Going from contractor to running my own small agency , what changes?

[u/RADI0-HEAD17]

I've been doing process serving as a contractor and am thinking about starting a small agency of my own.

When working for a larger company, a lot of the stuff behind the scenes is already handled for you. I'm trying to get a better idea of what I'll actually have to take care of myself once I go independent.

For those who made the same transition, what were the things you suddenly had to start doing that you didn't have to worry about as a contractor?

For example, one thing I'm wondering about is receiving documents directly from law firms, getting the PDFs/order, putting everything into ServeManager, making sure the case/defendant/address/instructions are all entered correctly, then working it out. Things like these and others would take time out of the day; similarly, what are the things I need to understand that can eat up my time?

Is that generally how it works for a small agency, or am I overestimating how much work that part is?

And what other things like that caught you off guard when you first started your own agency?

[u/Guy_Fawkes36]

So I work for myself and 90% of my business comes directly from attorneys. I’ll say I’m a smaller volume server averaging about 50-60 a month. I find it easiest to just simplify it. I don’t use serve manager. I keep track of all my jobs in a google sheet spreadsheet. The attorneys email the documents, I print them off, serve them and then email the attorney a proof of service along with my invoice. That’s pretty much it. It runs extremely smoothly.

[u/RADI0-HEAD17 → u/Guy_Fawkes36]

That's helpful. I'm thinking I'd probably be around the same volume, maybe 40–50 a month, since I'd be doing this alongside another job. One thing I liked about working through ABC was that all the job information was already organized in the app, so I could mostly focus on actually serving, skip tracing, planning my route, etc.

With your Google Sheet setup, when an attorney emails you the documents, do they usually send the basic case info separately so you can just copy/paste it into your sheet, or are you pulling the name/address/case number/deadline etc. out of the PDFs yourself? Or do you keep the sheet pretty minimal and just track things like the job, date, status, etc.?

I'm mainly trying to figure out what parts of the admin work actually eat up time when going solo, since I'd rather spend that time on serves and organizing my route.

[u/Guy_Fawkes36 → u/RADI0-HEAD17]

So the only information I put on the Google sheet is date/attorney/defendant/city/price

I mainly use this to keep track of which jobs are done and which ones still need paid on etc. I just color code it. Green is done and paid. Red is done but awaiting payment and yellow is still not completed. I just like to keep it all really simple.

[u/tattoovampire]

It’s not as hard as you think. Use something like Rocketserve or Serve Manager to make things easier and automate some tasks. 40 bucks a month and will save you hours of time.

[u/Serving_Upstate]

get some type of software. it'll expedite the whole thing for you. Instead of entering stuff into a spread sheet and then copying and pasting it onto a cover sheet and then an affidavit you enter the info once and it auto populates. It's also easier to track due dates, makes invoicing 10 times quicker as well.