}
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5 Tasks Wedding Planners Can Outsource
As wedding and event planners, many of us start out as a one-person operation. We are the owner, manager, lead planner, bookkeeper, marketing person, accountant, and so much more. As our business grows, it is absolutely critical that we hire help so we can focus on transitioning from event planner to CEO of our business.
Your hired help may be an employee or a contractor who can help with specific tasks that free up your time to focus on your clients, the future of your business, and on the tasks you love doing.
You may have started out your business by building your first website. Or perhaps you purchased an easy-to-use WordPress template when you started. Both of these are perfectly fine when you are just starting out and you are tight on cash. As your business grows, investing in professional help for your website programming, design, and SEO is an easy way to free up some of your time and to help your marketing grow through a professionally designed and managed website.
Accounting and bookkeeping can be very time consuming as your event planning business grows. When you get to the point where you need professional management software such as 17 Hats, Fresh Books, or Quickbooks, it is important to hire someone who knows the proper way to set up your business in the financial management software and can manage and reconcile your business books. Ideally, your financial person can explain what the financial numbers mean so you can make smart financial decisions about your business.
Your accountant and bookkeeper may be the same person or they might be two different people. Often, a bookkeeper will simply update your accounting records each month, manage receipts, take payments, and possibly send invoices. Your accountant may be someone who does your taxes and payroll. Typically a bookkeeper is less expensive than your accountant.
Creating contracts for clients, answering phone calls, and screening emails can all be managed by a virtual assistant. When I started having my assistant manage our general email inbox for my planning company, I wanted to celebrate! It was such a huge relief and time saver to have her in charge of that inbox.
You might be surprised at how many event planners outsource their design services. I have known planners who outsource to other event planners who happen to be good designers (but the clients don’t know the difference). I also know many planners who have graphic designers create room diagrams and sketches for their client’s events.
Keeping up with social media accounts can be so time-consuming, especially during busy wedding season. Even if you don’t want to hire someone to manage it all, a virtual assistant can help format and draft blog posts, write content for your blog, post photos from events on your website and blog, create pinnable images for Pinterest, retweet and respond for you on Twitter, post on Instagram, manage your email marketing newsletter, and much more.
If you are feeling overwhelmed in your business, take the time to write down the tasks that you can use help with. Once you have a task list, you can decide what kind of help you need. You could hire a virtual assistant for 5 hours a week to manage some social media and help with general emails, then hire a techie assistant who can update your website once a month and keep track of your SEO. Also, you may realize that you need to hire help with personal tasks such as housekeeping, grocery shopping, running errands, childcare, and more.
As for finding help for your business tasks, websites like People Per Hour and Upwork are great for finding freelancers for just about any task imaginable. You can also post on your blog and social media for the type of help you are looking for. I have had great luck by asking for recommendations in private Facebook communities related to the events industry. You can also ask your peers to see if they have any recommendations.
Want some more ideas on what you can outsource? Here is a helpful article with 101 tasks you can outsource to a virtual assistant.
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Great article! Thanks for highlighting how VA’s can help event planners with so many aspects of their business!
Thank you Claire!
Great list of common tasks here. This will give event planners an idea of what task are commonly given to VA’s so that they can lighten up their load. Being an event planner will have lots and lots of things on your hand so VA’s will really help you get through your day.
Thanks for your comment Tabby!