Leverage - Expert
Skilled support at $15 an hour
Bookkeeping, marketing and people work that needs judgment and a domain behind it, without carrying another salary to get it.
At a glance
Rate
$15 an hour
With volume
$13.50, then $12.75
Monthly cost
Starts at $650
Time to placement
7 to 10 business days
Best for
Real jobs that are not full jobs
The gap
Too much work to do yourself, not enough to hire for
The books are three months behind. The social account has not posted since the trade show. The last person you brought on took six weeks and a job description you wrote at midnight, and you would rather not do that again this quarter.
Each of those is a real job for somebody. None of them is a whole job. So they stay with you, in the gap between more work than you can do and less than a salary can be justified against, and they age.
The domains
Three domains, one rate
01 Money
- Bookkeeping and transaction categorization
- Bank and credit card reconciliations
- QuickBooks upkeep and standard reporting
- Invoicing and chasing what is owed
- Expense tracking, coded the way your accountant wants it
02 Marketing and creative
- Social content planning, scheduling and posting
- Email campaigns and list management
- Graphic work and visual content to a brief
- Copy written to your existing brand and tone
- Basic campaign reporting
03 Hiring and people admin
- Job descriptions and role documentation
- Hiring coordination and candidate correspondence
- Onboarding paperwork and checklists
- Payroll coordination
- Policy documents and review administration
The limit
What $15 an hour does not buy
An Expert bookkeeper categorizes the transactions, reconciles the accounts and hands you a clean set of books on a schedule. They will not tell you your pricing is wrong. That is a different conversation with a different person, and it is the one that changes the number at the bottom.
Same story on the marketing side. They will run the calendar, write to the brief and keep the campaigns going out on time. Deciding what the offer should be is not in the job, and it would not be fair to put it there.
Sort that out before you place somebody. If the gap is the thinking rather than the doing, LINX Connect is a weekly advisor starting at $1,500 a month, and Connect+ bundles that advisor with the staff.
Rates
The rate, and what volume does to it
10 hours a week
$15.00an hour
$650 a month
Full rate, no discount applied.
20 hours a week
$13.50an hour
$1,169 a month
10 percent off the rate.
40 hours a week
$12.75an hour
$2,208 a month
15 percent off the rate.
Most owners buying Expert hours do not need forty of them a week. Ten hours of clean bookkeeping every week is worth more than forty hours of anything done in a hurry, and it costs $650.
Above and below
When it is Basic instead, and when it is Specialized
Basic, $12 an hour
Inbox, calendar, data entry, document preparation, follow-up reminders.
If there is no domain knowledge in the task, there is no reason to pay Expert rates for it.
Specialized, $40 an hour
Financial modeling rather than bookkeeping. Building the site rather than updating it. Paid media rather than posting.
The jump is large, and it is the right one when the work would otherwise need a professional on payroll.
Most Expert clients run some Basic hours alongside. Splitting the work by the judgment it needs is almost always cheaper than putting all of it at one level.
Fit
Who Expert fits
A strong fit
- You need skilled help in the books, the marketing or the hiring, and the volume does not justify a hire.
- The work needs judgment and a bit of training, but not a license or a career path.
- You want the domain without the overhead that usually comes attached to it.
- Something in one of those three areas is visibly behind, and has been for a while.
Not the right fit
- Not for work that needs a license. An Expert bookkeeper is not your CPA and does not file your returns.
- Not for a role that needs somebody in the room. Presence is the one thing an hourly remote placement cannot supply at any rate.
- And not for a business hoping a $15 hour will produce a strategy. It buys competent execution of a job you have defined. Defining the job is still yours.
Questions
What owners ask about the Expert tier
What kind of bookkeeping can an Expert placement handle?
Transaction categorization, bank reconciliations, invoicing, receivables chasing, expense management and standard reporting in QuickBooks. Month-end that closes on time rather than three weeks late.
Do they work inside my own systems?
Yes, in the accounts and tools you already run.
How quickly can I get started?
Placement runs 7 to 10 business days. Expert roles take a little longer to shortlist than admin ones, because the domain has to match as well as the person.
Can I mix Expert with the other tiers?
Yes. A common shape is Expert hours on the books and Basic hours on the admin, with Specialized brought in for a project and then stopped.
What if the person is not a good fit?
Tell us and we replace them at no additional cost. If the problem turns out to be the job rather than the person, we will say that instead of sending a second candidate into the same gap.
Start the conversation
Which job has been sitting with you longest?
Thirty minutes. Tell us what is behind, and we will tell you whether an Expert placement is the answer or whether something else is.
