but not a full-time CFO.
Senior financial oversight at the level you need it, without the salary line.
Our lender wants monthly management accounts.
Covenant reporting prepared to the lender's format, on the lender's timetable.
We are a foreign company and need books kept in Pakistan.
Local statutory compliance and reporting in a format your head office can consolidate.
IIWhat we do
Scope of the accounting practice
From a single bookkeeper's workload to a complete outsourced finance function.
01
Bookkeeping and ledger management
The daily record, kept current and reconciled rather than reconstructed at year-end.
- Transaction recording and coding
- Bank, cash and credit card reconciliation
- Accounts receivable and payable ledgers
- Intercompany and related-party reconciliation
- Month-end close and cut-off procedures
- Catch-up and historical reconstruction
02
Financial statement preparation
Statements prepared under the framework that actually applies to your entity classification.
- IFRS as notified in Pakistan
- IFRS for SMEs
- AFRS for Small-Sized Entities
- Notes and disclosure preparation
- Comparative restatement where required
- Group reporting packs for a parent's format
03
Payroll
Statutory obligations that fall on the employer, handled as a monthly process.
- Salary computation and payslips
- Income tax withholding on salary
- EOBI contributions
- Provincial social security contributions
- Provident and gratuity fund administration support
- Final settlements and leave encashment
- Payroll reconciliation to the general ledger
04
Management reporting
Reporting built around the decisions you actually make, not a standard pack.
- Monthly management accounts
- Departmental and segment reporting
- Cash flow reporting and forecasting
- Lender covenant reporting
- KPI dashboards
- Board reporting packs
05
Budgeting and planning
A budget that is compared to actuals and explained, rather than filed in January and forgotten.
- Annual budget preparation
- Rolling forecasts
- Variance analysis and commentary
- Scenario and sensitivity modelling
- Working capital planning
06
Outsourced CFO
Senior financial oversight for businesses that need the judgement but not the headcount.
- Financial strategy and planning
- Cash and working capital management
- Lender and investor reporting
- Finance team supervision and structure
- Board and shareholder support
- Systems and process design
07
Chart of accounts and systems design
Designed once, documented, and not quietly amended by whoever is closest to the keyboard.
- Chart of accounts design and rebuild
- Accounting policy and procedure manuals
- Approval and authorisation workflows
- Software selection and migration
- Opening balance establishment
08
Stock take and fixed assets
Physical verification against the ledger — the reconciliation most often deferred and most often material.
- Physical inventory counts and observation
- Fixed asset verification and tagging
- Fixed asset register construction
- Depreciation policy review
- Reconciliation to the general ledger
- Impairment indicators
IIIWho actually reads them
Your accounts have more than one audience
Books kept only to satisfy the tax filing will fail the first time somebody else looks. Each reader wants something different from the same ledger.
| Reader | What they are looking for, and what fails |
|---|---|
| Your auditor | Evidence supporting each balance and a clear audit trail. Fails on unreconciled control accounts, missing supporting documents and a chart of accounts that does not map to the reporting framework. |
| A lender | Cash generation, covenant compliance and reliability of the monthly numbers. Fails on management accounts that differ materially from the eventual audited position. |
| An acquirer's advisers | Quality of earnings, working capital normalisation and related-party transactions. Fails on undocumented revenue recognition and owner transactions mixed into the trading accounts. |
| The tax authorities | Consistency between the return, the financial statements and the withholding position. Fails when the three do not reconcile to each other. |
| A donor or grant funder | Expenditure traceable to the grant conditions and separately identifiable from other activity. Fails on pooled costs with no allocation basis. |
| Your board or shareholders | Whether the business made money, where, and what changed. Fails when reporting arrives too late to act on. |
| A parent company | Data in the group's format, on the group's timetable, reconciled to local statutory books. Fails on late submission and unexplained local-to-group differences. |
IVHow we work on accounting
Six disciplines that decide whether books hold up
01
Reconciliation before reporting
Bank, receivables, payables and intercompany balances are reconciled before any management accounts are released. A report built on unreconciled balances is a guess with a header.
02
Second-person review before anything leaves
Every deliverable is reviewed by a second qualified professional. This applies to a monthly management pack exactly as it applies to an audit opinion — proportionate to risk, but never skipped.
03
The right framework, established at the start
IFRS, IFRS for SMEs or AFRS for SSEs depending on your classification. Applying the wrong one is expensive to unwind, and it is usually discovered by an auditor rather than by the preparer.
04
A close calendar, not a monthly scramble
Fixed dates for cut-off, reconciliation, review and release, agreed at the start. You know when the numbers arrive, and so do we.
05
Documented so the next person can follow it
Chart of accounts documented, policies written down, judgements recorded. The test is whether someone new could take over the ledger without a handover conversation.
06
Kept to audit standard from the beginning
We maintain books as though they will be audited, because most of them are. Records prepared this way make the audit shorter, cheaper and considerably less argumentative.
These are the firm's controls applied to accounting work specifically. The full set, applied to every engagement of any type, is published.
VSystems and delivery
Your platform, whichever it is
We work in the system you already use rather than requiring a migration you did not ask for.
Cloud and SME accounting platforms
QuickBooksCertified ProAdvisors on the delivery team — Online and Desktop
XeroCloud bookkeeping, bank feeds and reporting
SageSage 50 and Sage Business Cloud
Zoho BooksWidely adopted across Pakistan and the Gulf
TallyPrimeThe default SME ledger in Pakistan and the GCC
Tally ERP 9Legacy installations and migration to TallyPrime
ERP platforms
SAPS/4HANA and Business One — finance module, master data and period close
OracleOracle Fusion and NetSuite financials
Microsoft DynamicsDynamics 365 Business Central and Finance
OdooAccounting, inventory and multi-company configuration
ERPNextOpen-source ERP deployments and chart of accounts design
Power BIManagement reporting and dashboards over any of the above
On ERP platforms we work at two levels. As your accounting team, we operate the finance module — transactions, reconciliations, period close and reporting. Where the requirement is implementation, configuration, migration or controls design, our technology practice leads it, with the accounting team specifying what the finance function actually needs from the build.
ERP implementation and IT governance →
Model 01
Fully outsourced
We are your finance function. Bookkeeping, payroll, reporting and compliance, with a named team and a fixed monthly fee.
SuitsBusinesses without an internal finance team, or foreign entities operating in Pakistan.
Model 02
Co-sourced
Your team keeps the daily ledger; we handle month-end close, review, reporting and the technical judgements.
SuitsBusinesses with a bookkeeper but no qualified oversight.
Model 03
Oversight only
Outsourced CFO and periodic review. We supervise, review and advise; your team executes.
SuitsEstablished finance teams needing senior judgement and independent challenge.
VICommon questions
Questions we are asked
Can you also audit the accounts you prepare?
Generally no. Preparing the records and then auditing them creates a self-review threat under the ICAP Code of Ethics — strictly prohibited for public interest entities, and dependent on materiality and safeguards for others. We tell you which applies at the outset. Many clients use us for accounting and a separate firm for audit, which is a perfectly normal arrangement and often the right one.
Our books are two years behind. Is that a problem?
It is common and it is fixable. We scope catch-up work separately from ongoing bookkeeping, because reconstruction is a different exercise with different risks — missing documentation, unavailable bank records, staff who have left. We tell you what is recoverable and what will have to be estimated and disclosed as such.
Which accounting framework applies to my company?
It depends on your classification under the Companies Act. Public interest and large-sized companies apply IFRS as notified in Pakistan; medium-sized companies apply IFRS for SMEs; small-sized companies apply the AFRS for Small-Sized Entities. Establishing this correctly at the start avoids an expensive restatement later.
Do you handle payroll compliance as well as calculation?
Yes — salary tax withholding, EOBI contributions, provincial social security, and provident or gratuity fund administration support, reconciled to the general ledger. These obligations fall on the employer, and defaults compound quietly until somebody looks.
Do we have to move to your accounting software?
No. We work in QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, Zoho Books, TallyPrime and Tally ERP 9, and operate the finance module in SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Odoo and ERPNext. We recommend a change only where the current system is genuinely the constraint, and we will explain why rather than asserting it.
How quickly can you produce monthly accounts?
We agree a close calendar at the start — fixed dates for cut-off, reconciliation, review and release — and work to it. The realistic timeline depends on how quickly source information reaches us, which is why the calendar sets obligations on both sides.
Can you prepare reporting for our overseas parent?
Yes. Group reporting packs in the parent's format and timetable, reconciled to local statutory books, with the local-to-group differences explained rather than left as a balancing figure.
How is outsourced accounting priced?
Normally a monthly retainer for an agreed scope, so it is budgetable. Catch-up and reconstruction work is scoped and priced separately, because its extent cannot be known until the current position has been established.
Related
Where accounting work usually leads
Let's work together
Tell us the state of the books.
Honestly, including the parts that are behind. A partner will tell you what it takes to get them right and what it costs to keep them that way.