Hiring an Office Manager

The Office Business
1

My goal is to get to the point where I’m only putting in 1-2 hours a week in my business. I’m also a pastor, and want to focus as much time there as I can.

So, I’ve been thinking of hiring an Office Manager. I already have a Field Manager. I’m thinking that with an Office Manager, I can pass off almost all of the work that I and my wife currently do.

This person could:

*Answer phones, schedule jobs, and give over the phone estimates.
*Input all invoices into Quickbooks
*Make deposits
*Follow-up on overdue Invoices
*Add or delete drivers from our auto insurance
*Make sure our general liability insurance and worker’s comp insurance are effective in good standing.
*Do quarterly reports
*Pay payroll taxes monthly

So, my question to all of you who have hired an Office Manager is, what job responsibilities should I keep for myself?

Also, if I rent office space for the Office Manager to work out of, he/she would most likely be the only one there most of the time. So, how do you keep folks honest in terms of using their time diligently for the company, instead of frittering it away on personal calls, texts, surfing the web, etc.?

Any tips/ideas from any of you who have walked this path already?

2

I cringe to hear of an office manager giving estimates.

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3

Your office manager should not be doing accounting and payroll. Either keep that for yourself or hire an accountant.

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5

how large of an operation do you have? number of trucks? number of staff?

if a couple trucks or something, you will likely only need part time help

that doesn’t help with full time phone answering though

if part time, I see many retired grandmothers who are diligent and on top of things and happy to work 3 days a week or like 9-2 5 days a week

only you sign the checks and only you can withdraw, Always, always, always

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6

I’ve got 2-3 full time technicians in the field. We have 3 trucks and one van, although we usually only have 2 or 3 trucks in operation each day. Right now my wife handles the office work, and I handle answering the phones and scheduling, marketing, paying employees, and handling all tax quarterly reports and monthly payroll taxes.

We are on track to do about $350k this year.

Yes, I was figuring someone part-time, until we grew bigger and needed someone full-time.

Right now we are still working out of my home. One technician takes a van home, and the other 3 trucks are at my home. We’ve been thinking of renting an office for an Office Manager, but wonder if that would be smart, as he/she would have no one to supervise them. It would take a very self-motivated individual to thrive in those circumstances.

I really like your thinking about the retired grandma working part-time. If it was you, where would you look to find her?

Also good advice on only owner signing checks and withdrawing. That’s what we had figured we would do.

Once we get the right people in place, working our systems, I think I could get it to where I worked very little (perhaps 1-5 hours per week). I would still have monthly staff meetings, talk with the 2 managers daily, and do an occasional odd job here and there. If someone quit, I would need to advertise, interview and hire. But, other than that, I think all of the employees could live on what the business produces.

Any thoughts?

7

Masters, it sounds like you are looking for a new partner to take over running your business rather than an employee.

2 Likes
8

What about a partner or potential buyout?

9

You could look into hiring a virtual assistant or two