Virtual Assistant Costs VIC 2026 - Get Free Quotes

Virtual Assistant Costs in VIC

An offshore assistant handling general administration costs $12 to $30 an hour, an Australian assistant doing the same work costs $45 to $65, and a specialist with a defined skill runs $65 to $85. Executive level support, where the person manages a principal's diary and correspondence at a senior level, runs $70 to $120. Retainers are the most common arrangement for small business, with ten hours a month at $500 to $900 and twenty hours at $900 to $1,700. General administrative support is priced in more detail at administrative virtual assistant costs. Rates within each band move with the assistant's experience and with how specialised the work turns out to be.

A full time managed placement, where a provider recruits, employs and supervises somebody working exclusively for you, runs $2,500 to $5,500 a month all inclusive. That figure covers the assistant's wage, the provider's management, equipment, supervision and replacement cover if the person leaves. It looks expensive beside an hourly offshore rate and it removes a great deal of administrative burden from your side. Which of those matters more depends on whether you have anybody available to manage the arrangement.

The rate is only one of three numbers that decide what an assistant actually costs you. The second is the hours you spend briefing, checking and correcting, which is the number almost nobody counts. The third is the structural cost, meaning payroll tax exposure, superannuation obligations and the compliance work that follows from how the engagement is set up. A business comparing quotes on the first number alone is comparing a third of the picture. Businesses that compare only the first number are the ones who find the arrangement disappointing without ever working out why.

What You Pay For

Time is the obvious component and the one every quote leads with. What varies between providers is what counts as billable, since some charge only for productive task time while others bill for reading a brief, attending a weekly call and preparing a report on what was done. Neither approach is wrong and they produce different invoices for identical output. Establish what is billable before you compare two hourly rates. A weekly status call that runs twenty minutes is roughly an hour a month before anybody has done any work.

Supervision is a genuine cost and it sits either with the provider or with you. A managed placement includes somebody whose job is to keep the assistant productive, resolve problems and cover absences, and that management is a real part of the monthly figure. A direct hourly arrangement does not include it, which means the supervision falls to whoever in your business is closest to the work. That person's time is rarely free and rarely accounted for.

Onboarding is the front loaded cost that surprises people in the first month. Documenting how you want tasks done, granting and testing access to your systems, setting up communication channels and correcting the first few attempts all take time before any productivity appears. Expect the first month to deliver considerably less than the second and the second less than the third. A business that abandons the arrangement after four weeks has paid the setup cost and collected none of the return. A realistic view of that curve is what separates businesses that persist from businesses that give up in week four.

Software and access are usually your cost and not the assistant's. Additional user licences for your accounting package, your customer database, your project tool and your email platform all attach to the person doing the work, and on a per seat basis that adds up. Some providers supply their own equipment and connectivity while others expect you to. Ask specifically which side pays for licences before the arrangement starts. On a five seat accounting package the incremental licence can be a meaningful monthly figure in its own right. It is the sort of decision that looks minor at signing and significant eighteen months later.

Replacement and continuity carry a cost that only becomes visible when somebody leaves. A managed provider generally undertakes to replace an assistant and carry over the documented processes, while a direct engagement with an individual leaves you starting again from nothing. Documentation is what converts a person leaving into an inconvenience instead of a crisis. Build it from the first week regardless of which arrangement you choose.

Contract terms shape what happens when the arrangement stops working. Notice periods, minimum terms, whether unused retainer hours roll over and who owns the work product should all be settled in writing before the first invoice. Small business contract protections are administered by the ACCC, with Victorian consumer and small business guidance published by Consumer Affairs Victoria. Read the termination clause before the pricing clause. A three page agreement covering these points is worth considerably more than a thirty page one that covers none of them.

How VAs Are Priced

Hourly billing suits variable workloads and irregular tasks. You pay for what is used, there is no commitment beyond the hours worked, and it is the simplest arrangement to start and stop. The trade off is that you have no claim on the assistant's availability, so a busy week for them can mean a slow week for you. It also produces the least predictable monthly cost. It is the sensible way to start an arrangement while both sides are still working out whether it suits.

Retainers are the dominant model for ongoing support and they solve the availability problem. You buy a block of hours each month at a rate below the casual hourly figure, the assistant reserves that capacity for you, and both sides get predictability. Ten hours a month suits a sole trader offloading admin, while twenty to forty suits a small business with a genuine ongoing load. Ask what happens to unused hours, because policies differ sharply.

Roll over provisions are worth reading closely. Some retainers let unused hours carry into the following month, some expire at month end, and some allow a limited carry with a cap. A business with a seasonal pattern is materially better off with roll over, while a business with a steady load barely notices. This single clause changes the effective rate you pay across a year. Businesses with a heavy end of financial year or a seasonal peak should treat this clause as a pricing term.

Project pricing works where the scope is genuinely defined and finite. Cleaning a customer database, transcribing a set of recordings, building a spreadsheet model or migrating records between systems can all be quoted as a fixed price against a stated deliverable. Data work of that kind is priced at data entry costs, with system specific work at CRM data entry costs. Fixed pricing puts the estimating risk on the provider, which is exactly where it belongs when the scope is clear. A provider willing to fix the price has usually done the work before and knows what it involves. That difference compounds every month the arrangement continues without anybody reviewing it.

Per unit pricing appears in specific categories and is the fairest measure where output is countable. Transcription is quoted per audio minute, data entry per record or per thousand keystrokes, and call answering per call or per minute of connected time. Comparison figures appear at transcription services costs and virtual receptionist costs. Where output can be counted, per unit pricing removes any argument about how long something should have taken.

Full time placement is a different proposition again and it suits businesses with enough work to justify it. A provider recruits somebody, employs them under the law of their country, manages them day to day and bills you a single monthly figure. You get a dedicated person and none of the direct employment obligations, which is the appeal. What you give up is direct control over employment terms and, in most cases, the ability to choose exactly who is hired. The recruitment process usually takes three to six weeks from brief to somebody starting.

Australian and Offshore Rates

The rate gap between Australian and offshore assistants is wide enough to drive most of these decisions. An Australian based assistant charging $50 to $65 an hour and a Philippines based assistant charging $15 to $25 are separated by a factor of three, and that gap holds across most task categories. It reflects cost of living and prevailing wages, not capability. Both markets contain excellent operators and both contain poor ones. Capability is distributed across both markets and the difference in rate does not predict which individual you will get.

Where offshore engagement works best is defined, repeatable, documented work. Data entry, inbox triage against clear rules, appointment setting from a script, order processing and routine bookkeeping entry all transfer well because the task can be specified precisely and the output checked objectively. Inbox work is covered at email management virtual assistant costs, with scheduling at calendar management virtual assistant costs. The more a task depends on judgement about Australian context, the less well it transfers.

Local knowledge is what an Australian assistant is genuinely being paid for. Understanding how a Victorian business actually operates, recognising a customer's tone, knowing which suppliers and terms are normal here and writing in a register that reads naturally to an Australian recipient are all difficult to specify in a brief. Customer facing work is covered at customer service virtual assistant costs. Where your customers will read the words, the local rate frequently earns itself back. Tone is the thing that is hardest to specify and easiest to notice when it is wrong.

Time zones cut both ways and are worth thinking through properly. The Philippines sits two hours behind Melbourne during standard time and three hours behind during daylight saving, which produces a substantial overlap with an Australian working day. That means real time collaboration is possible, unlike arrangements with providers on the other side of the world. It also means an assistant starting at nine their time begins around midday here. That overlap is the main reason the Philippines dominates the Australian market for this work. The structure you choose is far harder to change than the provider you choose.

Overnight turnaround is the genuine advantage of a larger time difference. Work handed over at the end of a Melbourne day and returned before the next morning suits transcription, data processing and document preparation, where nobody needs to talk to anybody. That is a workflow advantage and not a cost one. Decide whether your work needs conversation or simply needs doing.

Public holidays differ and that catches businesses out at predictable moments. An offshore assistant observes their own country's holidays instead of Victorian ones, so coverage patterns will not match your office, and the Melbourne Cup public holiday or the Friday before the AFL Grand Final mean nothing to a team in Manila. That can be an advantage when you want cover on a local holiday. Agree the holiday calendar in writing at the start instead of discovering it in November. Their Christmas period runs differently again, which is worth knowing before you plan January coverage.

Contractor, Employee or Agency

How you engage somebody matters more than what you pay them, and this is the section most businesses skip. The same person doing the same work can be a contractor, an employee or a worker supplied by a third party, and each of those brings a different set of obligations. Calling an arrangement a contract does not make it one. What matters is the substance of the relationship, not the label on the invoice. Regulators look at what actually happens day to day instead of at the words in the agreement. Businesses that document properly find the second assistant far easier than the first.

Contractor and employee classification turns on the actual working arrangement. Control over how the work is done, whether the person can delegate, who supplies equipment, whether they carry commercial risk and whether they work for others all feed into it, and no single factor decides the question. Guidance is published by the Fair Work Ombudsman. An assistant working set hours, using your systems, following your direction and working for nobody else looks a great deal like an employee.

Sham contracting is the exposure that follows from getting this wrong. Presenting an employment relationship as an independent contract, whether deliberately or through inattention, carries penalties and back payment obligations covering entitlements the person should have received. Small businesses rarely set out to do this and a number arrive there gradually as an arrangement deepens. Review the classification annually instead of at the start alone. The cost of being wrong is measured in back payments and penalties, not in the difference between two hourly rates.

Victoria operates a labour hire licensing scheme, and this is the state specific point that catches people. Information is published at the Victorian Government. If a provider is supplying you with a worker instead of delivering a service outcome, ask directly whether they hold a licence. The scheme was introduced to address exactly the arrangements that are hardest to characterise from the outside. It is worth revisiting annually instead of treating it as settled at the start.

Whether the scheme applies to a given virtual assistant arrangement depends on the facts. A provider delivering a defined service using their own people sits differently from one placing a worker into your business under your day to day direction, and the second looks far more like labour hire than the first. Offshore providers with no Australian presence raise different questions again. This is worth a short conversation with an adviser instead of an assumption either way.

Direct employment remains an option and it is the cleanest structure where the work justifies it. A part time employee brings award or agreement coverage, superannuation, leave entitlements and workers compensation, all of which are visible costs and not hidden risks. The comparison against a contractor is closer than the headline rates suggest once entitlements are counted. Where somebody is working substantial regular hours exclusively for you, employment is often the honest characterisation. Businesses frequently arrive at employment after two years of a contractor arrangement that quietly became something else.

Payroll Tax and Super

Payroll tax is the Victorian obligation most small businesses assume does not apply to them. It applies once total Australian wages exceed the threshold, it is administered by the State Revenue Office, and the contractor provisions are what catch businesses using assistants. Current thresholds, rates and exemptions are published by the State Revenue Office Victoria. The figures change, so confirm the current position instead of relying on what applied last year. It is one of the few taxes where a business can be liable without ever having realised it applied. The commercial exposure is usually larger and arrives sooner than the regulatory one.

Contractor payments can be deemed wages for payroll tax purposes and that surprises most people who hear it. The relevant provisions treat certain payments under a relevant contract as wages unless an exemption applies, which means engaging assistants as contractors does not automatically keep those payments outside the payroll tax base. Several exemptions exist and they depend on the specific facts. This is one to check with your accountant instead of reasoning through yourself.

Grouping rules extend the reach further than expected. Related businesses can be grouped for payroll tax, with a single threshold applied across the group and not to each entity, so a structure with several companies may be over the threshold when each entity individually looks well under it. Businesses with a trust, an operating company and a service entity should be particularly careful here. The threshold applies to the group, not to whichever entity happens to pay the invoice. It is a common structure among Victorian small businesses and a common source of unexpected assessments.

Regional Victorian employers pay a lower payroll tax rate, which is a genuine advantage worth knowing about. The concession applies to businesses meeting the regional criteria and it materially changes the calculation for employers based outside metropolitan Melbourne. Eligibility rules are specific and are published by the State Revenue Office. If your business operates from Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong or elsewhere in regional Victoria, check whether you qualify. It is a genuine reason for a regional business to model an employee against a contractor properly instead of assuming.

Superannuation can be payable to contractors and this is the obligation most often missed entirely. Where somebody is engaged wholly or principally for their labour, superannuation guarantee obligations can apply even though the person invoices you as a contractor and holds an ABN. Guidance is published by the Australian Taxation Office. An Australian assistant working set hours principally supplying their own labour is exactly the arrangement this catches.

Offshore arrangements sit outside most of these obligations and bring different considerations. Payments to a provider or worker outside Australia generally do not attract Australian superannuation or payroll tax in the same way, though the characterisation of the payment and any withholding questions still need attention. Business licensing and obligation information across jurisdictions is available through ABLIS. Do not assume offshore means no obligations, only that they are different ones. Withholding and transfer pricing questions can arise on larger arrangements and are worth raising with your accountant.

Data, Access and Privacy

Handing an assistant access to your systems is the part of this decision with the longest tail. Inbox access, customer records, banking portals, supplier accounts and document storage all contain information about people who never agreed to it being handled by a third party. Australian privacy law is administered by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The obligations depend on your business, but the exposure exists regardless of whether the obligations formally apply. A breach involving customer data damages a small business far more than the regulatory consequence usually does. Getting the sequence right matters more than getting the rate right.

Small business turnover exemptions do not resolve the question the way people hope. Many small businesses fall below the turnover threshold for coverage under the Privacy Act, though exceptions apply to certain activities, and a business handling health information or trading in personal information is covered regardless of size. Falling outside the Act does not remove your commercial exposure if customer data is mishandled. Customers judge a breach on the outcome, not on which statute applied.

Cross border disclosure is the specific issue with offshore assistants and it deserves proper attention. Sending personal information overseas engages additional obligations where the Act applies, including taking reasonable steps to ensure the overseas recipient handles the information appropriately. That is a contractual matter as much as a technical one. Where your provider is offshore, the agreement should say what happens to data and where it is stored. Most reputable providers will have standard terms covering this and will produce them on request.

Access hygiene is the practical control and it costs nothing to implement. Give each assistant their own credentials instead of sharing yours, grant the minimum access the role requires, use delegated access features instead of handing over passwords, and revoke everything the day an arrangement ends. Shared logins make it impossible to establish who did what. Most platforms support proper delegation and most businesses never turn it on. It takes an afternoon to set up properly and it protects you for the life of the arrangement. That is the practical test, not the one written into the agreement.

Financial access needs a firmer line than general system access. An assistant preparing invoices, reconciling accounts and chasing payment does not need authority to move money, and separating preparation from approval is basic control that applies whether the person is across the room or across the world. Bookkeeping arrangements are covered at bookkeeping virtual assistant costs. Keep payment authorisation with somebody who has a stake in the business.

Confidentiality and intellectual property should be documented instead of assumed. Who owns the work product, what happens to your data at termination, what confidentiality survives the arrangement and what the person may put in a portfolio are all worth stating plainly. Content and creative work makes this more pointed, and rates for that work appear at content creation virtual assistant costs. Getting it in writing at the start is straightforward, and getting it afterwards rarely is.

Scoping the Role

Most disappointing virtual assistant arrangements fail on scoping and not on the person. A business that cannot describe what it wants done will not get it done, no matter what it pays per hour, and the assistant is left guessing at a standard nobody has articulated. Spend a fortnight noting every task you would hand over if you could. That list is the actual brief. Two weeks of honest notes will surprise most business owners with how much is delegable. Every hour spent on this at the start saves several later on.

The tasks worth delegating first are the ones that are repetitive, rule based and low judgement. Data entry, appointment scheduling, inbox sorting against defined categories, invoice preparation and research to a template all fit that description and all transfer cleanly. Spreadsheet work sits at spreadsheet data entry costs. Start there instead of with the work that most annoys you, because the annoying work is usually the judgement heavy work.

Documenting a process is the investment that determines whether any of this works. A short written procedure, or a screen recording walking through a task once, converts something in your head into something transferable, and it pays for itself the second time somebody needs it. Businesses that skip this step end up re-explaining the same task monthly. Record it once while you are doing it anyway. A library of short recordings becomes the single most valuable asset in the arrangement.

Hours should follow the task list and not the other way around. Estimating that a set of tasks takes six hours a week and buying a twenty hour retainer produces exactly the outcome you would expect, which is fourteen hours of nothing in particular. Start with fewer hours than you think and increase once the load is proven. Providers will generally accommodate an increase far more readily than a reduction. Buying hours you cannot fill teaches an assistant that the work is not urgent. A provider who pushes back on a reasonable question is telling you how the arrangement will run.

Specialist roles are priced above general administration for good reason and it is worth being honest about which you need. An assistant maintaining a property database and preparing listing paperwork is doing different work from one sorting an inbox, and industry specific support is priced accordingly at real estate virtual assistant costs and ecommerce virtual assistant costs. Paying a specialist rate for general admin wastes money. Paying a general rate and expecting specialist output wastes time.

Some work should stay in house regardless of the saving available. Anything requiring a licence, professional registration or authority to bind the business belongs with somebody who holds it, and no rate makes that arrangement acceptable. Preparing figures is different from lodging returns, and drafting a message is different from making a commitment. Draw that line explicitly in the scope instead of leaving it to judgement. No commercial saving justifies having somebody act outside what they are authorised to do.

What Drives the Price

Location sets the base rate and nothing else moves it as far. An offshore assistant and an Australian assistant doing identical work are separated by a factor of three or more, which dwarfs every other variable in this decision. That gap is a wage differential and not a quality one. Decide which side of it you are engaging on before comparing anything else. That is a wage differential between labour markets, not a statement about anybody's capability. The saving is real and it is smaller than the headline comparison suggests.

Seniority and specialisation move the rate substantially within either market. General administration occupies the bottom, defined specialisms such as bookkeeping or paid advertising sit in the middle, and executive level support the top, with each step reflecting scarcer skills and greater independence. Higher level support appears at executive virtual assistant costs. Match the level to the work instead of to the title you would like to give the role.

Commitment reduces the rate in almost every arrangement. Casual hourly work carries the highest figure, a monthly retainer falls below it, and a full time placement produces the lowest effective hourly cost of the three. Providers price certainty because it lets them plan capacity. Where the work is genuinely ongoing, committing to it is the simplest saving available. It is the same logic that applies to any supplier relationship where volume is guaranteed.

Management inclusion is the difference between two monthly figures that otherwise look similar. A managed placement includes supervision, quality control, absence cover and replacement, while a direct arrangement includes none of those and expects you to provide them. Neither is better in the abstract. The question is whether your business has somebody with the time and inclination to manage remote work. The honest answer to that question decides which model suits your business. Reviewing it once a year takes an hour and occasionally saves a great deal.

Complexity of your own systems affects the cost more than businesses expect. An assistant working across six platforms with inconsistent processes and undocumented exceptions takes longer at everything than one working in a tidy environment, and that time is billable. Cleaning up your own systems before delegating is genuinely cheaper than paying somebody to navigate the mess indefinitely. It also makes the work easier to check.

Melbourne Metro Costs

Melbourne businesses have the widest choice of arrangements and the strongest local supply of Australian based assistants. Rates for local support sit at the upper end of the national range, reflecting the cost of operating here, while access to offshore providers is identical to anywhere else with an internet connection. What varies between businesses is the volume and predictability of the work and not the postcode. A consulting practice and a trades business with the same weekly hours will pay similar rates for different work. Providers servicing Melbourne businesses generally understand both models and will discuss either.

Professional services firms across the Melbourne CBD and the inner suburbs typically engage at the higher end. Legal, accounting, financial advice and consultancy work involves client confidentiality, technical language and correspondence that will be read closely, which pushes these businesses toward Australian based support. The saving from offshore engagement is real and the risk tolerance is usually lower. Many settle on a split arrangement with local support for client facing work and offshore support for processing. That split arrangement is more common among professional firms than either option on its own. It is the kind of detail that separates a working arrangement from a frustrating one.

Trades and service businesses across the outer suburbs and the growth corridors have a different profile entirely. The load is quoting, scheduling, invoicing and chasing payment, all of which are rule based and transfer well, and the volume is often enough to justify a substantial arrangement. Lead handling is covered at lead generation virtual assistant costs. These businesses frequently get the most obvious return, because the alternative is the owner doing paperwork at nine at night.

Retail and online businesses concentrate their support around order flow and customer contact. Processing orders, handling returns, updating listings and answering enquiries are all documented and repetitive, which suits an offshore arrangement well, and volume peaks around known trading periods. Social channel work is priced at social media management virtual assistant costs. Build seasonal capacity into the agreement at the outset instead of trying to negotiate it in November, because peak periods are entirely predictable and capacity is much cheaper to arrange months ahead of when it is needed.

Regional VIC Costs

Regional Victorian businesses face the same rates as Melbourne ones, because the work is remote and location is irrelevant to delivery. What differs is the alternative, since hiring locally in a smaller labour market is harder and a regional business often has fewer options for part time administrative help. That makes remote support proportionally more valuable outside the metropolitan area. The internet connection matters more than the address. A business in Sale or Horsham competes for administrative staff against a much smaller pool than one in Richmond. Both sides benefit from the expectation being written down instead of assumed.

The regional payroll tax rate is the concrete Victorian advantage for businesses based outside Melbourne. Employers meeting the regional criteria pay a lower rate than metropolitan employers, which changes the calculation when weighing a direct employee against a contractor arrangement. The thresholds are narrow, so confirm your position directly. A regional business considering employing somebody part time should factor this in before dismissing the option.

Seasonal businesses across the Peninsula, the Surf Coast and the alpine areas have a load that swings hard through the year. A retainer sized for February is wrong for July, and an arrangement with roll over provisions or a scalable hours band suits this pattern far better than a flat monthly commitment. Negotiate the seasonal structure at the outset. A flat twelve month commitment suits a business with a flat twelve month workload, which few seasonal operators have.

Agricultural and primary production businesses have administrative loads that cluster around specific periods. Compliance paperwork, supplier reconciliation, seasonal labour records and grant applications all arrive in concentrated bursts instead of evenly, which suits project based engagement more than a monthly retainer. Reporting and model building appears at spreadsheet data entry costs. Scope the burst instead of committing to hours you will not use in the quiet months. Grant application periods in particular arrive with hard deadlines and a great deal of paperwork attached. Most of what goes wrong here was foreseeable at the point the arrangement was set up.

Connectivity is the one practical constraint that still applies in parts of regional Victoria. Video calls, screen sharing and cloud based systems all assume a connection that some areas cannot rely on, and an arrangement built around real time collaboration will frustrate everybody if yours drops out. Asynchronous working suits those situations better. Be realistic about your own connection when designing the working pattern.

What to Look Out For

Establish the engagement structure before you agree a rate. Whether somebody is a contractor, an employee or a worker supplied by a provider determines your payroll tax position, your superannuation obligations and whether Victoria's labour hire licensing scheme applies, and none of that is fixed by what the invoice says. A cheap rate inside a structure that creates liabilities is not cheap. Have your accountant look at the arrangement before it starts. A conversation with an accountant before signing costs a fraction of an unexpected assessment afterwards.

Ask a provider supplying workers whether they hold a Victorian labour hire licence. Where the scheme applies, hosts as well as providers carry obligations, and engaging an unlicensed provider is an offence and not an oversight. A legitimate provider answers immediately and gives you the licence details without any fuss, and hesitation on that particular question tells you something worth knowing about how the rest of the arrangement will run. Those details are public and can be verified independently once you have them in hand. That question is worth answering honestly before any money changes hands.

Look at how the agreement ends before you look at what it costs. Minimum terms, notice periods, whether unused retainer hours carry forward and what happens to your data and documented processes at the end all matter more than a few dollars an hour. These clauses are where an arrangement becomes difficult to leave. Consumer and small business guidance is published by Consumer Affairs Victoria, and Victorian business disputes may be heard at VCAT.

Do not hand over shared logins or payment authority. Individual credentials with the minimum necessary access, delegated access features in place of password sharing, and a firm separation between preparing a payment and approving it are all basic controls that cost nothing. Nobody can reconstruct events afterwards from a single shared account. Revoke every access on the day an arrangement ends and not the week after. Access control is the one part of this that is entirely within your power to get right.

Be realistic about the first month. Onboarding, documentation and correction absorb most of the early hours, productivity builds across the second and third months, and a business judging the arrangement on week three will conclude it has failed. Budget for a slow start deliberately. Three months is a fair trial period for an arrangement expected to run for years. The answer shapes everything else about how the arrangement should be built.

What to Look for in a Quote in VIC

A virtual assistant quote should state the rate and the basis, confirm what counts as billable time, and set out the minimum term, notice period and roll over treatment for unused hours. It should identify where the assistant is located and under what structure they are engaged, say who supplies equipment and software licences, and confirm what happens to your data and documented processes at termination. Where a provider is supplying a worker instead of a service, the licensing position belongs on the document. The billable time definition and the roll over clause are the two items that most often turn an attractive rate into an unattractive arrangement.

Circulate one brief without variation and the three replies become comparable. The task list, the estimated hours, the systems involved, the level of judgement required and whether the work is customer facing all shape what should be proposed and at what level. Settle it in writing before the work starts. The same brief sent three times is the only way to compare three responses.

What a provider asks before quoting tells you which sort you are dealing with. Somebody asking for your task list, wanting to know which systems you use, asking about volumes and querying how much judgement the work requires is scoping a role. A rate card sent by return email has not been near your business. That difference shows up in the third month of the arrangement and not anywhere in the proposal document, because a rate card is a product being sold while a scoped proposal is a service being designed.

Settle the structure, the scope, the access and the exit before anybody starts. Confirm how the engagement is characterised and what obligations follow, agree the task list and the hours against it, define what access is granted and how it is controlled, and put the termination terms in writing. Related arrangements are covered at virtual receptionist costs and customer service virtual assistant costs. Those four settled first are what separate an arrangement that lasts years from one that ends awkwardly in month two. Everything else about a virtual assistant arrangement follows from those four being settled first.