As I mentioned in last week’s outsourcing update, my Virtual Assistant made an appointment for me with a local staffing service. Thursday afternoon Kristie from Elite Staffing came to my office and we talked about the task I have at hand. We agreed to a trial period at a very reasonable hourly rate and she’ll be back on Monday to pick up the boxes of papers and files I’m now raking off my desk.

The plan is to have Kristie sort and file the backlog of mail, papers, and miscellany I have accumulated over the past two years. Once that’s done I’ll have her start scanning the papers that I actually need to keep and shred the ones I don’t.

I also went to see a nearby Padgett Business Services office this week. I’ve used them to do my taxes before, but I’ve never had anyone actually do my bookkeeping. This definitely needs to be outsourced, as I never keep this up to date. The plan is for Padgett to setup QuickBooks Online so I can access it from anywhere and can grant access to whoever I need in order to get my data entered.

I started out trying to work with Brickwork India on the QuickBooks setup, but it just didn’t feel right. Bookkeeping just seems like something I needed to keep close to home, at least until I get the process worked out. I may have Brickwork, or some other supplier, do the backlog of data entry if Padgett doesn’t have a reasonable enough fee for that type of work, but for now I’ll look for other opportunities to use Brickwork.