South Africa vs India for UK accountancy outsourcing

• India is four and a half to five and a half hours ahead of the UK. South Africa is one to two hours ahead, all year, with no clock changes in either country.
• India has the deeper pool and the most mature per-job market. In our September 2026 audit of 68 outsourcing sites, 26 named India as the delivery country and three named South Africa.
• On published rates, a qualified accountant from India runs £1,300 to £2,000 a month. South Africa runs £2,300 to £3,200, with bookkeepers from £1,050.
• The working-day overlap decides how fast queries are answered. That matters for year-end accounts and matters less for batch bookkeeping.
• Whichever country, the questions are the same: who employs the person, who reviews the work, whose software it is done in, and what the contract says.

Where each country stands

We run our team in Pretoria, so you know where we sit. We have also worked alongside practices that use Indian teams and are happy with them. This guide puts the two side by side on the things that decide the choice, with the figures from published rate cards and our own pricing, so you can weigh them against your own work.

India has been doing UK accounts production for longer than anywhere else, and at greater scale. QX Accounting Services, AccountsAid, Aspire Offshore, Black Piano and Samera are among the providers whose own sites name India as the place the work is done. South Africa is newer to UK practices and smaller. In the audit of 68 outsourcing websites we captured on 21 September 2026 (the full list is on the provider comparison page), 26 sites named India, three named South Africa and 30 did not say where the work is done.

The clock

India runs on UTC+5:30 all year. That is five and a half hours ahead of the UK in winter and four and a half in British Summer Time. An accountant working 9am to 6pm in Ahmedabad or Pune is online from about 3:30am to 12:30pm UK time in winter. Your morning overlaps. Your afternoon does not, and a query you raise at 2pm is answered the next morning.

South Africa runs on UTC+2 and does not change its clocks either. That is two hours ahead of the UK in winter and one hour ahead in summer. A Pretoria 8am to 5pm is 6am to 3pm in the UK in winter and 7am to 4pm in summer. The whole of your core working day overlaps, on a normal day shift, with no shift premium.

Some Indian providers run UK-hours shifts for exactly this reason. It works, and it costs more to staff, because it asks people to work into their evening every day.

Where the overlap matters and where it does not

For batch work with a written process, the gap costs little. Monthly bookkeeping from a clean bank feed, payroll runs, VAT returns: the work goes, the work comes back, you review it. If there are no questions, a five-hour gap is invisible.

Year-end accounts are different. A set of accounts for a client with an untidy ledger produces a query list, and the list gets worked through by conversation. When the preparer and the reviewer are online at the same time, the list is cleared in an afternoon. When they are not, each round trip costs a day, and a set that should take a week takes three. The same applies if you want the person on your morning call, answering a client's bookkeeper by phone, or picking up a job the same day it is sent.

So the first question to ask yourself is which kind of work you are moving. If it is bookkeeping and payroll on a settled routine, India's price advantage is real and the clock rarely bites. If it is accounts and tax with a review loop, the overlap is worth paying for.

Language and qualifications

Indian accountants are taught and examined in English, and written English in working papers and query lists is good. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India runs one of the largest and most demanding chartered qualifications in the world, with a three-year articleship, and a large number of Indian accountants serving UK firms are ICAI-qualified or part-qualified, or have sat ACCA. Training on FRS 102, FRS 105 and the UK filing regime is well established because the market has been doing it for years.

South Africa has eleven official languages. English is the language of commerce, of the universities and of the accounting profession, and most accounting graduates have been educated in it from primary school. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants runs the CA(SA) qualification with a three-year training contract, and the South African Institute of Professional Accountants runs a separate professional accountant qualification, also with a training contract, oriented to small business and practice work. Both produce people who have prepared statutory accounts and tax computations under IFRS and IFRS for SMEs, which sits close to FRS 102. SAIPA has said the country is short of more than 20,000 accountants (SAIPA), so good trainees are competed for at home as well as abroad. The accountants in our own office came through the SAICA and SAIPA routes.

Spoken English on the phone to a client varies more by individual than by country. If you want the person to speak to your clients, interview them, whichever country they are in.

What it costs

These are dedicated full-time monthly rates from published rate cards and quotes in each market, as we compiled them in August 2026 for our three-country guide, with the UK column on our working rule of thumb of salary times 1.35.

Individual providers publish figures inside those bands. Star Sterling Outsource lists a bookkeeper at £7 an hour and an accountant at £15 an hour on its home page. AccountsAid, which names India, starts at £7 an hour on its pricing page. Black Piano's home page offers a remote accountant at £833 a month against a UK £2,500. Aspire Offshore's calculator shows £15,000 a year all-inclusive for an offshore hire. Our own seats sit inside the South African band: a Production seat at £1,950 a month for 160 hours and an Accounts seat at £2,650 with review by our own UK practice included, on the pricing page. That is about £12 and £16.50 an hour.

The price gap is real. Whether it is the right measure depends on what you count. A per-job price covers the preparation. The queries, the re-learning of the client each year and the coordination on your side are not on the invoice, and they land on the most expensive person in your practice. The costs guide works through what to add back.

The models each market sells

India's per-job market is the most mature anywhere. If you want a hundred sets of accounts done in a month with no continuity requirement, that is where the capacity is, and the larger providers can absorb a January surge that would swamp a small team. Most Indian providers also sell hourly work and dedicated full-time staff, and several sell a managed team with a UK-based account manager.

South African providers tend to sell dedicated people. The time zone makes the seat model workable, where the provider includes review and cover, because the reviewer and the preparer are awake at the same time as you. That is how we work: one named person in one role for 160, 80 or 40 hours a month, with accounts and tax work reviewed by our own UK practice before it reaches you, and the portal showing the hours used against the seat.

A practice can use both. Some of the practices we speak to send high-volume, low-judgement work per job to India and keep the accounts and tax work, where the review loop matters, on a South African seat. There is no rule that says one provider.

Data protection

Neither India nor South Africa was on the UK's list of countries with adequacy regulations when we last looked, in September 2026. A transfer of client data to either therefore needs a lawful transfer mechanism under UK GDPR, which in practice means the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, plus a transfer risk assessment. The ICO publishes the list and the tools. Our data security guide sets out what a data-processing agreement should cover and the ten questions to ask any provider, wherever it is.

The practical point is the same in both countries: work done inside your own software, under named logins you control, keeps the data where your engagement letter says it is. Work done on the provider's systems means a copy of your client records sits abroad, and the paperwork has to cover that.

A worked example

An illustration, using our own published rates and the per-job market range above. A practice with 120 sets of small company accounts a year and 180 self assessment returns, at our calculator's benchmarks of 5 hours per set and 2 per return, has about 960 hours of accounts and tax work a year, or 80 hours a month.

Per job from India: 120 sets at £120 to £300 is £14,400 to £36,000 a year for the accounts, before the returns and before the practice's own time on queries and coordination. On our figures a job on a seat needs closer to three and a half to four hours by month three, once the client sheets exist and the recurring queries have been answered once.

A South African seat: an 80-hour Accounts seat is £1,450 a month, £17,400 a year, with UK review included and the same person on every job. If the work grows to 160 hours, the seat is £2,650 a month, £31,800 a year.

A UK part-qualified doing the same work costs £44,000 to £52,000 a year all in and delivers about 1,500 productive hours, which is £29 to £34 an hour of finished work (the working is in what a part-qualified really costs).

On those figures the Indian per-job route is cheapest on the invoice, the seat is cheapest once queries and continuity are counted, and both are well under the UK hire. Which of the first two wins for you depends on how much query traffic your clients generate.

The checklist, whichever country you choose

1. Who employs the person? Direct employees in the provider's own office, or freelancers on a platform?
2. Who reviews the work before it reaches you? Someone UK-qualified, or is review your job?
3. Whose software? Inside your practice system under named logins, or exported to theirs?
4. What are the working hours, in UK time? Ask for the shift pattern in writing.
5. What happens when the person leaves? Handover period, who pays for the dip.
6. What is the contract? Rolling monthly with a month's notice, or a year with a minimum?
7. Which transfer mechanism covers the data? Ask for the paperwork.
8. Interview the actual person. Country averages tell you nothing about the individual.

Where to start

Work out how many hours you need before you pick a country: the capacity calculator does that from your client numbers. Then get in touch. If your work suits per-job volume from India, we will say so.

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