From Revolving Door to Reliable Team
How RSG Group Found Success By Offshoring Its Accounting Through EVES
Recruiting accountants these days is tough.
The growing shortage of CPAs, lingering repercussions from the pandemic, and shifting attitudes towards work (especially from Millennials & Gen Z), has made finding dependable accounting staff very challenging for many organizations.
RSG Group in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area was no exception.
Their Controller Kerry Smalley was struggling to find accountants who were reliable, detail-oriented, and affordable. As he tells it, that’s become a tall order:
“We had one employee who was great, & she did really good work. But she knew she was great, and the market’s hot in DFW because a lot of businesses have relocated here since the pandemic. So she was able to get a job making more, and that priced her out of our range. Then we brought in a guy that couldn’t stay awake. He kept falling asleep at his desk. After him we brought in another guy who was with us for two weeks, then he got an offer for a work-from-home gig, and RSG Group wasn’t offering WFH at that time, so he left. I’ve had at least three people who on their first day of work just didn’t bother showing up. That’s just kind of the revolving door we’ve been dealing with here in accounting.”
By August of 2023, employee turnover reduced Kerry’s 5-person team down to one person. This led to an “incredibly difficult time” for Kerry & his single remaining team member. Despite being short-staffed, they were still on the hook for producing timely, accurate financials which executive leadership & the operations team relied upon.
As a stopgap measure, Kerry brought in different consultants from a temp agency to help out. However, he needed a more sustainable solution for the long-term.
Then his CFO was referred by an industry colleague to Elite Virtual Employment Solutions (EVES). EVES, specializes in providing top-tier accountants and other financial staff offshore from the Philippines. The Filipino accountants are just as equally qualified as US staff, and undergo similar certification requirements.
The big difference, however, is that their labor rates are up to 70% lower. Additionally, by offshoring with EVES, companies like RSG also save up to 50% on overhead while enjoying relief from an excess of HR administrative burdens.
Nonetheless, Kerry was initially very skeptical about offshoring. What would it be like working with people in a distant time zone? How reliable were they? Were they as meticulous as he required his people to be?
Eventually Kerry overcame his reluctance and decided to try offshoring a single position – senior accountant. After interviewing some suitable candidates, he began his offshoring journey by bringing on board an applicant EVES provided him named Charles.
At the outset, Charles was tasked with helping RSG manage its cash positions, perform cash position reporting, and do reconciliations by individual location.
(picture at left is NOT Charles)
He proved so adept, that Kerry increased Charles’ responsibilities by having him help prepare the forecast. Now Charles pulls in the banking data, analyzes it, and gets it on to a worksheet to categorize inflows and outflows. Kerry then recruited Charles to help out further by recording revenue entries & handling sales tax reporting, all of which he does with a high level of accuracy. Offloading these tasks to Charles has reduced a major strain on Kerry’s workload.
Kerry states that Charles has “exceeded every expectation” he had. He’s “very respectful, very happy, grateful for the work, grateful for any training that I give him. And he tells me all the time – thank you for showing me how to do that.”
Kerry continues on about Charles, “He’s getting work done while you’re sleeping, right? So you come into the office and then the work’s all ready for you, which is a huge benefit because of the time zone difference. It does present some challenges though because I’ve worked some odd hours to try to do training and so forth, but I would just say that his willingness to take on any task, the accuracy and willingness to get it right, and then uh the follow through – Charles sends me an update every day like here’s what I worked on. This is what I was able to finish today. Here’s where I have a question. And it’s like, I can’t get that from employees here. If I ask my local staff what they worked on, I get accused of being a micromanager.”
Since starting with one Senior Accountant, RSG has offshored two more accounting positions with EVES. Consequently, Kerry’s team is now once again providing executives and operations with timely, accurate financials to support their decision-making. That in turn allows RSG to be responsive to its customers, and optimize corporate effectiveness.
Kerry continues being pleasantly surprised by his offshore team’s ability to take on more work, and higher-level work. He concludes by saying, “If I had my choice, I would staff my entire team from there. That’s what I would do, because at this point in time, they’re more reliable. They work harder. The attention to details is there. And it’s just been a very, very pleasant experience.”
