What a weekly review with your offshore team should cover
A weekly review with your offshore accounting team should cover four things: last week's corrections and the checklist step each one belongs to, deadlines in the next two weeks, anything blocking access or tools, and one change you'll make. Thirty minutes is enough if you check the numbers before the call, not during it.
Below is the agenda we'd give a firm owner running one bookkeeper or accountant offshore, what to write down afterwards, what to stop doing, and how to pick a slot when the team is eight hours behind you.
Serkan Honeine, Co-founder, CoSauce
Published · Last updated
Check four numbers before the call
The review goes badly when it becomes the place where you find out what happened. Find out before. Ten minutes in your practice software and your review log gives you these four numbers, and they decide what the call is about.
| Number | Where it comes from | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Rework | Files that came back from your reviewer with a correction, as a count and as a share of files handed over. | It should fall week on week for the first two months, then stay low. A jump means new work or a missing checklist step. |
| Turnaround | Days from handover to ready-for-review, against the deadline you set for each file. | Anything that arrived late, and anything due this week that hasn't started. |
| Reviewer hours | Time your own people spent checking the offshore work. | If it stays high while rework falls, your reviewer is still checking every file out of habit. If it rises, the work got harder or the checklist slipped. |
| Queue | Files handed over and not yet started, plus files waiting on a client or on an answer from your firm. | A queue that grows two weeks running, and the age of the oldest item. The oldest item is usually a question nobody answered. |
Rework, reviewer hours and turnaround are the measures from our article on moving your firm to offshore bookkeeping. The queue is added because once the first two months are over, that is where the problems hide.
The 30-minute agenda
Run it in the same order every week, so everyone knows what to bring.
Minutes 0 to 10: last week's corrections
Go through each correction your reviewer made and name the checklist step it belongs to. If it belongs to no step, that's the finding: add the step. If the same step has come up two weeks running, either the wording is unclear or the person hasn't understood it, and you work out which. Don't re-teach the whole file.
Minutes 10 to 20: deadlines in the next two weeks
List what's due: BAS, payroll runs, month-end for particular clients, anything with a date on it. For each one, agree when the file needs to be ready for review, who reviews it, and what's still waiting on a client. Two weeks is far enough ahead to chase a client for missing statements and still make the date.
Minutes 20 to 25: access and tools
Ask one question: what did you need this week that you couldn't get to? Expired logins, a client file nobody added, a bank feed that stopped, a question that sat in someone's inbox since Tuesday. Most of these take five minutes to fix, and cost a day each week they're left.
Minutes 25 to 30: one thing to move or add
Pick one change for the coming week. Add a client to the bookkeeper's list, hand over payroll, drop a check your reviewer no longer needs on every file, or write a rule for something that keeps coming up. One change a week is enough. Pick three and nobody can tell which one worked.
What to write down after it
Write five lines straight after the call. One page, shared with the offshore person and whoever reviews their work.
- The four numbers for the week, next to last week's.
- Each correction and the checklist step it belongs to, with any step you added or reworded.
- The deadlines due in the next two weeks, each with a ready-for-review date and a reviewer's name.
- Anything blocked, who unblocks it and by when.
- The one change for the week.
Keep every week's notes in one place. After a BAS quarter, twelve pages will show whether rework is falling and where your reviewers' time goes, which is what you need when deciding what to move next.
An example of a week's notes
The shape, with a made-up firm and made-up numbers.
Week of 9 November. Review Tuesday 10 November, 4pm Sydney, 7am Johannesburg.
Numbers. 22 files handed over, 3 came back with corrections (last week 5). 20 on time, 2 late, both waiting on client bank statements. Reviewer hours 4.5 (last week 6). Queue 7, oldest item 9 days: a question about a director's loan account that nobody answered.
Corrections. GST coded on the full amount of two insurance invoices that include stamp duty. Step 6, GST on mixed invoices. Reworded the step and added both invoices as examples. Wrong tracking category on one wages journal. Step 11, a one-off, no change.
Deadlines. Two quarterly BAS, lodgement date per the ATO calendar. Ready for review by Friday 20 November, reviewer named. Payroll for client A runs Thursday as usual. Month-end for clients B, C and D ready by 4 December.
Blocked. Director's loan question goes to the partner today. Bank feed for client C stopped on 3 November, owner to reconnect it tomorrow.
One change. Add payroll for client E from next week. Reviewer checks the first two runs in full.
What to stop doing
- Status readouts. "Here's what I did this week" tells you nothing you can't see in Xero.
- Task-by-task walkthroughs. Opening every file on the call turns 30 minutes into 90, and teaches the person that nothing is finished until you have looked at it. Review happens before the call. The call is for the pattern.
- Skipping the week because nothing broke. A clean week is the week to move something, and it still needs the numbers written down so you can see the trend.
- Running it from memory. Without the four numbers, the call drifts to whatever annoyed someone most recently.
Picking a slot across the time difference
South Africa is eight hours behind Sydney, nine in daylight saving, so you get an hour or two of shared time late in your day. That shared hour is where the review goes. A 4pm Sydney call is 8am in Johannesburg in winter and 7am during daylight saving. Set the invite in Sydney time and leave it there. If you move it to suit Johannesburg when the clocks change, it lands at 5pm for you and people start skipping it.
Brisbane has no daylight saving, so it stays eight hours all year. Perth is six hours behind, so the shared time there is longer.
Pick Monday or Tuesday. Last week's corrections are still fresh and there is a full week to act on the deadlines list. Friday reviews produce good intentions and a weekend. Put the four numbers in the invite the day before.
If your firm needs the offshore person live through your morning for client calls, the eight hours is a real problem and no agenda fixes it. That needs a night shift in South Africa, not a better calendar.
How we run it
Each week we go through what came back for rework and what's coming up. A co-founder runs your account, and a co-founder joins your weekly review, which is part of how we work on every account. Our bookkeepers and accountants work in your own Xero or practice software, under named logins and your access rules. The four numbers come out of your own system, not a report we prepare. You set the checklist and the deadlines, and we manage the person against them. That is how our outsourced bookkeeping service, the Offshore finance desk, is set up. Lodgement and sign-off stay with your firm.
Questions
Does the offshore person need to be on the call?
Yes. A review about someone without them turns into a complaint session, and they're the one who can tell you why the correction happened. If the slot only works for them with a night shift, change the slot, not the attendance.
Do we still need a daily standup?
Not for one bookkeeper working a handover. Questions go in a shared channel and get answered when your day starts. With three or more people offshore, a ten-minute standup in the shared hour keeps blockers out of the weekly review.
When can we drop to a fortnightly review?
We'd keep it weekly. Once rework is low, the time goes on what to move next. A fortnight is long enough for a queue to grow or a deadline to slip without anyone noticing.
Next step
If the weekly call with your offshore bookkeeper has turned into a status meeting, book a call with me. Bring your last month of review notes, or tell me there aren't any. We'll go through the numbers we'd look at and how we'd set the agenda, and if we're not the right fit for the work, I'll say so.