Automate QA reporting for small teams

Hey, we're a tiny team. We tried hiring a manual tester, but it seems this isn't the right path, as someone needs to manage that person, their workflow, and outcomes. If we don't manage them and they act more like freelancers, we don't know what we don't know, we don't have visibility on what they may have missed, etc. For a tiny team, this isn't really easy, so I'm thinking we need to automate as much as we can ourselves using code and tools, and then use an external service that does the QA and delivers us bug reports every few days or something like that. If you have done this, I would love to hear how it went, if it worked, etc. Thank you!