Point vs hiring an assistant

This page is about hiring a person, not about software that calls itself an assistant. The two get compared because they promise the same relief, and they fail in completely different ways. Cost rarely settles it. What settles it is confidentiality, judgment, and the week they’re away.

• You picture somebody handling your inbox. The job that exists is wider than that, and email triage on its own is a slice of a role.
• An assistant costs you time for the first months. Your judgment has to move across before it can be applied, and it moves one correction at a time.
• In an accounting or law practice, delegating the inbox means a person reads client financial matters. That’s a real question with a real answer. Settle it before the advert goes up.
• Point does the sorting, the summarizing and the chasing. The phone, the client who sounds upset, the job that grows past what you hired for: those are the parts a person is for.

Maybe what you’re weighing is a software add-on that calls itself an assistant rather than a human being. That’s a different comparison, and it’s drawn in an AI email client versus an AI email assistant.

What are you actually hiring for?

Worth being honest at the start. The gap between the job people imagine and the job that exists is where most of the disappointment comes from.

The picture in your head is somebody who opens your inbox in the morning, works out what matters, deals with the routine, and leaves you a short list. That picture is real, and people do it well. At a firm of five to fifteen people, it’s part of a job rather than a job. What that firm actually needs is somebody who does the inbox and the phone and the calendar. They chase the unsigned engagement letters, they onboard the clients, and they sort out the thing that broke in the office. Email triage is perhaps a fifth of their week.

Two consequences follow, and neither is obvious in advance. The first is that you’re making a hiring decision about a whole role, with everything that involves, to solve a problem about your inbox. The second is that the inbox part is the part that gets squeezed. Something urgent comes up, and it does, and the triage is what slips. It’s the task with no deadline attached to it. So the relief arrives, and then it comes and goes. Triage that comes and goes is in some ways worse than none, because you stop checking and then have to start again.

Hiring is still the right call for plenty of firms. What matters is knowing which problem you’re solving. If you’re doing five jobs, hire. If the problem is that a hundred messages a day arrive and three of them commit you to something, that’s a narrower problem, and it has a narrower answer.

Why an assistant costs you time before it saves you any

Anyone who has hired knows this, and few buying guides say it, so it’s worth setting out properly.

For somebody else to sort your inbox correctly, they have to know what matters to you. That knowledge lives in your head. It’s a hundred small judgments. This client is difficult about timing. That one always says urgent and never means it. A message from the bank about that account matters because of what happened in March. The referral from the lawyer is worth more than it looks. You know all of it, and you’ve written none of it down, because you never needed to.

It moves across by correction. They sort, you look, you say no, not that one, and here’s why. Every one of those exchanges costs you a few minutes and buys them one rule. There are hundreds of rules. The arithmetic is hard in the first quarter. You’re spending time to save time later, and meanwhile you’re doing your own inbox as well as explaining it. Most owners underestimate this by a factor of several. Some conclude in month two that the hire was a mistake, when in fact they were exactly on schedule.

It’s also perishable, in a specific way. The knowledge lives in one person. They take two weeks off, or they leave for a better offer, and it goes with them. What covering for somebody really takes is the whole subject of covering for each other. The answer there applies with more force to an assistant than to a partner, because a partner at least shares the client relationships.

Software has the same problem in a different shape, and it’s fair to say so. Point has to learn your firm too. The difference is where the corrections land. What Point picks up about the way you like things is written down, somewhere you can read it and edit it. And Point stays.

Whose confidentiality is it?

This is the question a professional practice should settle first. It’s also the one most often left to drift.

Delegating your inbox means a person reads client correspondence: tax positions, disputes, valuations, the letter about the divorce that affects the shareholding. That may be entirely proper. Firms have employed people who read privileged material for as long as firms have existed. The answer is a contract, a duty, supervision and consequences. It’s a well-understood arrangement.

What makes it worth deliberate thought is that the arrangement has parts. An employee who’s been trained and is supervised is one thing. An assistant hired part-time through an agency, possibly in another jurisdiction, with mailbox access on day one, is a different thing. The difference sits in the paperwork rather than in the person. Your professional obligations, your engagement letters and your insurer each say something about who may see client material, and about whether any client consent is required. Those documents will have a view. It’s cheaper to find out before than after.

Software raises the same family of questions in a different order, and it earns the same scrutiny. Software keeps quiet, and it still reads your mail. The questions worth putting in writing to any vendor, Point included, are in the confidentiality checks for an AI email client. Point’s own answers come in three parts. A sender Point doesn’t recognize has their mail held back before anything reads it. What belongs to one business you operate stays out of sight from another. And every action taken is written down in order, explained in a sentence, with undo a click away. A person can’t hand you a log of every judgment they made about your mail last Tuesday, and would reasonably object to being asked.

What a person does that no software will

A comparison that only lists the advantages of the thing being sold is worth skipping. This is the section where the human wins outright.

They hear the tone. A client who’s normally chatty sends an email that’s short in an unusual way. A person picks that up, and picks up the phone. Software reads the words.

They handle the thing with no category. The landlord, the insurance renewal, the awkward call about an unpaid invoice, the supplier who has messed something up. Real work arrives messy, and a person absorbs the leftovers without being told how.

They represent you. A reply from your assistant is a reply from your firm, with a human on the other end who can be asked a follow-up question. That’s worth something to your clients, and it’s worth something to you.

They notice you. That you’re underwater this week, that you’ve said yes to too much, that you haven’t eaten. Software hasn’t caught up here, and nobody should pretend otherwise.

They grow. In a year a good assistant is doing things outside what you hired them for, things you’d never have thought to ask for. That compounding is the real return on the hire, and it belongs to people alone.

They take work away entirely. A job you never see again, rather than a shorter list. That’s a different kind of relief from a well-sorted inbox, and there are weeks when it’s the only kind that helps.

If those are the parts you need, hire, and don’t let anything on this page talk you out of it.

What software does that a person cannot

The other side. It’s narrower, and it’s real.

Point is there at every hour. Mail is weighed as it lands at six in the morning, at eleven at night, and on the Saturday when the client who runs a restaurant does their admin. An assistant works their hours, which are usually your hours. Everything arriving outside those hours waits in a pile for the morning pass.

Point reads everything. Every message, at the moment it arrives, with the same attention given to the ninetieth as to the first. Attention is the resource a person runs out of at exactly the point in the day when it matters.

Point needs the mailbox and leaves the rest, and this is the part worth dwelling on. Handing your inbox to a person means handing over context about your clients, your firm and your judgment. Handing it to Point means the sorting is done and the relationships stay entirely yours. You still read what needs you. You still write the reply. Point’s part is that the right message is in front of you, with a summary of what it wants and the ask already lifted out as a dated task.

Point works through August. Whatever the arrangement is on the second of the month, it’s the same on the thirty-first. You go away for two weeks and it holds exactly as it was, with the handover conversation skipped.

And the money is a different order. A part-time person is a payroll line: employer costs, a desk, equipment, management time, and the risk that they leave. That sits well above any software subscription in this category. The comparison is unfair in one direction, since the assistant is doing four other jobs, so it’s worth doing honestly against what you’d ask each to cover. What an AI email client costs does the software half properly across the whole category.

Which one first, and can you have both?

Both, usually. The order matters more than the choice.

The mistake is hiring somebody into an untriaged inbox. That creates a job that scales with your volume, so it gets harder as the firm succeeds. Its most valuable part is a copy of your judgment, installed by hand, and it walks out of the door if they leave. You’ll have spent a salary to move the bottleneck from you to them.

The better order is to sort first, then hire for what’s left. The mail gets ranked as it lands. Every thread carries a summary of what it wants. The asks inside messages have already become dated tasks. What remains is the work that genuinely needs a person. The phone call, the awkward conversation, the client who needs handling rather than answering. The parts of running a practice that were never email in the first place. That’s a much better job to advertise. It’s easier to fill, and it survives the person in it changing.

If you can only do one this year, ask which failure is costing you more right now. If you’re personally doing five jobs and one of them is the office, hire. If a client’s message sat unread until Thursday, an assistant is an expensive and slow answer to a problem that’s about ordering rather than about hands. And if the work falls between you and a colleague rather than landing on you, that’s a third problem again, described in when an email falls through the cracks between you.

Common questions

Is Point a replacement for hiring an assistant?

For one part of the job, yes. For the rest, a person. If you’re considering a hire because of the volume of email and the fear of missing something in it, Point handles that directly, and at a small fraction of a salary. If you’re doing the phone, the calendar, the invoicing and the office as well, that’s a job for a person, and you should hire.

Would an assistant do a better job of triage than software?

Eventually, on the messages they understand, and at a cost in your time first. A good assistant who’s been with you two years will make judgment calls no software will match, because they know your clients as people. In the first three months they’ll make calls you have to correct, and correcting them is work. Point starts imperfect too. Point’s corrections are recorded rather than remembered, and they stay put when somebody new arrives.

Is it safe to let an employee read confidential client mail?

Usually, yes, under the arrangement firms have always used: a contract, a duty of confidentiality, supervision and consequences. One thing is worth checking before rather than after. Your professional obligations, your engagement letters and your insurer each require something about who may see client material, and that matters most if the person is part-time, agency-supplied or outside your jurisdiction. The parallel questions to ask a software vendor are in the confidentiality checks.

What happens to my inbox when my assistant is on leave?

Whatever you arranged in advance, which is usually less than you think. The knowledge of what matters lives in one person. Covering means somebody else applying rules they only partly know. The two weeks tend to be caught up on afterwards rather than kept up with. What covering for somebody really takes is worked through in covering for each other.

Can I do both?

Yes, and the order matters. Sorting first turns the assistant’s job into the part that actually needs a person: the phone, the awkward conversation, the client who needs handling rather than answering. Hiring first into an untriaged inbox creates a role that gets harder as the firm grows, and its most valuable knowledge leaves when the person moves on.

Which is cheaper?

Software, by a wide margin, and the comparison is unfair in that direction. A part-time person is a salary plus employer costs plus a desk plus your management time, and they’re covering four other jobs alongside the inbox. The fair question is which job you need done, and whether the email part of it is a person-shaped job at your volume.

Does Point act on my mail without me?

At the top of the dial, yes, and it’s the same decision you’d be making about a person. You’d let a new assistant book meetings in the first week. You’d watch them work for a year before letting them answer a client’s question about a tax position. Those two permissions are granted separately, as trust arrives. Point is built to be delegated to the same way. Every kind of action has its own level, from suggest-only through review to fully handled. Everything starts on review. Point prepares, you approve. Scheduling is the errand most owners hand over first, and Point runs the back and forth itself. Taking it back is where the comparison stops resembling a person. Lowering a level is a setting rather than a conversation. Behind it sits the thing an assistant could never offer you: every action in order, with undo a click away. Once a message has reached somebody else’s server, neither a person nor Point can bring it back.

The short version

• At a small firm, email triage is part of a job rather than a job. Hiring for it means hiring a whole role, and the triage is the part that gets squeezed when something urgent lands.
• An assistant costs you time for the first months. Your judgment moves across one correction at a time before it can be applied on your behalf.
• Delegating the inbox means a person reads client material. That’s a normal arrangement with a well-understood answer. Confirm it against your engagement letters before the advert goes up.
• A person hears a tone, absorbs the work with no category, represents your firm and grows into more of the job. That belongs to people alone, and a firm that needs it should hire.
• Point reads every message the moment it lands, at every hour, and asks only for the mailbox. And Point stays. If the failure you’re buying against is a message seen days late, that’s the narrower and cheaper answer.

Whether that’s worth a seat is a judgment about your own week rather than about software, and the benefits page is the flat list to hold the week against. It reads differently in an accounting practice than in a law firm, and the rest are here.