Turnaround Times for Transcription

Turnaround times depend on the audio classification of the material submitted for transcription.

All turnaround times listed are in 'business' days. Weekends and holidays do not count towards the turnaround time.

Turnaround times are counted from after the day we receive them. Thus if a transcription type has a 2 day turnaround and we received your tapes on Monday, you should not expect your transcripts until late Wednesday afternoon or early Thursday morning.

Choose a Transcription Service to the left to determine the turnaround for your particular type of transcription. (e.g. click on "One-on-One Interview" to see turnaround times for one-on-one interviews.)

Please note, all non-Rush turnaround times quoted are estimates and not guarantees. We deliver the vast majority of our work within the stated time frames, but sometimes it may be slightly longer or slightly shorter due to pre-existing workloads. (i.e. +/- 1 day)

Rush Transcription Orders

Our cutoff time for Rush service is 2:30 PM Los Angeles time for Physical Files (tapes, DVDs, etc) and 3:30 PM for uploaded files.

Rush work is guaranteed by the next day or we waive the rush fee.

We are only able to rush so much material per day. If you have more than 5 hours of Rush material, please call for availability.

Large Transcription Orders

In general the turnaround times quoted are good for transcription orders of up to 5 to 7 hours of audio.

If you have an extremely large order, then add one additional day for each 5 additional hours of audio.

Example: You have 15 hours of lectures. Normally these would be classified as Type-2 audio with a turnaround of 3 business days. In this case, you should receive the first 5 hours within 3 business days with the final transcripts arriving by the 5th business day.
(3 business days for the first 5 hours + 1 business day for the next 5 hours + 1 business day for the last 5 hours = 15 hours of audio finished in 5 business days.)

On the submission form, you can prioritize which tapes to do first, so that we can start with those.

Timecoding of Transcripts

Requesting the optional transcript timecoding will add 1 business day to the turnaround time.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey "people." People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest....
--C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man