BPO
Finance and accounting
Accounts payable and receivable, reconciliations, invoicing and close support, alongside your own accountants.
What is delivered
Accounts payable processing with approval and audit trail
Bank and ledger reconciliations on a defined cycle
SAF-T preparation support, always with your certified accountant
What does the Portuguese framework force you to do differently?
Portugal has one of Europe's most demanding digital tax reporting regimes. Invoice communication to the tax authority is monthly with a short deadline, the standardised tax audit file has to be producible on request, and invoicing software has to be certified. None of it is optional and all of it determines how the operation is designed.
The most visible practical consequence is that invoicing stops being editable once issued. A wrong document is not corrected, it is voided and another is issued, with full traceability of the sequence. Teams coming from systems where you fix things before anyone notices have to change habit, and it is the most common source of friction in the first months.
The Portuguese chart of accounts has its own structure and is not the group's international chart. Four to six weeks of initial training is the realistic minimum for someone with an accounting background, and it is the number most frequently underestimated in transition proposals.
What can and cannot be outsourced?
Transactional work, which is most of the volume, can be done by a dedicated team: entries, reconciliations, document management, matching invoices against orders and delivery notes, and preparing the information supporting the filings.
What does not move is technical responsibility. Financial statements and tax filings require the signature of a certified accountant registered in Portugal, and any supplier suggesting otherwise is describing a risk rather than a service. We work with your accountant or introduce one, whichever you prefer.
The boundary usually designed badly is the one around exceptions. An entry that does not reconcile requires judgement and knowledge of the business, and pushing that decision to a team without context produces entries that are technically valid and substantively wrong, which only surface at close.
What controls exist against error and fraud?
Segregation of duties, above all. Whoever records a payment is not whoever approves it or reconciles the account. In small teams this looks bureaucratic and it is exactly where supplier payment fraud occurs, with a consistency the audit literature has documented for decades.
Change control on master data, particularly supplier bank details. A change of account number requires verification through an independent channel: the request arrives by email and confirmation happens by phone to an already known number, never to the number in the message.
And reconciliations on a fixed schedule with evidence retained, not reconciliations done when there is time. An account reconciled monthly reveals a problem a month late; an account reconciled when someone remembers reveals it when it is already expensive to fix.
How does the tax calendar affect staffing?
It determines it. The Portuguese calendar is dense and concentrated: monthly invoice communication, periodic VAT returns monthly or quarterly depending on turnover, monthly withholding declarations, and annual obligations grouped into short windows.
Sizing to the average guarantees missing deadlines in specific weeks, every month, in an entirely foreseeable way. We size to the peaks, with capacity shared between clients outside the critical windows, which is what makes the model viable for companies that alone would not justify the team.
For the same reason we avoid transitions during closes. The useful window to move volume is mid-quarter, with the first full close running in parallel with the outgoing team still available.
Which indicators show whether the operation is healthy?
Close time, measured in working days from period end to accounts being ready for review. It is the indicator that best summarises the operation's health, because a close that drags is almost always a symptom of transactional work not done on time during the month.
Percentage of entries requiring later correction, which measures quality at source, and average age of open items in reconciliations, which measures accounting technical debt. Accumulated old items are small mysteries costing progressively more to resolve as the people who remembered the context leave.
And filing deadline compliance, counted as a percentage submitted on time. The difference matters: ninety-eight per cent looks good and represents twenty-four missed deadlines a year across a thousand submissions.
What competences do we look for in the team?
Formal accounting training, because the Portuguese chart of accounts has its own logic and anyone approaching it without a conceptual base memorises rather than understands, and memorising fails on the first case not in the manual. It is the requirement experience in another country does not replace.
Documentary rigour above speed. A correct entry without a filed supporting document is a problem at audit, and a naturally fast, careless person costs more in this role than a methodical one who handles fewer cases a day.
And willingness to ask. Most expensive errors come from someone assuming rather than confirming, and a team culture where asking reads as incompetence produces exactly that behaviour, predictably.
How does the information reach management?
In a monthly report with the numbers and the causes behind them, delivered on a fixed date rather than when the close allows. A report arriving on variable dates stops being used to decide with, because whoever decides finds a more predictable alternative source, usually a spreadsheet.
And with the operation's own indicators beside the financial ones: close time, later correction rate, age of open items and filing deadline compliance. Whoever reads the report should be able to see whether the numbers can be trusted without having to ask.
Where finance and accounting can be run from
Not every delivery model suits every service. The table shows only those that make sense for this work, with the data residency position of each.
| Model | Where | When it makes sense | Personal data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onshore Portugal | Lisbon, Porto, Braga, Coimbra, Aveiro, Faro, Funchal and Ponta Delgada | When data cannot leave the EEA, or when the end customer is Portuguese | Stay inside the EEA. No transfer. |
| Brazil | Sao Paulo | When scale and cost are the priority, or the market served is Brazilian | No adequacy decision. Requires standard contractual clauses and a transfer impact assessment. |
| Global network | Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Poland, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Turkiye and Africa | When you need continuous cover, specific languages or the lowest cost | Poland is inside the EEA. The others require standard contractual clauses. |
The data column describes the applicable framework and is not legal advice. The detail is in international data transfers.
Related services
- Customer supportContact centre operations in Portuguese, English and more than thirty languages, across voice, email, chat and social.
- Technical supportLevel 1 and 2 support for software, telecoms and hardware products, with structured escalation.
- Back officeAdministrative processing, document management, data entry and internal operations support.
- Data processingExtraction, classification, validation and enrichment of data at volume, with measured quality control.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need to change software?
Only if the current one is not certified for invoicing in Portugal. We work inside your system whenever it meets the requirements.
Who signs the tax filings?
A certified accountant registered in Portugal. That is not outsourceable abroad and we do not propose it.
Can the work be done outside Portugal?
Transactional work can, with the full transfer framework and controlled, logged access. Technical responsibility stays in Portugal.
How long does the transition take?
Four to six months to steady state, with one full close run in duplicate before the outgoing team leaves.
What is SAF-T and why does it matter here?
It is the standardised tax audit file the tax authority reads directly, and the operation has to be able to produce it on request.
How do you protect against payment fraud?
With segregation of duties, independent-channel verification of bank detail changes, and value limits triggering a second approval.
Do you work with our current accountant?
We do. It is the most common arrangement and the one that preserves the existing relationship and knowledge.
Does it suit a newly established foreign company?
It suits that case particularly well, because it avoids building an internal finance function before knowing what size it needs to be.
Let us look at the numbers for your case
Tell us which processes you want to outsource, in which languages and at what volume. We come back with a euro estimate and an operating design, with no commitment.
We reply within 6 hours on working days. If you would rather write: info@corpshore.solutions