How to Delegate Data Entry: Build Your Business with Better Data

In this guide, we’ll go over how to delegate data entry quickly, while maintaining quality standards.

Specifically, this will serve as a basic introduction covering online or remote data entry with a focus on tasks involving databases. This includes data input, data cleansing or validation, and classification or labeling. That said, you can also apply the advice here to delegating tasks like transcription annotation, and file conversion.

Uses of Data Entry

Data entry covers a wide range of tasks, which can make it difficult to talk about in broad strokes. We’ll go over some of the distinctions for the sake of clarity.

Offline data entry involves data stored on hard copies, such as handwritten notes, printed documents, etc. The data here is then encoded into a database, either physical or digital.

Online data entry⁠—which we’ll be focusing on⁠—involves the management of digital data, which is stored and shared using the internet, making it easier to access or disseminate. This includes work such as:

• Data Entry: Adding information to a database. The basic work of data entry.
• Updating and/or Cleansing Data: Ensuring data is correct. Updating old entries, removing errors, duplicate entries, or entries with insufficient available information.
• Classifying Data: Organizing data points within a database, or assigning tags or labels to them. Making it easier to sort through or analyze data in a collection.

Transcription of Conversion:  Converting data from one type or format to another. This may include transcribing text from audio/visual recordings.

Taken together, data entry work finds a lot of use across different industries and business activities. Some common ones are:

• Managing a CRM: ensuring entries have complete information, removing duplicates or churned clients
• Finances, billing, invoices, etc.: generating invoices from billing data, checking for errors/omissions in billing entries, double checking billing records against exchanges/refunds
• Managing store listings or product data: organizing or tagging products, uploading product images and matching them with product variations

This is the sort of work this article is written for. That said, other types of data entry work exist, especially in specialized fields like medicine, law, and AI.

Getting Started

Before you delegate a data entry task, there are a few things you should have in place.

Grant Secure Access

First, make sure you can grant your assistant access to the database they’ll be working with while maintaining its security.

• If you’re using a spreadsheet on Google Office or Microsoft 365, you can use the built-in sharing features to extend access to your assistant
• For other databases, such as CRMs or ecommerce platforms, you can either set up an account for them (with limited functions, if the platform supports it), or grant them access to your own account. If you choose the latter, you can keep your account safe by enabling 2FA. (You can authenticate their login when they begin the task and let them use the account till the task is done.)

Know How You’ll Communicate

Another thing to determine is the standard procedures you and your assistant will use for data entry work in general: how tasks will be assigned and submitted, and where, when and how to communicate.

• If your assistant will be performing ongoing or recurring data entry tasks, set a regular time to review them (e.g. at the end of each week, of every two weeks, or a certain day each month).
• Decide how you’ll communicate. You can use a channel like email or Slack for high-level comments, while leaving more specific comments on the database itself, for instance.

Delegating Data Entry Tasks

There are two steps to streamline when it comes to delegating data entry: giving your assistant instructions, and reviewing their work. Here’s how you can keep those as simple and efficient as possible.

Record Instructions

An effective way to give your assistant instructions is to record yourself performing the task while walking them through it.

You can record yourself using Loom, which provides screen and audio recording functions, as well as built-in editing options. (It has free and paid service options.)

As you perform the task, brief your assistant on procedures, protocols and standards:

• How should entries be formatted or organized?
• If they need to leave notes or comments, how should they do so?
• What are the standards for data they use? What constitutes invalid/unreliable data?
• What data validation tools or processes should they use?
• How should the finished work be saved, backed up, or shared?

Go through enough entries to provide proper reference. Any work you complete while recording these instructions will also serve as reference for your assistant when they take over the task.

Have your assistant write a quick reference guide based on the specifics you mentioned above, so they can refer to it as they work.

Example: You want your assistant to update a database of prospective investors. Someone on your team made a list by combining shortlists from two databases, as well as their own independent research. However, the list is disorganized and full of gaps; the formatting doesn’t always match, either. Record yourself going through the list, running through a series of tasks for each entry.

• Checking for duplicate entries (and merging them if they exist)
• Ensuring all details (e.g. phone numbers, email, websites) follow proper formats
• Filling out missing information fields (and where they might find the data for these)
• Removing invalid entries (e.g. those with essential info that can’t be found)

Once you’ve done enough examples to cover the different aspects of the job, send the recording to your assistant.

Review the Data

Once the task is done, get on a call with your assistant and have them run you through the data. You don’t need to go over all of it. Just have them explain how they sourced the data, validated and verified it, and formatted or organized it (as applicable to the task).

Over time, as your assistant grows accustomed to the work, this step will become quicker. For routine tasks, you can forgo it in favor of broader check-ins that you can do less frequently.

Example: Your assistant is done cleaning up the list you gave them before, turning it into a proper database. They run you through:

• The sources they consulted for missing data
• How they validated the entries to ensure consistent formatting
• Edge cases they ran into while carrying out the job

Once they address any remaining questions or concerns you might have, you can mark the job as done.

Delegate Data Entry with Magic

Data entry is routine work, but it’s meticulous. By delegating it to an assistant, you free up your time and that of your team⁠—but you also guarantee that someone can handle data entry as a main priority, rather than a secondary task. And when your data is complete, consistent and reliable, you can use it to make better business decisions.

Magic can find you a dedicated executive assistant to handle data entry. Our assistants are screened for the skills that yield the best results in the EA role, and are backed up by custom AI tools to boost their efficiency.

Let us know what sort of assistant work you need an assistant to handle, and we’ll find you the ideal candidate.