Administrative Outsourcing for One Person Companies

A one person company still has a back office. Companies House mail, client packs, invoices, the diary, the chase. Administrative outsourcing exists so that back office is not you at 10pm.

Nobody sets out to spend their evenings on paperwork. It arrives anyway, one small task at a time, until the founder is doing two jobs and only being paid for one.

What is administrative outsourcing in plain terms?

It is paying a UK team to run defined admin processes so the founder can stay on sales and delivery. Hours are scoped. The company stays yours. Nothing about how you win work changes — only who handles the repetitive part of it afterwards.

It is a better description than admin agency for many micro firms, because you are buying a service, not a body on site. There is no recruitment cycle, no contract of employment, no spare desk, and no awkward conversation if the volume drops next quarter. You can see the full list of tasks we take on under our services.

Where do one person companies feel the pain?

Onboarding A client says yes on Friday and the pack goes out the following Wednesday. The work starts before the paperwork does.

Correspondence Enquiries sit for three days because delivery came first. By the time you reply, they have called someone else.

Diary Two things booked at the same time and nobody noticed until the morning of.

Invoices The invoice goes out late, and the chase never goes out at all.

They feel it when a new client starts and the paperwork is late, when a meeting is missed, or when correspondence sits for three days because delivery came first. There is no colleague to catch the drip. In a team of ten, someone notices. In a one person company, the founder is the one who notices — and the founder is on site. Outsourcing is the colleague.

Which processes move first?

Client onboarding, document chasing, diary and correspondence move first. They are the four that repeat every week and the four that break first. Write the steps once. We run them weekly.

• Client onboarding — welcome email out, pack sent, records saved in the right folder.
• Document chasing — the missing P45, the unsigned form, the photo that never arrived.
• Diary — bookings taken, confirmations sent, reminders the evening before.
• Correspondence — inbox triaged, routine replies sent in your tone, the rest flagged for you.

Invoices often follow once those four are stable. You can see how these map to what we do on the services page, including calendar and diary management, email organisation and invoicing.

What this looks like for a one person company

A one person consultancy we work with was losing most of Monday to admin. Onboarding packs went out late, two meetings were double booked in a single quarter, and invoices went out on average eleven days after the job finished.

We took onboarding, the diary and the inbox into a 10 hour monthly block — the Starter retainer at £300 a month. Nothing else changed. The pack now goes out the same day, the diary is confirmed the evening before, and invoices go out within 48 hours.

That is roughly two and a half hours a week for £300 a month. For a consultant charging £50 an hour, one recovered billable hour a week pays for the retainer twice over.

How does GDPR apply if you are tiny?

Size does not remove the duty. If you hold personal or financial data you still need a careful handler, and there is no small business exemption. What changes is the scale of the answer, not whether you need one.

UK based, limited access support is the practical answer. One named person, access only to the tools they need for the tasks in scope, a short data processing agreement, and no copies held outside your own systems. We work inside your tools so you are not multiplying where the data lives — you keep the account, the audit trail and the control.

Which package should you start with?

Start with the smallest retainer that covers a full weekly rhythm, not a wish list. Half a day a month scattered across unrelated tasks will not hold a diary. Most UK small firms land on a monthly package rather than scattered one off hours, because the point is the rhythm, not the total.

One person companies often start at 10 or 20 hours:

• Starter — £300 for 10 hours a month. Enough for onboarding, the diary and a daily inbox sweep.
• Growth — £500 for 20 hours a month. Adds document chasing, invoicing and follow up.
• Professional — available when the work outgrows those, priced on the hours you need.

No onboarding fee on the Starter or Growth retainers. See what each package covers on the pricing page, or put your own numbers in with the free cost calculator.