The role of a chartered accountant is critical for professional financial planning, tax planning, and overall financial counselling for individuals and businesses. But how would you feel to communicate with a chartered accountant via email and phone, without face-to-face meetings and handing off hardcopy documents?
MPVD plays a pivotal role in making a difference as a chartered accounting firm in Kolkata that offers both in-person meetings and virtual chartered accounting services to domestic and NRI clients. In this blog, we will give you an overview of how virtual CA consultancies work and how to get the best services.
What Are Virtual Accountants, And How Do They Work?
The domain of chartered accounting is widely undergoing a digital shift around the world. Today, most of the traditional services like bookkeeping, payroll management, compliance and audits, GST filing, tax planning, financial planning, and many other tasks are done via digital technologies like cloud-based software, online applications, and data analytics tools. As a client, you can connect with your CA over email, phone calls, video calls, or via centralised accounting software.
Now, virtual accounting can often mean two things:
- It could mean the tasks that accountants do using virtual software and tools to improve their services
- It could mean an accountant who is available to work online instead of from an office.
The latter is the true definition; a virtual accountant is available through internet-based communication and work processes.
Software and technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and process automation can break down a lot of the complexities associated with the administration and management of big data. The role of the chartered accountant in this virtual realm is to sustain actionable insights and instil intellectual reasoning.
What Virtual Accountants Can Do
The prospects for location-agnostic accounting services in India are still largely untapped, as consumers and businesses alike prefer to interact with CAs in person. While most companies outsource a third-party chartered accountant, during the inception, the need to hire in-house becomes
Virtual accountants can do a lot more than just keep your books; they have a key role to play in developing, storing, and transmitting vital accounting data, and presenting it in the most user-friendly electronic form. Below are some of the core attributes that any business can delegate to a virtual accounting firm:
- Virtual Audits: Plan and support virtual audits to verify the financial data of a person or organisation
- Payroll management: Calculating payroll adjustments, taxes, and payments related to company policies.
- Invoicing and financial statements: Virtual accountants can do so much over the mail and through telecommunication, from developing invoices, calling payees on behalf of you, preparing financial statements, and keeping company policies up to date and compliant with current regulations.
- Accounting ledger maintenance: Virtual accountants construct general ledgers. These ledgers are then utilised by chartered accountants to generate financial reports and do additional analysis.
- Company Formation: Virtual chartered accountants can also be your legal guide in company formation and company law matters. From setting up your company, company registration, tax registration, GST filing and lots more.
The benefits of paperless accounting and real-time reporting have redefined the compatibility and performance of remote accountants, in the fast-paced world and rapid change in government regulations.
These services are highly cost-effective for businesses over in-house accounting departments. While businesses would eventually feel the need to hire in-house accountants as they grow, for new and small businesses, outsourced, virtual services can bring a host of resources at a lower cost, and enhance efficiency, security and consistency.
Would You Consider Hiring a Virtual Accountant?
With a strong ambition to enhance both operational efficiency and outputs, the financial industry has been quite swift in adopting advances in automation for figure crunching and modifying business procedures.
Businesses, entrepreneurs, and individual taxpayers can decrease the number of time-consuming chores by outsourcing their accounting requirements to a virtual CA.
Because everything is recorded on a single server or program, the services are more efficient and easy, as well as cost-effective. This lowers reporting errors, involves less paperwork, and allows accounting firms and businesses to easily retrieve historical tax returns and financial information. That is a worthwhile solution.