Ask ten founders how they picked their accounting firm and you’ll hear some version of, “We went with the name our lawyer recognised,” or, “My mate said they were decent.”
It’s understandable. The market is confusing. On one side, you’ve got the Big 4 with skyscraper logos and FTSE 350 audits. In the middle, there are boutique and mid-tier firms that feel more human-sized. And then there’s the fast-growing world of offshore and outsourced accounting – including players like Madras Accountancy and other specialist providers.
Each model has its place. The trick is not to pay for a jumbo jet when all you need is a reliable train ticket.
When people say “the Big 4,” they mean Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG – the firms that dominate large public company audits worldwide and, in the UK, sign off on the vast majority of FTSE 350 accounts.
If you’re heading toward capital markets, managing complex multi-national structures, or trying to reassure a very conservative board, the Big 4 offer something hard to replicate: brand comfort. Lenders, investors, and regulators know the names and, fairly or not, draw conclusions from them.
You also get access to deep technical benches in tax, audit, and advisory. When the question is “how does this obscure cross-border rule work?” there’s usually someone internally who’s written a paper on it.
For most small and mid-sized businesses, the cost alone can be a showstopper. Big 4 fee levels assume a certain scale. Even when smaller clients are accepted, partner attention can be thinner, and staff rotation higher, simply because those firms are built for much bigger engagements.
Below the Big 4 sits a long list of mid-tier and boutique firms: BDO, RSM, and countless strong regional CPA practices.
These firms often strike a balance: large enough to have real technical depth, small enough that you still see a partner occasionally. Pricing tends to be more sustainable for SMEs, and service can feel notably more personal.
In many cases, especially for privately held businesses, the technical quality is absolutely on par with the Big 4 – without the same brand overhead.
What mid-tier and boutique firms can’t always offer is huge international reach or armies of staff on demand. If you suddenly need to spin up a 20‑person team for a compressed audit timeline or a giant carve-out, capacity can be a constraint.
Then there’s the third model: offshore and outsourced accounting. This includes dedicated providers like Madras Accountancy, Unison Globus, Finsmart, Whiz Consulting, Frontline Accounting, and broader BPOs like Datamatics.
Here, the value proposition is usually three-fold:
Madras Accountancy is squarely in the “offshore partner for CPA firms and corporations” bucket. Over more than a decade, they’ve built tax, bookkeeping, CAAS, audit & assurance, and fractional CFO teams for 60+ US CPA firms and various corporate clients.
Unlike generic BPOs, the focus is deliberately narrow: accounting workflows and review chains. They’re not trying to run your call centre and your finance function at the same time.
Security and process are emphasized heavily – SOC 2, GDPR, ISO 27001-style controls, and VDI setups – backed by their connection to the BDO Alliance USA ecosystem. That combination makes offshore feel less like a risky experiment and more like an extension of a mid-tier firm’s own bench.
Of course, offshore isn’t magic. It requires:
Firms that skip that groundwork often come away blaming “offshore” when the real culprit was lack of clarity.
If we strip away the marketing and talk bluntly:
Increasingly, the real answer isn’t “Big 4 or boutique or offshore?” It’s “Which combination of these gets us the quality we need at a price that won’t strangle growth?”
For many CPA firms and sophisticated SMEs, that looks like: local or mid-tier advisors on the front line, and carefully chosen offshore partners like Madras providing the horsepower underneath. In other words: big-firm standards, offshore economics.
Not as catchy as a billboard slogan, perhaps. But your finance team – and your margin – will probably thank you.
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