How Outsourcing the Finance Function Gave Unlocking Language Better Financial Information

As a business becomes busier, its finance function can become harder to manage.

There are more transactions to process, more invoices to raise, more information to keep on top of and more opportunities for something to be missed.

That was the challenge facing Unlocking Language.

The business needed more than somebody simply keeping Xero up to date. It needed a finance process that could keep pace with the organisation and give the people running it confidence in the numbers.

The Challenge: Too Much Finance Admin and Not Enough Visibility

Like many owner-managed businesses, Unlocking Language had reached a point where managing the finance function was taking increasing amounts of time and attention.

Bookkeeping needed to be maintained.

Sales invoices needed to be raised.

Transactions needed to be processed correctly.

And the financial records needed to be sufficiently accurate and up to date for the business to understand its position.

When these responsibilities are spread between different people or squeezed around somebody's main role, it's easy for finance work to become reactive.

Something gets dealt with because it is urgent rather than because there is a clear, consistent process behind it.

The result isn't necessarily dramatic accounting errors.

Often it's simply less confidence that everything has been dealt with.

Moving to an Outsourced Finance Function

MBS took on more of Unlocking Language's day-to-day finance work.

That included bookkeeping and sales invoicing, with the aim of creating a more consistent finance process rather than simply completing individual accounting tasks.

The principle was straightforward:

give one team greater responsibility for keeping the financial records accurate, up to date and usable.

Technology played an important role.

Xero and modern bookkeeping tools helped automate routine processing and reduce unnecessary manual work.

But automation wasn't the end of the process.

The work still needed appropriate review, queries needed investigating and somebody needed to take responsibility for whether the resulting financial information made sense.

Finding Income That Hadn't Been Invoiced

One of the practical benefits of taking greater responsibility for the finance function was having better visibility over the invoicing process.

During the work, income was identified that should have been invoiced but hadn't been.

That matters for an obvious reason: work that has been completed but never invoiced doesn't turn into cash.

But it also demonstrates a broader point about outsourced finance.

A good finance function isn't simply about recording transactions after they happen.

The processes around those transactions matter too.

Are invoices being raised?

Are customers paying?

Are transactions being recorded consistently?

Are queries being followed up?

And does somebody have responsibility for making sure those things happen?

Why Reliable Bookkeeping Matters

It is easy to think of bookkeeping as an administrative function.

But bookkeeping is the foundation for almost every other piece of financial information a business uses.

If the underlying records are incomplete or inaccurate, the reports produced from them can be misleading.

That matters whether those reports are being reviewed by the owner, used to prepare management accounts or analysed using AI.

Software can only work with the information available to it.

For Unlocking Language, improving the day-to-day finance process meant creating a better foundation for the financial information used elsewhere in the business.

Using Technology Without Removing Human Oversight

Modern bookkeeping should make good use of technology.

Bank feeds, document capture, automation and accounting software can remove significant amounts of repetitive manual work.

At MBS, we want technology doing the jobs technology is good at.

But that doesn't mean removing people from the process.

Transactions still need to be treated correctly. Unusual items need investigating. Reconciliations need reviewing. And sometimes somebody simply needs to look at something and ask why it doesn't make sense.

The aim isn't to replace the finance function with software.

It's to use technology to make the finance function more efficient while retaining experienced human oversight where it matters.

One Team Looking After More of the Finance Function

There is another advantage to bringing bookkeeping and accounting closer together.

The bookkeeping doesn't exist in isolation.

The same financial records ultimately feed into VAT returns, management accounts, year-end accounts and tax work.

When different providers look after each part independently, responsibility can become fragmented.

An outsourced finance function can give an owner one team with greater visibility over the financial records from the day-to-day bookkeeping through to the accounting and reporting built on top of it.

That doesn't mean every business needs to outsource its entire finance function.

For some, an internal bookkeeper or finance team will be the right solution.

But where a business doesn't want to build that function internally, outsourcing can provide access to a broader finance team without employing each role individually.

What Changed for Unlocking Language?

The most important outcome wasn't simply that bookkeeping tasks were outsourced.

It was greater structure around the finance function.

That meant:

• Bookkeeping being kept up to date

• Sales invoicing being handled more consistently

• Missed invoicing being identified

• Better use of Xero and finance technology

• Human review sitting behind the automation

• More reliable financial information

• Less finance administration sitting with the business

Ultimately, good outsourced finance should make the finance function feel less fragmented.

The business should know who is responsible for it, the records should be maintained properly and the resulting numbers should be information the owner can actually use.

Could Outsourced Finance Work for Your Business?

Outsourcing isn't automatically the right answer.

If you already have a strong internal finance team, it may make more sense to keep that expertise inside the business.

But if bookkeeping, invoicing and other finance responsibilities are being spread between the owner, administrators and external accountants, bringing more of that work together can make the whole process easier to manage.

The question isn't simply:

“Who does our bookkeeping?”

A better question is:

“Who is responsible for making sure our finance function works?”

For Unlocking Language, outsourcing more of that responsibility to MBS provided a clearer answer.