Outsourced bookkeeping, with someone you hire directly

Offshore bookkeeping services: what your bookkeeper does, stage by stage

Accurate books come from steady routine, not a catch-up the week before BAS is due. A dedicated offshore bookkeeper gives that routine one owner who works inside your file, to your checklist, every day.

• Daily: code bank feeds, capture receipts and bills through Dext or Hubdoc, and match them to transactions.
• Weekly: enter supplier invoices, prepare a payment batch for your approver, allocate customer receipts and follow up overdue accounts.
• Each pay cycle: collect timesheets and leave requests, and prepare payroll inputs for review before the pay run.
• Month and quarter end: reconcile GST, prepare BAS workpapers and supporting schedules, and list what is missing before your accountant reviews the file.

If you run an accounting or bookkeeping practice, the same person can work across several client files to your practice standards.

What stays with you or your BAS agent

Keep approval separate from processing. Your bookkeeper prepares the work and flags exceptions. Your team keeps:

• Releasing payments and pay runs
• Tax positions, BAS review and lodgement through your registered BAS or tax agent
• Advice to clients and anything that needs a registration

Agree the entities, transaction volumes and deadlines before the search starts, so the role has a realistic workload from week one.

How we test bookkeepers before you meet them

Much of the bookkeeping outsourcing Philippines firms sell is a shared team working whichever file comes next. We recruit one person for your file. A search typically starts with 1,000+ candidates from job advertising, direct headhunting and referrals through vetted local networks. Of that starting pool, about 40% pass CV and quality screening, 20% the video screen, 10% the practical assessment and 5% the structured interview. Around 2% reach finalist review, and you receive a shortlist of 3–4 in about 2 weeks.

For this role the practical assessment could include a bank reconciliation with a few deliberate errors to find, plus coding a month of transactions to a sample chart of accounts. In your interviews, look for three things: a clear explanation of why an account is out of balance, a habit of asking before guessing a code, and notes a reviewer can check in minutes.

Bookkeeping outsourcing costs: agency fees or a one-time fee

With a managed agency, you pay a fee every month on top of your bookkeeper’s salary, for as long as you keep them. One published example: Staff Domain lists $1,099 per person per month, about $13,188 a year, plus $1,200 per hire (checked October 2026). Keep that bookkeeper for three years and the agency fees come to about $40,764, before any salary.

With Tarino you pay a one-time fee, and your bookkeeper keeps their full salary because you pay them directly. You can compare agency fees with a one-time fee, or work out the monthly markup on your own numbers.

Your first month with a new bookkeeper

Offshore bookkeeping works best when access grows with trust. Start with read access and bank feed coding, then add payables and payroll inputs as your reviews come back clean. Write down your month-end checklist, even if it lives in your head today. Before you make an offer, read how 13th month pay works in the Philippines so the package is complete. If your backlog is really year-end accounts and tax returns, an offshore accountant may suit you better.

More than 95% of Tarino placements are still in the role at 6 months, and 6-month replacement cover applies to the same role. See each stage of how we hire.