Casual Admin Work

ALittleInLove

Hi Everyone,

I am an administrator for a local charity which is a job i love but as a charity it doesn't pay particularly well.

I was speaking to someone who was running a youth group today and they were saying how desperate they were for someone to help with their admin. I offered to help out if she wanted some casual admin staff. And she asked me what i charge, (I clearly had never done anything like this before) so i told her we could work something out and gave her my number.

Now i love paperwork (i know i'm sad!) but organizing everything is my idea of a good time so i was thinking of starting a sideline freelance admin business at weekends/weekdays to top up my income.

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with "freelance" admin work. In this example the people were small self-employed people that wouldn't hire a contract administrator which i imagine would be quite standard?

What would you expect to pay a freelance administrator? Obviously i would need to undercut the temp agencies (which wouldn't be too difficult as they are expensive!!!)

I would only be available at evenings and weekends due to my full-time job but would that put most potential clients off?

I am aware there would be tax implications but i'll cross that bridge if i decide to go ahead with it.

Any help/advice or horror/success stories would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Eliza_2

Hello there

This isn't quite the same but I do, or have done, admin work for small businesses and charities, some a few hours a week, some a few hours a month and some a few hours a year - but it all adds up! A mix of PAYE and self employment. Some work I've fallen into because of word of mouth - put the word among your friends - this has been a really successful method for me and I got a fabulous job paying well, with flexibility to work from home and from their office, and just a few hours a week but I could take on more at busy times if I wanted and so on. Pay £9 an hour self employed.

Like you, I've also worked for charities, one was a short term contract for a few hours for a year, another is to service meetings of trustees - they meet twice a year (evenings) so I do minutes for these, accounts, post, correspondence etc between the meetings. Both of these were advertised in the local paper but I was told that hardly anyone applied, it's hard to find someone prepared to work for a few hours a month/year. These I did self employed and they had a fixed rate for the job (the latter for example is £800 a year, paid twice a year)

The other possibility is Clerk to governors of schools or parish councils etc. These seem to come up very regularly. Meetings usually in evenings, you need to take minutes, carry out follow-up actions, accounts etc and you work from home. Standard admin work all of it. These are PAYE and there's fixed salary scales (though some flexibility within). Pay roughly £10 an hour dep on experience.

The other thing I've done, but which wouldn't work for you, is to let it be known in your 'day job' that you have admin skills and you can offer extra hours to do this. A friend of mine worked at riding stables as a groom but let it be known that she had good office skills. She was asked to do extra admin (working from home) which she enjoyed in addition to contact with the kids and ponies.

Good luck with your plans - incidentally I've never been asked what I charge, they all know what they want to pay and I wouldn't argue with the above pay rates, to me the flexibility is worth more than a huge pay rise!