A boutique service — personally run, carefully matched
Your front office, fully staffed.
I connect US and Canadian small businesses with bilingual receptionists and operations coordinators from Bolivia. We recruit, contract, pay, house and manage them — they work your hours, in your time zone, on your systems. From our office, not from a spare room. English and Spanish, every working day.
One person. Yours alone.
A bilingual receptionist or operations coordinator, dedicated to your business, on your systems, every working day. Never shared with another client, never a rotating pool.
The desk stays covered.
Illness, holidays, an emergency — a colleague in the same office who already knows your account steps in. A home-based freelancer just goes dark for a week.
- UTC−4
- Eastern and Central business hours, covered live. No 12-hour gap, no daylight saving to track.
- One flat fee
- Full time, everything in — recruiting, contracting, payroll, the office and the equipment. No placement fee, no deposit, no hourly maths.
- Our office
- Business internet with a backup line, on-site supervision, cover when they're out.
The wall every growing business hits
You need a professional. You can't justify a US salary.
There is more administrative work than the owner can carry, and not quite enough to justify a $60,000 hire. So the work gets done badly, late, or at nine at night.
The work lands on whoever is least busy
Calls, scheduling, invoicing, chasing paperwork, following up on quotes. None of it is hard. All of it is urgent. It ends up with you, or with someone who already has a full job.
A local hire is $3,750 to $5,600 a month
Loaded with payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits and equipment. For a role that is genuinely valuable but rarely worth that much, the arithmetic doesn't close — so the hire never happens.
Offshore at $6 an hour costs more than it saves
A night-shift team twelve hours out of phase, high turnover, and a new person to retrain every few months. You spend the savings supervising, and the work still isn't right.
What the price actually buys
Your person doesn't work from their kitchen.
Almost every nearshore agency places someone who works from home. That is fine right up until the day it isn't — the internet drops mid-call, a motorbike goes past during a customer conversation, someone gets sick and the desk goes dark for a week. We do it the other way round.
- The line
- Business internet with a redundant second connection and backup power. A dropped call is a lost lead, and residential internet is not a service-level commitment.
- Supervision
- Someone on site who notices when the work isn't getting done — before you do.
- Coverage
- Illness, holidays, an emergency. A colleague who knows your account steps in. A home-based freelancer just disappears.
- The room
- A quiet space built for taking calls. No dogs, no family, no traffic.
- Equipment
- Company machines and managed access to your systems — not a personal laptop on a home network.
There are three other ways to get administrative help from abroad. Each one makes you give up one of the two things that actually matter.
| Option | Dedicated to you? | Covered when they're out? |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance marketplace / home-based VA | Yes | No — the desk goes dark |
| BPO, shared pool or answering service | No — you're one of forty accounts | Yes |
| Deel, Remote or an EOR | You do the hiring yourself | No — that isn't what they sell |
| NearshoreDesk | Yes — never shared | Yes — peers in the same office |
Most agencies make you pick one. We only take a handful of clients so we don't have to. Coverage without sharing only works when the people sit together and the client list is short. That's not modesty about scale — it's the reason the promise is deliverable.
Pricing
Three ways to do this. Priced by how much we carry.
The difference between these isn't the price — it's who owns the problem when something goes wrong. Take the managed desk and she's ours to house, equip, supervise, cover and replace. Take the second option and she's yours to run, and we stay on for the contract and the payments. Same price for either role, no annual contract, cancel with 30 days' notice.
Managed Desk
Everything in one number. Her pay is inside it — you write one cheque a month and nothing else.
- One dedicated person, full time. Yours alone, never shared with another client.
- She works from our office in Santa Cruz — business internet with a backup line, power backup, a quiet room built for calls.
- We buy the equipment. Company machines on a managed network, not a personal laptop at home.
- A supervisor on site who notices when something slips before you do.
- Covered when she's out. A colleague in the same office who knows your account takes the desk.
- Replaced within 20 business days if she leaves or stops working out — at no cost, as many times as it takes, for as long as you're a client.
- No placement fee, no setup fee, no deposit.
Want to take her fully in-house later? $3,900 one time, any time — day one or year three. It never rises and it never expires.
Recruit & Administer
We find her and keep the paperwork off your desk. You pay her salary directly, on top, and you run her day.
- We recruit and screen her — roughly forty applicants to get you a shortlist of three.
- The $500 keeps the admin with us: her contract, her payroll, the compliance and the cross-border payment every month.
- You never become an international employer or work out how to send money to Bolivia.
- 90-day replacement guarantee from her start date — one replacement, free.
- Any time zone. No office to staff, so she can be hired onto whatever hours you keep.
- She works from home, on her own internet.
- You provide everything — the laptop, the headset, the software.
- No supervision, and nobody covers the desk when she's out.
Do the arithmetic before you pick this one. Add her salary and her equipment to the $500 and it usually lands above the managed desk — and you're doing the managing. Happy to work it through with you on the call.
AI After Hours
The piece that turns a business-hours desk into a front office that never closes. Add it to either option above.
- A voice agent that answers in English and Spanish once your team is off the clock.
- Captures the caller's details instead of sending them to a voicemail box nobody checks.
- Anything urgent reaches a person. A real escalation path, not a promise to call back tomorrow.
- Your person picks it up in the morning with the night's calls already written down and waiting.
- This is the door to a front office that never closes. A person during your hours, an agent after them — that's the whole 24/7 idea, and it only works with one of the options above beside it.
Being straight with you: this isn't answering phones yet. It's what we're building next, and the price is here so you can plan around it. Ask on the call and I'll tell you honestly where it stands.
Either role, either option, same price. Receptionist & Intake or Operations Coordinator — we don't charge more for the harder one.
Receptionist & Intake
Answers every call in English or Spanish, books appointments, qualifies enquiries and chases the follow-up.
Operations Coordinator
Schedules and dispatches, coordinates vendors and tenants, tracks work orders and keeps customers updated.
- Full time, Eastern or Central business hours. One dedicated person, on your systems, every working day. Not a shared pool.
- Billed monthly in advance. ACH autopay, no deposit, no month's salary held. Cancel with 30 days' notice.
- Your price is fixed for 12 months. After that, any change comes with 60 days' written notice. No surprises mid-year.
- Replaced within 20 business days, always. On the managed desk, if someone leaves or stops working out at any point, we replace them at no extra cost, for as long as you're a client. Most recruiters stop at ninety days.
For comparison: a home-services receptionist in the US earns $36,000–40,000 a year and a property or short-term-rental coordinator $45,000–52,000 — roughly $3,750–5,600 a month once payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits and equipment are counted. Our people are career professionals, paid in US dollars, working your hours from our office.
How it works
Four steps. About ten business days.
We talk for 15 minutes
Your hours, your software, and what the role actually needs to own. In English or Spanish.
I shortlist three
Screened for written and spoken English, professional judgement and follow-through, with references I call myself.
You interview and choose
You pick your person. Nobody is assigned to you, and nobody is shared with another client.
They start on your systems
Contracts, payroll, compliance, cross-border payment and the desk they sit at are mine. You get a colleague, not a project.
Why Bolivia
Why we source from Bolivia first.
Most outsourcing firms default to the Philippines or India for low cost, or to Mexico and Colombia for proximity. We built NearshoreDesk around Bolivia for a specific reason: the right combination of bilingual talent, US-aligned time zones, low turnover, and a cost that lets us pay our team fairly while still saving you 40–60% versus a local hire.
Bolivia — our pick
- UTC−4 year-round, no daylight saving — matching US Eastern in summer, one to two hours ahead of Central
- Strong, neutral-accent English out of the bilingual universities
- Lower cost of living, which buys stable, long-tenure team members rather than constant churn
- An underserved market — we compete with local employers, not a dozen US recruiters
Rest of LatAm
- Mexico, Colombia and Argentina have excellent talent — at a higher cost
- Saturated by US recruiters, which means faster turnover and bidding wars
- Often two to three times the salary expectation of Bolivia
- We still recruit there for specialised roles when it makes sense
Philippines / India
- The cheapest option, but with a 10–14 hour time-zone gap
- Night-shift teams, which means burnout and high attrition
- Limited Spanish capability for Spanish-speaking customers
- A cultural and accent gap on customer-facing calls
US / Canada hire
- $3,750–5,600 a month all in, once payroll taxes, benefits and equipment are counted
- Long hiring cycles, and harder to replace if it doesn't work out
- Bilingual talent in this band is scarce and priced accordingly
- You handle HR, payroll, taxes and turnover yourself
About us
We think good work should travel — and that the people doing it should be paid properly for it.
There is a gap in this market, and it is the reason NearshoreDesk exists. At one end are the expensive vetted platforms, priced for funded startups rather than for a plumbing company or a property manager with eleven doors. At the other are the cheap marketplaces, where you sort through two hundred applicants yourself, hire someone you have never really assessed, and start again three months later when they disappear.
We built something deliberately narrow instead. We take a handful of clients, we place one carefully matched person with each of them, and we keep that person — in our own office, on our own equipment, with a colleague who can cover the desk when they are out. We are not trying to become a BPO running hundreds of seats. Staying small is what makes the promises on this page deliverable.
The other half of the mission points the other way. Real, dignified employment is one of the most powerful forces there is for lifting people out of poverty. We pay in US dollars, we pay above the local market, and we build roles people can stay in for years rather than churn through. That is not charity — it is the reason our clients get someone who is still there in month eighteen, and it is why we would rather grow slowly than cheaply.
The founder
JP Bender
Founder — and the person you will actually be working with
I was born and raised in Bolivia and I am Canadian. English and Spanish are both mother tongues for me, so I am not sourcing from a country I read about in a market report — these are the people I grew up around, and I know the seriousness they bring to their work.
I spent years at Toptal matching small businesses with vetted talent abroad, which is the same problem I work on now, and most of my career before that was spent close to owner-run businesses — close enough to know what a slow month does to one. You deal with me directly, every time. No account manager, no ticket queue.
Questions
The things people actually ask.
What does this actually cost me per month?
Three prices, depending on how much of it you want to run yourself. $2,000 a month for the managed desk — one dedicated person full time, her pay, her office, her equipment and her replacement all inside that number, and nothing else to pay. $3,500 once and then $500 a month if you'd rather employ her yourself and just have us find her and handle the contract and the payments — her salary is on top of that, and you provide the laptop. And $500 a month for the after-hours agent when it's ready. No setup fee, no deposit, no annual contract on any of them.
Where do they actually work?
On the managed desk, from our office in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, on our equipment, with business internet and a backup line. Not from home. That's deliberate: it's what lets us guarantee the call gets answered, cover the desk when someone's away, and have a supervisor who notices problems before you do. On the $500 option she works from her own home on your laptop — which is the honest trade for the lower price.
What hours do they cover?
Bolivia is UTC−4 with no daylight saving, which lines up cleanly with US Eastern and works well for Central. If you're on Mountain or Pacific time, the managed desk gets harder — but the $500 option doesn't, because there's no shared office to staff and she can be hired onto your hours. Tell me on the call. I'd rather say so up front than promise a schedule and disappoint you in month two.
Who employs them — me or you?
On the managed desk, we do. The contract, the payment, the compliance and the workspace are ours; the work and the direction are yours. You get one invoice a month and a colleague who shows up. On the $500 option you direct her and pay her salary, and we still hold the contract and run the payments — so you get the person without ever having to become an international employer. Either way, you never wire money to Bolivia yourself.
Can I hire them permanently later?
Yes, whenever you want, for $3,900 — the same price on day one or in year three. It never rises and it never expires. That's different from the $3,500 above, and the difference is worth knowing: $3,500 buys you a screened candidate and an introduction, and you find out in month two whether she's right. $3,900 buys out someone who has already been running your front desk for months and who you've watched work. One's a bet, the other isn't. We only ask that you go through us rather than around us; that's the one thing the agreement is firm about.
What if it doesn't work out?
There's no trial period, and I'd rather explain why than dress it up. A trial protects you for two weeks; what we do instead protects you for as long as you're here. On the managed desk, if she isn't right — week one, month nine, year two — we replace her within 20 business days, at no cost, as many times as it takes, for as long as you're a client. That doesn't expire. Most recruiters stop at ninety days. On the $500 option the guarantee is the standard ninety days from her start date, with one free replacement. Either way it's 30 days' notice to end, with no term to get out of.
Is this a call centre or a shared pool?
Neither. It's one person, dedicated to you, on your systems, every working day. They'll know your regular customers by name and your calendar by heart. A shared pool can't do either, which is why the cheap option keeps disappointing people.
Do you do bookkeeping?
Not today. We're launching with reception and operations coordination and doing those properly rather than spreading thin. If bookkeeping is the thing you actually need, tell me on the call — I'd rather point you elsewhere than sell you something we're not ready to deliver.
Am I one of your first clients?
Probably, yes — NearshoreDesk is new, and I'd rather tell you than let you find out. Here's what it buys you: you deal with me directly, every single time. No account manager, no ticket queue. That stops being true at most agencies somewhere around twenty clients.
Do you do AI phone answering?
Not yet — it’s the next thing we’re building, and the $500 price is on the page so you can plan around it rather than be surprised later. The idea is a voice agent that picks up outside your office hours in English and Spanish, captures the caller’s details, gets anything urgent to a real person, and hands the night’s calls to your coordinator the next morning — a person during your hours, an agent after them. If after-hours coverage is a real problem for you, say so on the call: it’s exactly the demand that decides how fast we build it.
Can we do all of this in Spanish?
Yes — the call, the contract and the whole working relationship. Spanish is a mother tongue for me, not a second language I studied.
Fifteen minutes. Then you'll know.
Tell me what's piling up and how many hours a week it really takes. If a person from Bolivia isn't the right answer for you, I'll say so and leave you alone.