Guide
Hire, outsource or automate? What back-office help really costs
Three ways to get the back office off your desk: hire someone, outsource to an agency or bookkeeper, or automate with supervision. What each one costs, what you get, and how to choose.
Key takeaways
- The real cost of each option includes the time it takes to start and the cover you need when someone is away.
- Hiring gives you judgement and context, at the price of a salary and a long ramp-up.
- Outsourcing gives you expertise, but the work runs on someone else's schedule, often monthly.
- Supervised automation does the routine work every day, at a price per person with access, and leaves judgement with you.
The question behind the question
At some point every growing company notices that its founders, managers or best people are spending hours a week on bills, leave requests, receipts and office admin. The question is then how to get that work done by someone else. There are three honest answers: hire, outsource or automate. Most companies end up with a mix.
Comparing them on price alone misses most of the cost. A fair comparison looks at five things: what you pay, how long it takes to start, how often the work is done, what happens when someone is away, and who holds the judgement.
Option 1: hire an administrator
A good office administrator or bookkeeper brings context. They know your suppliers, your people and your quirks, and they can handle the odd request nobody planned for.
The cost is more than the salary. Add employer taxes and benefits, the weeks it takes to recruit, the months it takes to get fully up to speed, and cover for holidays and sick days. One person also means one point of failure: when they leave, the knowledge often leaves with them.
- Best for: a steady volume of varied work that needs judgement on the spot
- Watch for: a long time to start, single-person risk, work that stops during leave
Option 2: outsource to an agency or bookkeeper
An external bookkeeper, payroll bureau or virtual assistant brings expertise you may not have in-house, usually at a lower fixed cost than a hire. For specialist work, such as statutory accounts, tax returns or payroll compliance, outsourcing is often the right answer.
The trade-off is rhythm and reach. Outsourced work tends to run on the provider's schedule, often monthly, and it usually happens outside your systems: documents are sent over, worked on and sent back. Day-to-day requests, the "can you just…" kind, don't fit that model well.
- Best for: specialist work on a fixed calendar
- Watch for: monthly catch-ups instead of daily upkeep, work that happens outside your own tools
Option 3: automate, with supervision
The third option is newer: software that does the routine back-office work itself, inside your systems, checked by people. Done well, it records bills and receipts the day they arrive, matches payments, answers leave requests against your policy and keeps renewals and orders on track, every day and around the clock.
Done badly, automation is a script that breaks quietly. The difference is supervision: clear rules, a point where it stops and asks, a record of every action and people who review the work.
- Best for: high-volume, rule-based work that should happen every day
- Watch for: tools that act without logs or approvals, or that need your data moved to them
What OFFHOURS costs
OFFHOURS is priced per person with access, per month: the people who review and approve what the roles prepare. The Accountant and the HR Admin are €15 each, the Office Manager €10, and the whole back office €35, which is the most anyone pays per person. Everyone else in the company can send requests without being counted.
Every person past 25 is half price, there's no minimum and no onboarding fee, and billing yearly takes 15% off. A company of forty where four managers need access to the whole back office pays 4 × €35, which is €140 a month. A team of ten who all want access pays €350.
The full rules, including the monthly task allowance each plan includes, are in the Pricing Policy.
How to choose
Sort the work, not the options. List the back-office tasks your team does in a typical month and mark each one: routine or judgement, daily or periodic, inside your systems or specialist.
- Routine, daily, inside your systems: automate it, with supervision
- Specialist and periodic, such as year-end accounts and tax: outsource it
- Judgement-heavy and constant: that's the role worth hiring for, now freed from the routine
The mix most companies land on
In practice the answer is rarely one option. A common shape: supervised automation keeps the books, the HR admin and the office running day to day; an external accountant does the year-end and the tax; and the people you already have spend their time on the decisions only they can make.
If you want to see what that looks like for your company, book a call. We'll look at the work together and tell you honestly which parts we'd take on and which we wouldn't.
