A business address does a lot of quiet work for a small company. It goes on your website, your invoices and your business cards, and it's where clients, vendors and government offices send letters. But an address is only useful if you know what has arrived there.
If you pass by the office often, that's easy: you stop in and pick up your mail. If you work from home across town, travel for work or simply have a busy week, mail can sit unopened for longer than you'd like. That's what mail scanning is for.
Apollo Business Centers has provided virtual offices in Beverly Hills since 2005. Here's how our two mail scanning options work, what each one costs, and how to decide which one, if either, fits the way you run your business.
What mail scanning means at a virtual office
When you use our Beverly Hills mailing address, letters and packages addressed to your business are received at our office at 9100 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA, and held in your on-site private mailbox. Mail scanning adds a step: instead of waiting until you visit to learn what came in, you get scans of your mail.
We offer two levels of scanning, and both are month-to-month add-ons for any package that includes our mailing address:
- Envelope scanning, $25 per month: we scan the outside of each envelope that arrives for you.
- Open-and-scan, $50 per month: we open your mail and scan the contents. This option requires a signed release giving us written permission to open your mail.
You can see both alongside our other options on the add-on services page.
Envelope scanning: know what arrived, decide what to do next
Envelope scanning gives you a picture of the outside of each piece of mail: who sent it and who it's addressed to. Your envelopes stay sealed, and the mail itself stays in your mailbox until you decide what happens to it.
This works well if most of your mail is predictable. Many small businesses receive a mix of routine statements, marketing pieces and the occasional letter that actually needs attention. Seeing the envelopes lets you sort them in your head right away. A catalog can wait for your next visit. A letter from a client, a bank or a government office might be worth a trip, or worth having forwarded.
Envelope scanning tends to fit you if:
- You visit the office every week or two and mainly want to know whether anything urgent came in between visits.
- You'd rather open sensitive mail yourself.
- You get a modest amount of mail and mostly need to know who it's from.
Open-and-scan: read your mail without making the trip
Open-and-scan goes a step further. We open your mail and scan what's inside, so you can read the letter itself rather than just the envelope. For a business owner who is rarely near Beverly Hills, this can mean handling a lot of everyday paperwork without coming in at all.
Because it means someone opens your mail, open-and-scan starts only after you sign a release giving us written permission to open your mail. That keeps the decision clearly in your hands.
Open-and-scan tends to fit you if:
- You live or work far from the office, or travel often.
- You regularly receive checks, invoices or correspondence that you'd like to read promptly.
- You'd rather not make a trip just to find out what a letter says.
Scanning, pickup and forwarding work together
Scanning doesn't replace the other ways we handle your mail. It adds to them:
- Pickup: you, or someone you designate, can pick up mail and packages at our office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
- Packages: with your permission, we receive and sign for packages delivered to you and hold them for pickup during business hours.
- Forwarding: if you aren't nearby, we can forward your mail to an address you choose for an extra charge.
A common approach is to scan everything, then decide piece by piece. Routine mail waits for your next visit, while anything you need in hand gets picked up or forwarded. That way you aren't paying to forward mail you didn't need, and you aren't left wondering what's sitting in your mailbox.
Which packages include mail scanning?
Mail scanning is available on every package that includes our mailing address. You add it on top of the package you choose:
- Mail Package, $85/month: use of our Beverly Hills address, an on-site private mailbox, and mail and package handling.
- Basic Package, $135/month: everything in the Mail Package, plus a private phone number with voicemail.
- Standard Package, $155/month: address and mail, plus a live receptionist who answers in your company's name from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, Pacific Time.
- Transfer Package, $175/month: everything in the Standard Package, plus live transfers of your calls to one U.S. number of your choice.
Live Answering, our phone-only package at $145 per month, doesn't include a mailing address or mail handling, so mail scanning doesn't apply to it. If you want both phones and mail, the Standard and Transfer packages cover both, and you can read how our live answering service works.
For example, a consultant who works from home in Santa Monica and mainly wants her home address off her website might pair the Mail Package with envelope scanning, for $110 a month. Someone who travels most of the month and wants calls answered might choose the Transfer Package with open-and-scan, for $225 a month. Compare every plan on our virtual office packages page.
Simple terms, easy to change
There are no setup fees on any plan, and all plans are month-to-month. Add-ons are billed month-to-month too, so you can start with envelope scanning and move to open-and-scan later, or drop scanning in a month when you know you'll be stopping by often. To cancel a plan, simply give us 30 days' written notice.
When you do come in, there's a room waiting
A virtual office isn't only an address. When a conversation is better in person, you can meet clients at the same address that's on your mail. Our large conference room seats 8 to 10 comfortably, up to 12, and our private office is available by the hour when it isn't leased. Each is $45 per hour, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can pick up your mail on the same visit. Learn more about conference room rental or book a room.
Get started with mail scanning in Beverly Hills
If you're not sure which scanning option fits, start by asking yourself how often you'll realistically visit the office and how much of your mail you need to read quickly. If the answer is "often" and "not much," envelope scanning is usually enough. If it's "rarely" and "a lot," open-and-scan will save you trips.
Call us at 888-709-0210 to talk it through, or get started online and add scanning to your package in a few minutes.