Outsourcing can be a lifesaver for small business owners, but often it’s hard to know which tasks you can safely hand to someone else. Christine Frith talks you through the options. 

When I tell people about Hour Hands, they often say that they’d love to outsource some of their tasks and free up their time, but they don’t really know what they need help with, or where to start. 

My answer is that it very much depends on what’s most time consuming or painful for you, specifically. Some people are happy to manage their own diaries, for example, but hate booking travel and keeping track of expenses. Others love organising their data but can’t bear the idea of writing a report. Generally speaking, if it’s something you keep putting off then it’s probably worth outsourcing! 

Our outsourcing support is highly tailored to each client; here I’ve listed some of our most popular services to give you a starting point. Each can be provided as a single task or combined into a bespoke package – contact us for a no-obligation chat to find out what might work for you. 

1. Emails

If your inbox has reached overwhelming proportions then it’s time to get someone else to look at it. We usually sort emails into those that need action, those we think you should read, and then all the junk gets deleted. If you have a general enquiry inbox for your business then that’s also easy for us to manage. 

2. Diary Management

Do you attend a lot of meetings? These all take time to arrange, even if you’re just confirming your attendance, so let someone else book them in for you.

3. Travel

If you do a lot of business travel, booking train tickets or flights takes precious time. And if you’re short of time and do it at the last minute then it gets expensive! Many of our clients like us to do the legwork searching for the best route to suit their needs.

4. Sending Products

If your business requires products to be sent out to customers or contacts on a regular basis then this can easily be outsourced.

5. Expenses and Invoicing

If filing receipts and doing your expenses fills you with dread then it’s time to hand them over to someone else – you’ll feel like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders, we promise!

When things get busy, sending out invoices (or chasing unpaid ones) can get pushed aside in order to deliver new work. But if you don’t invoice, you don’t get paid. Let someone else do this for you.

6. Report writing

Writing reports can be a tedious task that takes a lot of time, if it’s not something you enjoy doing. We have a solution! You simply record what you want to say and our team will transcribe it into a (beautifully formatted) document for you. 

7. Formatting

If making presentations and documents look pretty – or even just professional! – is not one of your strengths, there’s no need to spend time wrestling with formatting functions. Just get the words down and let someone else make it look fabulous.

8. Systems

You know that having all your contact data in one place would really help you, but who has the time to organise that? A cloud-based bookkeeping system also sounds great, but when do you have time to set it up? And do you know what your pipeline looks like but have never managed to translate it from your head into a proper system? You can outsource all of this! 

9. Research

Many projects require an element of research to get them underway; even a seemingly simple blog can take time to get the right information and check facts and figures. Outsourcing the research element will free up your valuable time.

10. Event organisation

Events such as seminars, team events and client parties can be great for business but take a lot of organisation to work well. We’ve built up a portfolio of trusted suppliers in our little black book who we can draw on to deliver precisely the event you’re looking for.