The service description in a proposal rarely tells you what you actually need to verify. Here's what to check before handing a process to a Bulgaria-based provider.
Most comparisons between outsourcing providers focus on price and scope. Fewer founders — especially those running the relationship from outside Bulgaria — ask the questions that actually determine whether the arrangement holds up: who is legally handling what, what happens to the data, and how the relationship is structured on paper.
If the process you're outsourcing touches personal data — customer records, employee data, order information — the contract should state plainly who is the data controller and who is the processor under GDPR, and what happens to that data if the engagement ends. A provider that can't answer this clearly in the first conversation is a warning sign, not a detail to sort out later.
An outsourcing arrangement in Bulgaria is a service contract between two businesses, not an employment relationship — that distinction matters for how the engagement is taxed, invoiced, and terminated. Ask directly how the provider structures the contract, what the notice period is, and what happens to the process and any documentation if you end the relationship. A serious provider should be able to hand back a running, documented process — not leave you starting from zero with someone else.
"Based in Bulgaria" can mean anything from an in-house team on a monthly contract to a subcontracted arrangement several layers removed from the people doing the work. Ask plainly who performs the work, whether it's subcontracted, and who you'd actually be in contact with day to day. The answer changes both accountability and how quickly problems get fixed.
"Regular reporting" means very different things in practice. Before signing, ask for an example of what a status report or handover actually looks like, and how often you'll get one. A provider that can show you a real example is a different proposition than one that only describes reporting in the abstract.
Most of these checks come down to one thing: is this provider taking accountable ownership of the outcome, or delivering a task and moving on? The contract structure, the data terms, and the reporting rhythm are all downstream of that one distinction — which is worth establishing before anything else.
Tell us what you're dealing with — we'll tell you exactly how we'd approach it.