So you’ve decided that your business will be office-less for the foreseeable future. There were only a few things tied to your old physical office space, but one of them is mail. While there are many opportunities to switch correspondence to electronic delivery, your business still needs an address.
There are three main options for mail delivery in a virtual office:
P.O. Box or Mailbox Store
A P.O. box is a common option for a virtual business or a business run out of the owner’s home. They are generally inexpensive and easy to set up. However, the main drawback is that someone still has to go regularly to collect the mail. If this person lives near the mailbox, it’s hopefully a minor inconvenience. But what if that person moves? In a virtual office, people are not tied to an office. Why tie them to a mailbox?
Key employee or owner receives mail at their home
This scenario may work fine, but it does put additional responsibility on the employee or owner to distribute mail to the responsible employee. The business owner should not be sorting and forwarding mail. They should be dealing with responsibilities that only he or she can address. Also, what if the owner or key employee moves? Does the business address change too?
Virtual mailbox
These are services that will assign an address for your business and receive your mail. They scan it and allow you to choose what happens to it – keep the electronic copy, forward the physical document, or trash/recycle it. No one has to pick up mail. The owner is not sorting through the mail; another employee can access the service and handle those administrative tasks.
A few examples of these services are Earthclass Mail, Post Scan Mail, Anytime Mailbox. These will cost more than a simple P.O. box since the service includes scanning and disposing of documents. But these services truly make your business’ mail available from anywhere.
If it’s not clear, my choice is the virtual mailbox service since it’s one more step that turns your office into a truly virtual operation.