An accounting-services RFQ should describe the work well enough that providers price the same responsibility. A request for monthly accounts with no detail about entities, source records or review leaves bidders to assume different workloads. Build the brief with a qualified finance owner and separate recurring accounting from cleanup, specialist tax work and audit.
An accounting-services RFQ should describe the work well enough that providers price the same responsibility. A request for monthly accounts with no detail about entities, source records or review leaves bidders to assume different workloads. Build the brief with a qualified finance owner and separate recurring accounting from cleanup, specialist tax work and audit.
List entities, systems, reporting periods, transaction types and relevant complexities. Provide representative volumes and explain their basis. Identify known data gaps, unreconciled balances and the last accepted close. Do not imply that historic records are clean if that has not been established.
Ask bidders to state what further information they need and which assumptions affect the price. A volume estimate should not become an unlimited promise of work if the underlying transactions differ materially from the examples supplied.
Specify required reconciliations, supporting schedules, management reports and query logs. Have the finance owner set appropriate technical requirements. Ask who prepares, reviews and signs off each output and what evidence is retained.
For example, a monthly pack may need an explanation of overdue receivables and unresolved bank items, not only summary statements. The RFQ should identify those outputs so a provider cannot meet the brief by exporting a few software reports without review.
Describe how source documents will be supplied and who answers questions. Define the approval boundary for payments, payroll inputs and submissions where relevant. Use appropriate permissions and avoid treating full system or banking control as a default requirement for outsourced bookkeeping.
Request record ownership, retention, export and exit arrangements. If the provider proposes a proprietary platform, ask what the buyer can retrieve and maintain after termination. The commercial value of the service depends partly on continuity of access to the business's own records.
Ask for recurring fees, cleanup work, additional entities, volume changes and excluded tasks separately. Require precise descriptions of tax-agent or audit services and verify relevant status through appropriate channels. Explain the evaluation and first-cycle review process. The resulting proposals should allow the buyer to compare a defined accounting service, rather than select between attractive monthly prices whose assumptions about review, responsibility and extra work are incompatible.
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