What to check before subcontracting a client file

Seven things to confirm

Is the fee fixed before you commit?

Ask whether the fee is published and flat per file, or quoted after you've already sent the client's file. The second version is a number that can move once you're committed. Ask the same of delivery: a subcontractor working in scheduled batches against a delivery date can tell you before you commit whether they can hit yours; one accepting work open-endedly usually can't.

Will they ever contact your client directly?

Get it in writing, not a verbal assurance: no contact with the client outside the engagement, no marketing to them, and no direct engagement with them, including after your firm's relationship with the client ends. A subcontractor who also sells direct to small businesses isn't automatically a conflict, but one who won't wall off your client list from that direct business permanently is.

Does the file ever leave the client's own QuickBooks company?

It shouldn't. The access model to look for is an accountant-level user added to the client's own QuickBooks Online file, which is enough to categorize, reconcile and run reports and not enough to touch billing or delete the company, with the role visible in the client's own user list and revocable by your firm at any time, without asking the subcontractor.

Does the subcontractor's name appear anywhere?

Check the deliverables, not just the sales pitch: reports, working papers and any summary should come back unbranded, with no logo, footer or signature block. The one exception worth allowing is a genuine emergency needing the client's own action, and even then, your firm should decide whether the message comes from you or from the subcontractor with your firm named as the reason, not have that decided for you.

When the client has a question, who hears it?

Your firm should. A flagged question about the file comes back to you, and your firm decides what reaches the client and how, not the subcontractor deciding whether to answer the client themselves.

What comes back to you if the relationship ends?

Ask where working papers actually live during the engagement, not just what's promised at the end. If documents stay in the client's own QuickBooks file or in a folder your firm already controls, there's nothing held in a separate archive to hand back, which is a safer answer than a subcontractor promising to return files they held somewhere of their own.

Whose NDA governs the work?

Prefer signing your firm's own NDA over the subcontractor's boilerplate. Your firm is the one accountable to the client for the confidentiality of their records, so the terms should be the ones your firm wrote, not ones handed to you to accept.

What a subcontractor agreement actually contains

The seven questions above are what to ask. A written agreement is where the answers end up, and it usually carries ten clauses. The first six are the checklist in contract language; the last four are the ones a firm reading a subcontractor's boilerplate is most likely to skim past.

Two of those are worth slowing down on. Independent contractor status is boilerplate that stops being boilerplate if the arrangement looks like employment in practice. A subcontractor working set hours under the firm's direction on the firm's equipment is a classification question regardless of what the document says.Data protection is the clause most often missing entirely: ask what happens if the subcontractor has a breach, how quickly your firm hears about it, and whether that is written down or assumed. Your firm is the one that has to tell the client either way.