What Is the Most Affordable Way to Get a Full-Time Admin Person for a Small Business?

Ask any small business owner where their evenings go and admin usually comes up. Doing invoices after the kids are in bed. Replying to suppliers from the car park. Realising on Thursday that nobody rebooked Monday’s cancelled meeting. Most of them know they need someone. The salary is what puts them off.

A UK hire isn’t the only way to get a full-time admin person, though. You could take on an apprentice, use a temp, stretch a freelance VA’s hours, or bring in a dedicated offshore office administrator on a fixed monthly fee. We’ve priced each of those at five days a week using 2026 UK rates, so you can compare like with like.

What a Full-Time Admin Person Costs in the UK

Roughly £2,359 a month at the legal minimum. For someone with a few years’ experience, expect £2,638 to £3,138 once employer costs are added.

Wages first. From 1 April 2026, GOV.UK’s minimum wage rates put the National Living Wage at £12.71 an hour for over-21s. A standard 37.5-hour week gets you to £24,785 a year.

On top of that sits employer National Insurance, charged at 15% on pay above £5,000 (HMRC’s rates and thresholds for employers has the current numbers). And there’s pension. You’ll pay in at least 3% of whatever they earn between £6,240 and £50,270, which LITRG’s auto-enrolment guide explains if you’ve not dealt with it before. For a minimum-wage admin, it adds up like this:

Most businesses want someone who’s done the job before, and that costs more. On our office administrator page, we benchmark the monthly UK in-house cost at £2,638 for an admin with 1 to 3 years’ experience, £3,138 for 4 to 7 years, and £3,738 for 8 years or more.

What else to budget for

Recruitment fees catch a lot of people out. Going through an agency usually costs 15% to 20% of the first year’s salary, according to Agency Central. On a minimum-wage role, call it £3,700 to £5,000.

Holiday is the other one. Full-time staff are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid leave a year. That’s well over a month where the inbox fills up again unless someone covers it, and if they’re off sick you’re paying Statutory Sick Pay at £123.25 a week as well.

Then there’s the desk, a laptop and whatever software they need. Small amounts, but they’re there every month.

Every Route Compared at Full-Time Hours

Plenty of articles compare an employee with a VA working ten hours a month. Useful if ten hours covers it. If you need Monday to Friday, you want everything priced the same way, so that’s what this table does.

We’ve assumed 162.5 working hours a month throughout: 37.5 a week, times 52 weeks, divided by 12. Experienced UK employee and agency figures are the benchmarks from our office administrator page.

The Apprentice Route

Of the UK options, an apprentice costs least. What you save in wages, you spend in your own time.

The apprentice rate from April 2026 is £8.00 an hour, so £15,600 a year full-time. Under-25 apprentices also come with no employer National Insurance on earnings up to £50,270, thanks to HMRC’s apprentice relief. With the 3% pension added, you land at about £1,323 a month.

Training has also got easier to afford. In December 2025 the government announced it would scrap the 5% co-investment for small and medium-sized businesses, so eligible under-25s get their training paid for in full. Ask your training provider when that kicks in for you.

Two catches. The £8.00 rate is only for under-19s and for older apprentices in their first year, so expect their pay to rise after twelve months. And a chunk of their week is spent on training, not your work.

If you’ve got time to teach someone and you’d like them to stay for years, it can work well. If what you need is somebody to take the inbox off you from week two, look elsewhere.

Why Hourly VAs Get Expensive at Full-Time Hours

For a few hours here and there, a VA is hard to beat. UK rates you’ll see published start around £15 an hour and climb past £45 for experienced support.

Scale that up to a full month (about 162.5 hours) and the picture changes fast:

Most freelance VAs also juggle several clients. Fine for a weekly batch of invoices. Not so fine at 11am when a supplier needs an answer before lunch and your VA is halfway through someone else’s to-do list.

Already working with a VA and just need more of their time? A dedicated virtual assistant gives you the same remote set-up, but they work for you alone and the fee is monthly rather than hourly.

Agency Temps

A temp is often the fastest fix. Long term, they rarely work out the most affordable. The agency covers the worker’s pay, holiday and NI, then adds its margin. Agency Central says there’s no standard figure for that margin, and for an admin role you’ll typically be looking at £2,500 to £4,000 a month. Ask for the full breakdown up front.

For maternity cover or a seasonal rush, temps make sense. For admin that’s needed every week of the year, you end up paying the agency’s cut indefinitely, and there’s no guarantee the same person stays.

How the Offshore Setup Works

One person, working for your business only, during UK hours, for a set monthly fee. That’s the model. At Aspire Offshore, it starts from £950 a month for a junior administrator, then £1,250 for mid-level and £1,600 for senior.

That one fee covers their salary, workstation, HR, recruitment, and a UK account manager. There’s no employer National Insurance, no pension contribution, and no agency margin on top. You’ll see a shortlist of 2 to 3 pre-screened candidates, and most administrators are up and running in about four weeks.

They’re employed in India, where wages and office costs are lower. This isn’t the same as hiring someone from overseas onto your own books, which usually means a sponsor licence and visa fees, and our guide to employing staff overseas walks through how the two differ.

Even against a minimum-wage UK hire at £2,359 a month, a junior offshore administrator at £950 costs about 60% less. And that’s before you add a recruitment fee or a desk on the UK side.

Matching the role to your admin

Before you pick a role, look back over the last month and see where your admin hours went. The answer usually points to the right hire.

You don’t have to get it perfect on day one. Lots of businesses start with one general administrator and split the work later.

What to Ask an Offshore Provider Before You Sign

Two providers can quote the same monthly price and give you completely different service. Ask them all the same questions so you can compare properly.

Clear written answers are a good sign. If anything about cost or data stays vague after you’ve asked twice, walk away.

The Trade-Offs, and How to Handle Them

We’d be doing you a disservice if we said offshore suits everyone. Here’s what to think about.

• They can’t be in your office. Post, visitors and deliveries all need someone physically there. You can get round the post with a mail-scanning service, but if you have a reception desk, you’ll still want someone on site.
• There’s a time difference. India is four and a half hours ahead of the UK in summer and five and a half in winter, so your administrator will be working into their evening. Ask how the shifts work and what happens on UK bank holidays.
• Data is still your responsibility. Under UK GDPR you’re still responsible for your customers’ data, whoever’s handling it. Set access by role instead of handing out master passwords, turn on two-factor authentication, and get a data processing agreement signed. The ICO’s guide to international transfers explains what that paperwork needs to cover.
• The first few weeks take effort. Write down how you do things, or record your screen while you raise an invoice. It’ll save you answering the same question five times.

Handled properly, none of this is a dealbreaker for most office admin.

Do You Need Someone Full-Time?

Find out before you commit. For a fortnight, jot down every admin job and how long it took, including whatever you squeezed in at 10pm.

For comparison, a part-time UK employee on minimum wage for 20 hours a week costs about £1,222 a month with NI and pension. If the work is steady and needs doing in person, that may be all you need.

Which Route Fits Your Business?

• Sole trader, about eight hours of admin a week: stick with a pay-as-you-go VA. A full-time person would be twiddling their thumbs by Wednesday.
• A team of six or so, everyone doing a bit of admin: a dedicated offshore administrator usually makes the most sense. One person takes the diary, emails, invoices and supplier calls for the whole team.
• Growing firm where the owner still runs the processes: if you’re still approving purchase orders and chasing reports, an offshore business administrator can own those processes so you can step back from them.
• You want to train someone up and keep them for years: if you’ve got time to supervise, an apprentice is the lowest-cost way to do it in the UK.
• Reception or lots of post: you’ll need someone there in person. A part-time UK hire for the front desk and offshore help for everything on screen can cost less than one full-time UK employee trying to do both.

The Short Answer

Need admin cover five days a week? A dedicated offshore administrator is usually the most affordable way to get it: £950 a month, against £2,638 for a junior UK admin with employer costs included. With only a few hours of admin, a pay-as-you-go VA is enough. If the job has to be done on site, look at a part-time UK employee or an apprentice instead.

Whichever way you go, track your hours for two weeks first. You may need less help than you thought. Or a lot more.

To see what this could look like for your business, have a look at our offshore office administrator role, or book a consultation and we’ll go through your admin with you and send over some candidates.

“Doing admin after the kids are in bed? Tell us where your hours go, and we’ll send you candidates for a dedicated administrator from £950 a month.Book a consultation →