Virtual assistants for accounting & bookkeeping firms

The unlicensed work that surrounds every engagement: onboarding new clients, issuing organizers, chasing missing documents through your portal, keeping the deadline calendar, sending and chasing e-signatures, delivering finished returns, answering the phone in season and preparing WIP reports. The assistant works inside Karbon, TaxDome, Canopy or your workflow tool in your hours and sends an end-of-day report. Tax advice, return preparation, review and signing stay with your preparers and licensed professionals.

Same group, two jobs. LedgerBPO is the accounting and billing division: bookkeeping, reconciliations, accounts payable and receivable, billing and collections for firms and their clients. AssistBPO is the staffing division: practice assistants, receptionists, onboarding specialists and data entry staff who keep the firm running around the books. Many firms use both, with one team lead across the pair, so a document chased by the assistant lands with the bookkeeper without a hand-off email.

By working only inside your systems, under your written information security plan. Assistants are background-checked employees under NDA, use managed devices with MFA and no local storage, and access your portal and workflow tool through accounts you control and can revoke. We never receive tax documents by personal email. Before onboarding, your firm confirms its Section 7216 disclosure position and any client consents needed, and we document the access scope so it maps to the FTC Safeguards Rule.

Karbon, TaxDome, Canopy, Jetpack Workflow, Financial Cents and Practice Ignition for workflow and engagement letters; SmartVault, ShareFile, Liscio and the portals built into TaxDome and Canopy for documents; QuickBooks Online and Xero for client lists and time; Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace for email and calendars. Tax software itself, such as Drake, Lacerte, ProConnect, UltraTax or CCH Axcess, is used only for status lookups and e-signature tracking where you grant that access.

Plans depend on hours, desks and coverage. Get a staffing plan within 1 business day. For orientation, PayScale puts the average US virtual assistant at $19.45 an hour, an in-house assistant costs $4,700 to $9,100 a month fully loaded (PayScale and Indeed via Wishup, 2026) and offshore managed assistants are typically published at $640 to $2,400 a month full-time. AssistBPO prices per named person for a block of hours, with seasonal pods added and removed on notice.

Yes. Most firms keep one dedicated practice assistant year-round and add a seasonal pod of 2 to 4 with a team lead from January to the April deadline, then keep one through the October extension deadline. Because the seasonal staff are trained on the same desk manual and workflow tool, ramp takes days. UK firms scale for the January self assessment peak and Australian firms for the October to May lodgment program.

Yes, in local hours and vocabulary. UK practices get self assessment and Companies House deadline tracking, Making Tax Digital reminders and AML document collection for the MLRO under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. Canadian firms get T1 and T2 season support, CRA deadline tracking and bilingual French support available on request. Australian firms get lodgment program tracking and document chasing for the registered agent, with AEST-shift coverage available on request. Nobody at AssistBPO prepares or lodges anything.

Yes, about process: what is missing, how to use the portal, when the return will be delivered, where to sign. The assistant answers those from your approved responses. Any question about a deduction, a notice, an estimate amount or what a client should do is routed to the preparer with a note in the workflow tool. Clients hear the firm's name and a consistent voice, and the team lead scores a sample of calls and messages monthly.