Outsourcing Transcription - Advantages of a Retainer Contract by Anne Hickley If you're planning to outsource a significant amount of transcription or other administrative work on an ongoing basis then it may well be most cost-effective to use a retainer contract, rather than pay as you go. This generally works well for large organisations who have a significant amount of dictation being produced by senior managers, or for market research companies who regularly conduct interviews with members of the public. It can also work well for universities; it's a great way to get a discounted service for your students, because while each student might only need a small number of interviews transcribed,

across the university or even a faculty over the course of a year there are probably hundreds. The way a retainer contract generally works is that you agree to send in a certain amount of work per month, which you pay for in advance at a slightly discounted rate. You would need to establish a working relationship with a transcription service first, to make sure that you were both happy with working together. This also helps you to establish with a greater degree of certainty how much transcription you may have each month.

Suppose you anticipate having about ten hours of transcription recording every month. You would first work on a pay as you go basis with the transcription service, who may charge work in a variety of ways - per line, per character, per key stroke, per page, per audio minute or per hour of time taken. At Penguin Transcription we charge per audio minute for digital recordings or per hour of time taken for analogue tapes. However the time taken can vary depending on the quality of the recordings and a number of other factors (see my other articles for more information on this)