24 Nov 2025 · 9 min
John Jonas explains when to buy a computer for a Philippine-based contractor: wait until you trust them, usually after three months. Don't ship from the U.S. (customs delays and $300+ costs). Instead, send money or a gift card for local purchase on Lazada or Shopee, and ask for a receipt photo. Match the device to their work.
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 425, Buying a Computer for your VA. So one of the questions I get asked quite a bit, not that much, but I get asked it enough that I should talk about it, is, should I buy my VA a computer? And to start off with, I hate the word va. It does not describe most of the people that work for me in the Philippines. They are not virtual assistants, but the term is just used everywhere that sometimes I feel like I should use it. So, virtual assistants? Yeah. Actually, no. Should you buy a computer for your ofs, your online Filipino specialist, Someone who's really good at something? So let me answer this question and I'm gonna give you a bunch of information about it. Should you buy a computer for someone in the Philippines? Yes, you absolutely should, but only once you trust them. Do not buy something for someone who is new. If. If someone asks you to buy them a computer and they are less than three months into working for you, do not do it. Especially if it's in the first couple weeks. That is not a good situation there. It could be that someone may have had their computer go out and that's a really hard situation for them. But I still wouldn't buy a computer for someone who is that new. It's just not worth it. It's not worth the risk factor. Someone who has worked for you for longer, should you buy them a computer? Yeah, you should. Does that make them an employee of yours? Because now you're providing them equipment? No, it does not. There is no situation in which you can classify someone as an employee and not an independent contractor. Unless you go to the Philippines and set up a business in the Philippines, which you can't do, at least not very easily. It's really difficult to do. The Philippines government will not allow you to classify someone as an employee unless you have a legal entity in the Philippines. So then how do you buy a computer for someone? Well, it's not that simple. So the first times I did this, I bought a computer here in the US Because a computer in the Philippines laptop was going to be like $1,000. Here in the US I knew how to buy one for like $400. And I bought a couple of them. And then when I went to the Philippines in 2010, I brought them with me. That was. I mean, it was that simple. And I handed them out when I got there, actually, I handed one of them out and then I got the Other one stolen After I had been there for a month. People had been casing our apartment for a month. They finally broke in in the middle of the night. No. The next day was one of my team members wedding day. I was taking the computer to them and they stole everything that I had out of our apartment, including my passport and driver's license. And then they brought the passport and driver's license back almost as a gesture of like, hey, we don't really want to hurt you, so here's your passport back. We just want your stuff, right? Which is really an interesting. I'll talk about that in another episode. So buying a computer and taking it to them is not really a good option. What about shipping? So shipping a computer to the Philippines, we've done that also. You buy a cheap computer, it's going to cost you hundreds of dollars to ship it to them. It's going to cost, you know, $300 because you can't send it USPS. If you send it USPS, they turn it over to the postal service in the Philippines, which is completely unreliable and is likely to have your things stolen. If you ship it ups or FedEx or DHL, it's way more reliable. To get there, you need to buy insurance and you need to make sure a signature is involved. Anything going over is going to be looked at. It's either going to get opened, it's probably going to get opened by customs, which something to be aware of. They're probably going to add on customs fees. And so it's not as simple as just buy it and send it over. So for the last maybe eight years, we have recommended against buying something in the U.S. buying a computer in the U.S. and shipping it over to the Philippines, it just got too cumbersome. So Even though a MacBook Air is $200 cheaper in the US than it is in the Philippines, it is worth it to have it bought in the Philippines rather than buying it in the US and trying to get it there. So yes, computers are more expensive in the Philippines than they are in the us. I don't exactly understand why other than the Philippines charges import duties on things. I know that, but the US typically does too. So I don't understand why. But yeah, a $800 MacBook Air in the US is $900 in the Philippines or so A thousand dollar thing is $1,100 or 1150 in the Philippines. It's more expensive. So if you're going to buy something for your team member in the Philippines, how do you do that? Well, you can either give them a digital gift card, like a digital gift card to somewhere where they want to buy it. And I would ask them like, where do you want to buy this? You can go to a Philippines website, buy it and have it shipped to their house. So like Lazada.comPH or Shopee PH I think are two options. There are other electronic stores in the Philippines where you could buy something and ship it to them. Now one of the issues with this is typically Philippines companies don't love foreign transactions. They are not set up for it. And so often you'll have a hard time. You'll have a hard time using your credit card to buy something. The best way in our experience is to send the money. Tell you've already worked out with them like, hey, I'm willing to buy you a computer. What computer do you want? And they're going to go into a store, they're going to say, I want a MacBook Pro or I want this Windows computer or I want this laptop or whatever it is. And they're going to send you a picture probably of the actual cost in Filipino pesos of how much that thing is. So then you say, great, I'm going to buy this for you. Here's the money and you're going to send it just like you would their salary. And then you're going to require them to send you a picture of the computer and of the receipt after they've bought it. So send them the money, they go by the computer, they're going to send you this super, super nice email with pictures and probably them in te of them coming home with a new laptop. And I only say this because it happens almost every time we buy someone a computer. They send us a picture of the receipt. They send us a picture of them holding the laptop. Usually they're in tears holding it. And then they have a new computer. And here's the really good thing about it. It's bought locally. So when something goes wrong, they have a warranty, they can take it back in, they can get it fixed. They know where to get it fixed. They it's not a US thing. I mean, not that a computer in the Philippines is different than a computer in the US but there's someone responsible for that computer now and they know who that person is and they can take it in to get it. So now the question is, what kind of computer should you buy for the people in the Philippines? And there isn't a right answer to that. Some people don't need a MacBook Air some people just need something very simple and hopefully they can buy something for four or five hundred dollars. And they probably can. It's probably not a great computer, but if they're doing data entry, you know, it's not really that big of a deal. If all they're doing is word processing, well, you know, you don't need that much to do word processing. A lot of people on my team now are using MacBook Airs or even MacBook Pros like video editing. They need a good computer. Our programmers have really nice computers. Some of them are on Windows, some of them are on Macs. An answer of what do they need? Unless you have some specific software that they need to use and that's required and it's only available on either Windows or Mac. If that software has certain computer requirement like spec requirements, then you'll have to make sure that you get something that will work with that. Typically, remember that software requirements go up over time. So if its requirements are 8 gigs of memory now the next release could be requiring 12 gigs of memory. And so you probably need to buy more than the eight required. Maybe not, because maybe it's not worth it. Maybe when the next release comes out, you just buy another computer and sell the first one. You can have your team say, hey, I bought that computer, Will you please sell it? Use the money towards this new one and I'll pay for the upgrade for you. And I'm sure they're more than happy to do that in all of this. Try and keep it simple. You don't need to over complicate getting them a computer. One time one of my guys asked me to buy a computer in the US and then ship it to someone in Maryland because he had an aunt that was coming home soon. And you know, it worked. It was just complicated. Don't overcomplicate this. Let them buy their own computer in the Philippines. Send them the money. I've never seen someone take off with this once you trust them. I have seen people take off with the money. If they were brand new and you tried to buy them a computer in the first two weeks of their employment, that's a scam. So make sure you trust them. Buy whatever computer you feel is necessary. Let them choose the computer. In the grand scheme of things, the cost of the computer is so much less than the human capital costs and the amount of work that you're going to get done. Buying a computer for them is really not that hard of a choice.
