1. Do you really need an "outside" office? For many people, an office away from the home carries professional clout. That's fine, but the reasons for maintaining two offices should be more substantial. One justification is space — perhaps your business has grown to the point that a home office is no longer sufficient to meet your needs. Kelly Poelker, head of Another 8 Hours, an O'Fallon, Ill., virtual assistant business, started in her home but quickly sought out a second office when things became unmanageable. "When you can't see over the piles of papers on your desk, you're just not as productive," she says. "I quickly exceeded the space that my family was willing to allocate to me."

2. Do you routinely meet with customers and clients? Another compelling reason for outside office space is contact with those with whom you work. If pushing together dining room chairs for meetings or brushing Legos off the couch so a client can sit down makes you wince, then an outside office with adequate room makes a world of sense. "If I need to get together with 15 people, we can be very comfortable in my outside office," says Ted Demopolous, who also runs his business consulting firm from his Durham, N.H., home

3. How will you really use the outside space? Meetings and space considerations aside, it's also essential to consider just how you might use outside office space. For Poelker, her leased office is her primary workspace. Home is more for convenience — working late at night or when her kids are sick. Before he had children, Demopolous worked exclusively from home. When the kids were young, he switched to working at the outside office. Now that the children are a bit older, there's a balance between the two: "When everyone is gone from the house for the day, providing I'm not meeting anyone, I'm just as happy to work from home," he says.

4. Does it make financial sense? This is of primary concern to most entrepreneurs looking to outside office space. First, it's helpful to know the tax ramifications. By leasing office space outside your home, you usually can no longer deduct the home office space itself. However, finance attorney Bill Abrams points out that other at-home equipment such as telephone, fax machines and the like remain deductible. "In the end, it's pretty much a wash tax-wise," he says. Nor does an outside office need to be a huge expense. Look into shared office space where you split the expense of office equipment, a receptionist and other costs with others. Poelker says she subleases the conference room in her outside office to cut her costs even further.

5. Can you coordinate the two offices? Nothing's more maddening than needing a particular program or report, only to discover that it's at the "other" office. If two offices seem appealing, think carefully how you might juggle material between the two. Eva Rosenberg of TaxMama.com — no great fan of the two office juggle — says it's essential to have a laptop computer with complete docking arrangements at both locations. "Also, maintain online email access. That way, even if you don't download all your mail to your laptop, you'll always have access to it online," she says. "I cannot begin to tell you how many times I needed to access something at home while I was at the office and vice versa."

6. Are you ready to forgo the comforts of home? The professionalism of an outside office has its downsides. For one thing, you have to get there, a headache when the weather turns sour or traffic piles up. On top of that, it's not quite the come-as-you-are proposition. Unless you intend to lock yourself in for the day, that means no working in bathrobes and ratty blue jeans.

7. How far away is far enough? The issue of coordination leads to the question of location. If an outside office seems sensible, just how far away should that be? If, like Poelker, you expect to make a number of quick trips, then an office fairly close to your home seems sensible. But, if you're looking for a greater sense of psychological separation from your home, consider space that's a bit further away. For Demopolous, that meant leased office space some 20 minutes' drive away from his home: "I really wanted to feel that I was really in an office and away from my home."