Offshore accounting: India vs Philippines vs South Africa

• India has the deepest pool and the longest track record with UK practices. The time gap is four and a half to five and a half hours.
• The Philippines is strong in bookkeeping and back-office, with a seven to eight hour gap that usually means night shifts.
• South Africa is one to two hours ahead of the UK all year, so the working day overlaps almost entirely.
• Price ranges overlap more than the sales pitches suggest. Level and review matter more than country.
• Whatever the country, check who employs the staff, who reviews the work, and whose software it is done in.

Three good options, not one

We have our team in Pretoria, so you can guess where we land. But we have worked with practices that use Indian teams happily, and Philippine teams happily, and the point of this guide is to lay out the differences honestly rather than to rubbish anyone. All three countries have large, educated, English-speaking accounting workforces and providers who have been serving UK practices for years. The right one for you depends on what you are outsourcing, when you need to talk to the person doing it, and how much management you want to keep in-house.

Time zones

This is the difference that shapes everything else, so it comes first.

• India is on UTC+5:30 all year. That is five and a half hours ahead of the UK in winter and four and a half hours ahead in British Summer Time. An Indian accountant working 9 to 6 local time is online from about 3:30am to 12:30pm UK time in winter. Your morning overlaps; your afternoon does not.
• The Philippines is on UTC+8, again with no daylight saving. Eight hours ahead in winter, seven in summer. A Manila day shift finishes around lunchtime in the UK. That is why most Philippine providers serving the UK run a night shift, so their staff are on your day. It works, and the providers pay a shift premium for it, but it is a harder job to staff long-term.
• South Africa is on UTC+2 and does not change its clocks. That makes it two hours ahead in the UK winter and one hour ahead in summer. A Pretoria 8 to 5 is a UK 6am to 3pm in winter and 7am to 4pm in summer. The whole of your core working day overlaps, on a normal day shift, with no premium.

What that means in practice: with India or the Philippines on a day shift, a query you raise at 2pm gets answered tomorrow. With South Africa, or a Philippine night shift, it gets answered in the hour. For bookkeeping done in batches, that may not matter. For year-end accounts where the reviewer bounces points back and forth, it matters a lot.

English

All three countries have English as a language of business and of professional education. Indian accountants are taught and examined in English. The Philippines uses English in its schools, universities and government, and its call-centre industry has built a large workforce used to British and American clients. South Africa has eleven official languages; English is the language of commerce, of the universities and of the accounting profession, and most graduates in accounting have been educated in it from primary school.

Written English in working papers and query lists is good in all three. Spoken English on the phone to a client varies more by individual than by country. If you want the offshore person to speak to your clients, interview them, whichever country they are in.

Qualifications

Each country has its own professional bodies, and each has a path that produces people who can do UK work after training on UK standards.

India

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) runs one of the largest and most demanding CA qualifications in the world, with a three-year articleship. Many Indian accountants serving UK practices are ICAI-qualified or part-qualified, and a large number have also sat ACCA. Indian providers have been doing UK accounts production for long enough that training on UK GAAP, FRS 102 and the UK filing regime is well established.

Philippines

The Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA) is the national body, and the CPA licence is awarded by the Professional Regulation Commission after a board exam. The country produces a large number of accounting graduates each year. Philippine teams are particularly common in bookkeeping, payroll and back-office roles for Australian, US and UK firms, with qualified CPAs in review and accounts roles.

South Africa

The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) runs the CA(SA) qualification, with a three-year training contract and a reputation in the profession for rigour. The South African Institute of Professional Accountants (SAIPA) runs a separate professional accountant qualification, also with a training contract, that is more oriented to small business and practice work. Both produce graduates who have done statutory accounts, tax computations and audit work under IFRS and IFRS for SMEs, which sits close to FRS 102. SAIPA has said South Africa is short of more than 20,000 accountants (SAIPA), which means good trainees are competed for at home as well as abroad.

What it costs

These are the dedicated full-time monthly rates we have collected from the published rate cards and quotes of providers in each market, August 2026. They are ranges because level, experience and what is bundled in (review, management, software) vary a great deal.

A few things stand out. India is the cheapest for a qualified accountant and has the widest per-job market. The Philippines and South Africa are close on qualified staff, with South Africa's bookkeeper range starting lower. The UK hire column uses our working rule of thumb of salary × 1.35 on Indeed and PayScale salary data for 2026. Our own seats sit inside the South African band: a Production seat at £1,950 and an Accounts seat at £2,650 with UK review included, on the pricing page.

Typical models by country

India has the most mature per-job market. Most of the well-known names serving UK practices (QX Accounting Services, Outbooks, Corient, AdvanceTrack, AcoBloom, Initor Global, Entigrity and others, by their own descriptions) offer per-job pricing, hourly, and dedicated FTEs, with large teams that can absorb January surges. If you want a hundred sets of accounts done in a month with no continuity requirement, India is where that capacity is.

The Philippines is more weighted to dedicated staff. TOA Global and Intelligent Outsourcing, on their own descriptions, place named people with firms on a monthly basis, often with the provider supplying the office and HR and the practice doing the training and management. It suits practices that want to build a remote team they run themselves.

South Africa providers tend to sell dedicated people too, and the time zone makes the seat model, where the provider includes review and cover, more workable, because the reviewer and the preparer are awake at the same time as you.

The overlap argument, honestly

We think the working-day overlap is the strongest reason to pick South Africa, so let us also say when it does not matter.

It does not matter much for batch work with a written process. Monthly bookkeeping, payroll runs, VAT returns from a clean bank feed: send the work, it comes back, you review it. A five-hour gap costs you nothing if there are no questions.

It matters when there are questions. Year-end accounts for a client with a messy ledger generate a query list. If the preparer is online when the reviewer is, the list gets worked through in an afternoon. If not, each round trip costs a day, and a set of accounts that should take a week takes three. It also matters if you want the offshore person on your Teams calls, in your morning stand-up, or answering a client's bookkeeper by phone. The how it works page shows how we run a day on UK hours.

What to check whatever the country

1. Who employs the staff? Direct employees in the provider's own office, or freelancers on a platform? Employment means supervision, stability and a desk you could visit.
2. Who reviews? Someone UK-qualified, before it reaches you, or is review your job?
3. Whose software and whose logins? Work done inside your own practice system, under individual named logins, is auditable and keeps data where your engagement letter says it is.
4. Data protection. Ask how client data is held, where, and under what contract terms. Take your own advice on your obligations.
5. Continuity. What happens when your person leaves? How long is handover, and who pays for the dip?
6. Contract. Rolling monthly, or a year with a minimum? Shorter is better until the work is flowing.
7. The actual person. Interview them. Country averages tell you nothing about the individual.

Our own answers: employees in our Pretoria office, UK review on every job, your software under individual logins, rolling monthly with one month's notice. You can read more on the accounts production page or the about page.

Where to start

Work out how many hours you actually need before you pick a country. The capacity calculator does that from your client numbers. Then get in touch and we will tell you straight whether a South African seat is the right fit or whether your work suits a different model.

Published 22 August 2026. Tax rules and rates change — check current figures on gov.uk before relying on anything here. This is general information for practice owners, not advice.