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 organizations 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) so your transcription service will need to establish how long your recordings take on average. If your recordings are clear it will probably take about four hours to transcribe each hour of recording, so in this example you are looking at 40 hours of work per month. Or if based on an audio minute basis you’d be looking at 10 hours of recording = 600 minutes of recording, so 600 multiplied by the per audio minute rate.

You would then sign a retainer agreement stating that you agree to pay that amount in advance each month, at a discounted rate agreed with your transcription service. Some services will agree to carry over a small percentage of those hours to the following month if they are not all used, while others will require you to start afresh each month. Normally any extra hours you require, over and above the number stated in the retainer contract, are charged at the standard rate, which is why it’s so important to establish the amount you’re going to need before going in to the retainer agreement.

Retainer agreements will vary with different providers so, as with any contract, do check carefully and be prepared to negotiate for the right agreement for your organization.

Penguin Transcription http://www.penguin-transcription.co.uk part of Penguin Office Services, offers an affordable transcription service by tailoring each quote to the exact requirements of the client. The more information the client can provide us with, and the better the quality of the recording for transcription, the more affordable the transcription service will be. Why not visit our site and fill in an enquiry form at http://www.penguin-transcription.co.uk/PTS_enquiry_form.html to receive a quote for your transcription requirements.

This article is copyright, Anne Hickley, 2007.