Hire a Remote Accountant or Bookkeeper

What a remote accountant or bookkeeper does

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) describes accountants and auditors as people who prepare and examine financial records, and bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks as people who compute, classify and record data to help organisations keep complete and accurate financial records. We use those US descriptions only as a plain definition. They say nothing about pay or hiring conditions in other countries.

For a small business, a remote finance hire covers some mix of two kinds of work. Bookkeeping is the routine record: coding transactions, matching bank and card statements to the ledger, entering supplier bills, raising customer invoices and chasing payment. Accounting is the judgement layer on top: the month-end close, financial statements, budgets, explaining variances, and support for tax and audit. Our glossary entry on the bookkeeper job title explains how the two titles overlap, and our guide to tasks to outsource to a bookkeeper lists tasks that businesses hand to a bookkeeper.

Decide whether you need a bookkeeper or an accountant

BLS says a bachelor's degree in accounting or a related field is typically required to become an accountant or auditor, and that certification such as becoming a licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) may improve job prospects. For clerks it says entry requirements vary: some employers require or prefer college courses or a degree in accounting, while others hire workers with a high school diploma who learn some skills on the job. Treat that as a prompt to write down what your own work needs, not as a rule.

A very small business may hire one person for both layers. That can work if you keep the approval of payments with someone else, as described in the controls section below.

Skills to test

• The reporting framework. Name the one you report under, such as US GAAP, IFRS or a local standard, and test for it. Frameworks differ, so familiarity with one does not carry over automatically.
• Cloud accounting software. Name the package you use in the job advert and ask the candidate to walk you through real tasks in it. A candidate who knows a different package can still be tested on the underlying tasks.
• Reconciliation. Matching bank, card and payment-processor records to the ledger and clearing differences with a written trail.
• Payables and receivables. Coding bills correctly, scheduling payments for approval, issuing invoices and following up late payers.
• Spreadsheets. Lookups, pivot tables and data cleaning for the analysis that sits outside the ledger.
• Multi-currency and multi-entity work. Only if your business needs it. Ask how they handle exchange differences and intercompany balances.
• Written English. A finance hire has to explain a variance to a non-specialist in a short note. Ask for one in the assessment.
• Escalation. Does the candidate flag what they cannot resolve, or force the numbers to balance?

A paid practical assessment

Credentials and software lists tell you little about how someone works. A short paid exercise shows how someone actually works. Use a made-up ledger, not your real books.

1. Give a sample ledger with planted errors. Include a duplicated bill, a mis-coded expense and a bank line that does not match.
2. Ask for a bank reconciliation and journal entries. Request a short note of the assumptions made and the questions they would ask you.
3. Ask for a variance note. Have them explain a movement in one account to a business owner in a few sentences.
4. Score the process, not just the answer. Look for errors found, assumptions written down and sensible questions raised. Our remote hiring scorecard can help you keep the scoring consistent between candidates.

Set up access and controls before day one

A remote finance hire may see bank balances, customer payment details and employee pay. Decide the access first and give only what the work needs.

• Give each person their own login with the least access that lets them do the job. Never share credentials.
• Separate recording from approving. The person who enters a supplier or a bill should not be the only person who can release the payment.
• Require a second approver for new payees and for changes to bank details.
• Start with view-only access to bank accounts where the work allows it.
• Keep a written confidentiality agreement and, where personal data is involved, a data processing agreement.
• Write an offboarding checklist that removes every login on the day someone leaves.

Some rules may apply to your business. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says that financial institutions covered by its Safeguards Rule must designate a Qualified Individual to supervise the information security programme, train staff, and select and monitor service providers, with contracts that spell out security expectations. If the UK GDPR applies to your processing, the UK Information Commissioner's Office says that sending personal information to a separate organisation outside the UK can be a restricted transfer that must be covered by a transfer mechanism. Whether either applies to you is a question for a qualified adviser. Our guide to data security when outsourcing covers the practical side.

Month-end close: what to agree

The close is where a remote finance hire either becomes dependable or creates work for you. Agree the routine in writing before the first one.

• A calendar showing what is due on which working day, and who needs to supply what.
• A checklist of tasks, including bank and card reconciliations, accruals, prepayments, payroll entries and balance sheet review.
• A cut-off rule for documents. Anything received after it moves to the next period unless you approve otherwise.
• A short close note with each set of statements: what changed, what is unusual and what is waiting on you.
• A named reviewer on your side, even if the review takes only a few minutes.

Ask the candidate how they would run this and what they would need from you. A good answer includes questions, such as how you want unusual items flagged. Our remote team SOP and knowledge transfer guide explains how to write these routines down so they survive a change of person.

Tax work and credentials

If your remote accountant will prepare tax returns, check the rules for each country. For US federal returns, the Internal Revenue Service says that anyone who prepares or assists in preparing federal tax returns for compensation must have a valid preparer tax identification number (PTIN) before preparing returns, and that all enrolled agents must have one too (IRS PTIN requirements). Verify any certification with the body that issued it rather than relying on a certificate image or a description such as "equivalent to" a named qualification.

Where to hire and how to engage

Choose the country by what the work needs: familiarity with your reporting framework, the language you work in, the hours you need covered and the legal set-up for the employment. Read our country guides for India, the Philippines, Pakistan and Colombia, and our best countries for accounting outsourcing page. Use the time zone overlap tool to see how many working hours you share, and the glossary entry on time zone overlap for why it matters in a month-end close.

There are three common ways to engage the person: as an employee through an employer of record, as an independent contractor, or through a firm that supplies bookkeeping as a service. The EOR versus contractor comparison and the hiring model selector set out the trade-offs, and the misclassification risk checker helps you check whether a contractor arrangement fits the way the person will actually work.

Pay and cost

The Salary Range box at the top of this page gives the pay figure for this role, with the source and date the box states. This guide adds no pay numbers. For finance roles by country and seniority use the salary benchmark explorer, and to turn a salary into a total cost of employment use the Remote Hiring Cost Calculator.

For a wider look at what finance roles cost, see our bookkeeper and accountant salary benchmark. Remember that a salary is only part of the cost of employing someone, which our guide to remote staffing costs explains.

The first month

• Begin with work that is easy to check, such as historical clean-up and document organisation, before live financial operations move across.
• Hand over a documented chart of accounts, a month-end checklist and a list of recurring tasks with their due dates.
• Review every reconciliation at first, then reduce the review as the person shows consistent work.
• Agree how questions are asked and answered, and what counts as urgent.

Our guide to building a remote finance team and the onboarding glossary entry cover the wider set-up.

Mistakes to avoid

• Hiring a bookkeeper for accountant-level judgement, or the reverse.
• Skipping the practical assessment and relying on certificates.
• Leaving the same person able to record and approve payments.
• Naming no reporting framework, so each candidate answers a different question.
• Checking credentials from a document the candidate supplied instead of with the issuing body.
• Treating the hire as interchangeable when your industry has its own accounting rules.

Sources

• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Accountants and Auditors
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks
• IRS, PTIN requirements for tax return preparers
• FTC, FTC Safeguards Rule: What Your Business Needs to Know
• ICO, A brief guide to international transfers

References checked on 13 October 2026. This page is general information, not legal or tax advice.