Outsourced Accounting Services in Australia
Your bookkeeper reconciles the bank. Nobody owns the year end. The loan account a director drew on, the depreciation schedule, the report ASIC expects, all of it surfaces in October when your tax agent asks for a file nobody kept. Outsourced accounting services close that gap, and ours run on fixed fee plans starting at less than USD 250 a month.
What Outsourced Accounting Actually Covers
Outsourced accounting is a third party running the accounting layer above your bookkeeping: the monthly close, the general ledger, the reconciliations that feed statutory reporting, management accounts, and the year end file your registered tax agent works from. You keep the entity, the bank account and the software subscription.
The distinction matters when you are buying, because most providers blur it. Bookkeeping records what happened. Accounting decides how it is treated, which account it lands in, and what that does to your reported profit and your tax position. A transaction coded correctly by a bookkeeper can still be classified wrongly for reporting, and nobody finds out until the year end. If the transaction layer is all you need, our Australian bookkeeping service covers it on its own, and payroll outsourcing runs as a separate engagement.
What Outsourced Accounting Costs in Australia
What Australian providers charge
Published monthly fees on Australian provider sites run from about AUD 99 for a light dashboard product, through AUD 500 to AUD 2,500 for a fixed fee practice doing a real monthly close, up to AUD 6,000 where an embedded team owns the whole finance function. Offshore labour is sold separately at roughly AUD 20 an hour, with the review and the lodgement staying on your desk. Those three things get quoted as if they are the same purchase and they are not, which is why comparing accounting and bookkeeping services on headline price tells you almost nothing.
What the in house hire costs
Jobs and Skills Australia puts median weekly earnings for Accountants at AUD 2,003, across 215,500 people employed in the occupation. That annualises to AUD 104,156. Add the superannuation guarantee at 12 per cent, AUD 12,499, and one qualified accountant costs AUD 116,655 before payroll tax, workers compensation, leave loading, software licences or the three months the desk sits empty after a resignation. None of the pages currently ranking for this work publish that arithmetic.
| Cost line | One in house accountant | GATP Solutions |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary at the median | AUD 104,156 a year | One fixed monthly fee |
| Superannuation guarantee at 12 per cent | AUD 12,499 a year | Included |
| Subtotal | AUD 116,655 a year | One fixed monthly fee |
| Payroll tax | Applies above your state threshold | Included |
| Workers compensation | Premium on wages | Included |
| Accounting software | Separate subscription | You keep your own file |
| Cover during annual leave | The close stops | Team coverage |
Built for Australian Reporting, Not Adapted to It
Every rate and threshold below was checked against the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on 22 September 2026. This is the part of the file a bookkeeper is not engaged to watch and a tax agent only sees once a year.
Division 7A Loan Accounts
When a director or shareholder takes money out of a private company and it is not a wage or a franked dividend, it becomes a Division 7A loan and it has to carry interest at the benchmark interest rate. For the income year ending 30 June 2027 that rate is 8.77 per cent, up from 8.37 per cent for the year ending 30 June 2026. It is fixed before the income year starts and does not move if the Reserve Bank revises its published figure later. The failure is almost never the rate. It is a drawings account nobody reclassified during the year, found in May with no complying loan agreement behind it.
The ASIC Large Proprietary Test
A proprietary company is large for a financial year if it meets at least two of three tests: consolidated revenue of AUD 50 million or more, consolidated gross assets of AUD 25 million or more, or 100 or more employees at the end of the financial year. Cross that line and you must prepare and lodge a financial report and a director report, audited unless ASIC grants relief. Growing companies cross it on the employee count first, usually in a year when nobody was counting, and the audit then has to be run against a ledger that was never kept to an auditable standard.
Sustainability Reporting by 1 July 2027
Sustainability reporting obligations began phasing in on 1 January 2025 and reach most large proprietary companies by 1 July 2027. The reports are prepared and lodged under Chapter 2M of the Corporations Act, the same chapter as the financial report. If your company is anywhere near the large proprietary thresholds, the data collection starts well before the first report is due, and the chart of accounts is where that work either becomes routine or becomes a project.
Who Signs and Who Lodges
The company tax rate is 25 per cent for a base rate entity and 30 per cent otherwise, and which side of that line you land on is decided by how income has been classified in your ledger all year. We prepare the position. We do not lodge it. Under the Tax Agent Services Act only an agent registered with the Tax Practitioners Board may provide tax agent or BAS services for a fee in Australia, offshore work sits under that agent supervision and control, and the arrangement is disclosed in your engagement letter. Any provider vague about that line is worth a second question.
The Work We Run Every Month
Five things make up the outsourced accounting and bookkeeping services Australian companies actually buy, and all five run inside your own file rather than a system you cannot see.
Monthly close and general ledger
Accruals, prepayments, depreciation, intercompany balances and loan accounts reviewed every month instead of once a year, so the ledger you report from is the ledger your agent finishes from.
Accounts payable and receivable
Supplier bills entered, approved and scheduled so nothing is paid twice or paid late, invoices raised the day the work is finished, and the debtors past sixty days chased by someone whose job it is. Our accounts payable process runs to your approval rules, not ours.
Statutory and management reporting
A profit and loss, balance sheet and cash position on a date you can plan around, plus the schedules that sit behind a financial report if you are approaching the large proprietary thresholds.
Year end file and agent handover
Working papers, reconciled control accounts, a fixed asset register that agrees to the ledger, and the Division 7A position documented while the year is still open. Your registered agent gets a file they can sign rather than rebuild.
Catch up and clean up
Two quarters behind or three years behind, the file is rebuilt before anything else starts. That clean up work is where most engagements begin, because there is no point reporting from a ledger nobody trusts.
Offshore, Onshore and How to Compare Them
Where an offshore team helps and where it does not
Offshore bookkeeping services are sold on hourly cost, and that is the wrong reason to buy them. The cost only converts into a saving when the offshore team owns a complete process end to end, with the review inside that same team. Buy seat hours instead and you have moved the typing offshore while keeping the review, the chasing and the responsibility on your own desk, which is how the arrangement quietly costs more than it saved.
The three real disadvantages
An outsourced accounting bookkeeping arrangement has genuine downsides and they are worth naming. You lose the person who walks past your desk, so anything you used to fix by asking now needs a documented process. You depend on the handover, so the first two months are harder than the twelfth. And responsibility for what the numbers mean stays with you as the director, whoever prepares them. Any provider telling you it carries the liability for your reporting position is describing something it cannot deliver.
The Industries We Already Know
We work with owners across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. Three industries break in predictable places, and the break is in the accounting layer rather than the bookkeeping one.
Real estate
Multiple entities, intercompany loans, and a development in progress that has to be capitalised correctly rather than expensed as it goes. Real estate accounting fails at consolidation and at the loan accounts between the entities, which is also where Division 7A surfaces.
Healthcare
Practitioner payments sit between employee and contractor, and that single classification drives superannuation, payroll tax and workers compensation at once. Healthcare accounting starts with classifying every engagement correctly rather than consistently.
E-commerce
Platform settlements arrive net of fees, refunds, chargebacks and advertising, so revenue gets recognised at the net figure and real costs vanish. E-commerce accounting has to unpick the settlement before any margin number means anything.
Why Owners Move Their Accounting to Us
The same team every month
One team holds your file, so nobody re-learns your chart of accounts each quarter. Most comparisons of the best outsourced accounting services come down to whether the second year is as good as the first, and continuity decides that.
Hours built around the Australian day
A question asked on Tuesday morning is answered on Tuesday. Offshore only works when the overlap is real, so the working day is set against Australian hours.
A fixed fee agreed before the month starts
You know the number in advance and a difficult month does not arrive as a larger invoice. Scope sets the fee, not the hours the file happens to consume.
A handover your agent can sign
Your registered agent receives reconciled control accounts and working papers, so their time goes on the tax position rather than on repair.
What We Guarantee
Your close is finished and your reports are with you by an agreed date each month, and if we are going to miss it we tell you before you notice. Your year end file reaches your registered agent with time to review it, never on the deadline. Your data stays in your own Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks subscription under your ownership, so if you ever leave you take everything with you and nothing has to be rebuilt.
Regulatory Compliance Assurance
On Time Delivery Guarantee
Monthly, quarterly, and annual reports are delivered without delays. If we miss a compliance deadline due to our fault, we pay a 50 percent fee.
Common Questions About Outsourced Accounting in Australia
How much does it cost to outsource an accountant?
Published Australian fees run from about AUD 500 to AUD 2,500 a month for a fixed fee practice doing a monthly close, and up to AUD 6,000 where a team owns the whole finance function. Benchmark it against the alternative rather than against another quote. One in house accountant costs AUD 104,156 at the median wage plus AUD 12,499 of superannuation, so AUD 116,655 a year, roughly AUD 9,721 a month before payroll tax, software and cover during leave.
Which companies offer outsourced accounting services in Australia?
The market splits three ways. Large firms such as BDO and Grant Thornton sell it as a business services line. Australian mid market practices sell a fixed fee monthly close. Offshore providers, including us, sell a dedicated team working inside your own file at Australian hours. Compare outsourced accounting firms on who holds the file, who reviews the work and who lodges, because those three answers differ far more than the price does.
What is outsourcing accounting services?
It is handing the accounting function above your bookkeeping to a third party: the monthly close, the general ledger, reconciliations, management reporting and the year end file. You keep the entity, the bank account and the software subscription. The provider does the work and the checking, and your registered agent lodges.
What is the Division 7A benchmark interest rate this year?
It is 8.77 per cent for the income year ending 30 June 2027, up from 8.37 per cent for the year ending 30 June 2026. It applies to loans from a private company to a shareholder or an associate. The rate is set before the income year starts and does not change if the Reserve Bank revises its published figure afterwards.
When does my company have to lodge audited accounts with ASIC?
When it is a large proprietary company, which means meeting at least two of three tests: consolidated revenue of AUD 50 million or more, consolidated gross assets of AUD 25 million or more, or 100 or more employees at the end of the financial year. A large proprietary company must prepare and lodge a financial report and a director report, audited unless ASIC grants relief.
How do I switch without losing my history?
If your file already sits in your own Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks subscription, switching is a change of user access rather than a migration, and every historical transaction stays where it is. Ask two questions of anyone you are considering. Who owns the subscription, and what happens to the file if you leave.
Start Outsourced Accounting in Australia With GATP
Send us your most recent file and your last financial report. We will tell you what shape the ledger is in, what it would take to get the year end file ready, and what the monthly fee would be.