Giving Sensitive Data to Your VA - Bank Accounts, PayPal, Your Inbox - Ideas...
A lot of people are reluctant to bring a VA into there business for security reasons. I just wanted to touch on a few ways you can help eliminate security issues but still outsource more sensitive areas of your business.
Access to Your Inbox
Outsourcing your email is tough. With your inbox you would not give your entire inbox to your VA due to security issues. You should maintain a personal email address that only a few select people have and is also used for access to sensitive sites like PayPal. So you minimize who can contact you on your main email account.
You would set up separate emails for different things, and have some forwarding rules so that you only get the vitally important stuff, and everything else goes to your VA who sorts it out and manages it, answers it where applicable, and passes on anything important.
Making Staff Payment via VA
Often you don't need to give access to accounts and can still cut 99% of the work involved in making payments. For example, say you need to pay writers you can have them log into your blog and get post counts (but their login has restricted access so they can't make any changes to your blog, only view data). Then they take that information and create a mass payment excel sheet which they send to you. You just upload that to PayPal in 60 seconds and your payments get done.
When it comes to giving access to financial accounts I would be very careful of who I gave access to, but also restrict access. For example, set up separate Bank accounts that only have limited funds put into it each month by direct debit just to cover what costs should be made. Some bank accounts will also let you create sub-users online that have limited access (so for example you can go in later and put in the master password to allow payments through)
Doing Accounting via VA
If you are using PayPal you could simply get CSV reports sent to you, and set up a forwarder rule in your email account to forward it to your VA.
You could also hire a coder to create a script that works from your PC that can log into your bank account (using passwords only stored on your PC and encrypted) and to go into your bank and get a copy of statements, which are then automatically forwarded to your VA.
This would allow you to get sensitive info to your VA with minimal involvement without giving them access to your data.
If you have any of your own ideas please share them...
Access to Your Inbox
Outsourcing your email is tough. With your inbox you would not give your entire inbox to your VA due to security issues. You should maintain a personal email address that only a few select people have and is also used for access to sensitive sites like PayPal. So you minimize who can contact you on your main email account.
You would set up separate emails for different things, and have some forwarding rules so that you only get the vitally important stuff, and everything else goes to your VA who sorts it out and manages it, answers it where applicable, and passes on anything important.
Making Staff Payment via VA
Often you don't need to give access to accounts and can still cut 99% of the work involved in making payments. For example, say you need to pay writers you can have them log into your blog and get post counts (but their login has restricted access so they can't make any changes to your blog, only view data). Then they take that information and create a mass payment excel sheet which they send to you. You just upload that to PayPal in 60 seconds and your payments get done.
When it comes to giving access to financial accounts I would be very careful of who I gave access to, but also restrict access. For example, set up separate Bank accounts that only have limited funds put into it each month by direct debit just to cover what costs should be made. Some bank accounts will also let you create sub-users online that have limited access (so for example you can go in later and put in the master password to allow payments through)
Doing Accounting via VA
If you are using PayPal you could simply get CSV reports sent to you, and set up a forwarder rule in your email account to forward it to your VA.
You could also hire a coder to create a script that works from your PC that can log into your bank account (using passwords only stored on your PC and encrypted) and to go into your bank and get a copy of statements, which are then automatically forwarded to your VA.
This would allow you to get sensitive info to your VA with minimal involvement without giving them access to your data.
If you have any of your own ideas please share them...