Q: What tools can I use to document processes for my VA?

Process Street Using Process Street is a solid way to document key processes within 'checklists' for your VA (and other team members) to follow. Tasks can be assigned to us and other members of the team, with due dates set for each task. Google Docs For simpler processes, just use Google Docs and share directly with your VA. The "suggesting" tool is particularly useful for collaborating on documents and processes together! CloudApp We find screen recordings very helpful when documenting processes too - nothing makes a better "here's how you do it!" than simply watching a video of someone actually doing the task. We recommend CloudApp to help you demonstrate processes via screenshots or recordings, which you can also annotate. It's free!

Q: Do you have insurance in place?

As well as our terms and conditions , which outline the promises we make when servicing your account with us, we also hold a range of comprehensive insurance policies. These policies mean that you can be safe in the knowledge that, not only do we make certain promises (this is easy for any company to do!), but we also have the necessary insurance policies in place needed to deliver these same promises without causing any operation disruption to Virtlent or your business. This includes the following policies with Hiscox: Professional Indemnity (worldwide) Cyber and Data (worldwide) Public liability (UK and EU) Employers liability Legal protection and expenses

Question 1

Do my unused hours roll over? How does this work?

Accepted Answer

We appreciate how difficult it can be to predict exactly how much time you might need from your Virtual Assistant at Virtalent, particularly if the workload varies. This is why, as well as being able to easily switch plans and use extra time when needed, we will automatically roll over any unused time too.

Checking Your Rolled Hours

We'll always send you a monthly 'billing update' by email, which will explain the time your VA used, what tasks they have worked on for you and, importantly, any unused time that has rolled over.

You can also log in to our Task Portal at virtalentportal.com at any time to view your live account balance.

If you currently have any remaining Rolled Hours still to use, these are shown in yellow.

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If you had any hours roll over, even if they have since been used, this is also shown in your Account History.

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How Does This Process Work?

Each month, your account is topped up with your Plan on your regular monthly billing date.
Likewise, if your remaining balance ever hits zero, we will automatically top-up your account with Extra Hours (more info here).
Our Task Portal will automatically reconcile your account in the early hours of the morning on your monthly billing date - as well as adding the hours from your monthly plan to your balance, it will also roll over any unused time you have previously paid for, into the next, new billing period.
Please note, unused hours only ever roll over once. They don't continue to roll over indefinitely. If you find you consistently underuse your available balance, we'd recommend talking to your VA about other tasks they can help you with - they are likely to have ideas you've not thought of on how else to save you time!

Please do ask your Client Success Manager if you need any more information.

Question 2

What tools can I use to document processes for my VA?

Accepted Answer

Process Street

Using Process Street is a solid way to document key processes within 'checklists' for your VA (and other team members) to follow. Tasks can be assigned to us and other members of the team, with due dates set for each task.

Google Docs

For simpler processes, just use Google Docs and share directly with your VA. The "suggesting" tool is particularly useful for collaborating on documents and processes together!

CloudApp

We find screen recordings very helpful when documenting processes too - nothing makes a better "here's how you do it!" than simply watching a video of someone actually doing the task.

We recommend CloudApp to help you demonstrate processes via screenshots or recordings, which you can also annotate. It's free!

Question 3

How do I define a role for my VA?

Accepted Answer

To help you leverage your time as effectively as possible, we recommend working together to build out a clearly-defined, ongoing long-term role for your VA.

Delegating piecemeal tasks to your VA, here and there, requires you to stop and explain everything you require every single time you need their support. As you will realise, this can begin to feel frustrating and laborious for both of you as time goes on.

It's important for you to work with your VA in a way that adds as much value to your day as possible. If you can focus on delegating recurring processes to your VA, they can take care of that task every single day and all with minimum input from you. This adds more value, saves you time and, importantly, contributes to a sustainable, productive working relationship.

Let's explore the three "categories" of tasks available for you to delegate at the start of your relationship together (and, more importantly, beyond!).

List One-off Tasks

This is the best approach for the start of your relationship. What one-off tasks are currently sitting on your to-do list, that you need to clear?

This could include organising your next company event or workshop, replacing images on your website or researching a new CRM. These one-off tasks are a great place to start working with your VA - you just need to add a little explanation and away you go!

Your busy to-do list will look a lot healthier in no time, helping you benefit from the support of your VA as soon as possible and giving you some headspace to think longer-term. The key, however, is just not to stop there.

Define Ad-hoc Responsibilities

Ideally, an ever changing list of one-off tasks shouldn't form the basis of everything your VA does. Now we need to look at them taking on a few recurring tasks.

You might be slightly more reluctant to delegate this type of work, but it's important that you do! This could include booking travel from time to time, or writing content (e.g. blogs) as and when needed. These tasks are often easier to explain than more involved responsibilities (e.g. managing your customer service emails), as they happen less frequently and once they have been explained once, they don't have to be re-explained again. This will help begin to build out a long-term role for your VA.

Build Out Ongoing Processes

Finally, we want to look at the tasks that take up most of your time: the ongoing tasks that currently still take over your day. These are the tasks you are likely to have kept hold of so far... we need to try to change that!

These tasks should ideally form the core part of the long-term role your VA holds within the business, if you want to leverage your VA's time (and your own!) as well as possible. The role could include managing an inbox, responding to sales enquiries, handling client projects or scheduling social media posts. These will require you to invest some time in training your VA to begin with, in order for them to take care of these processes effectively, but long-term this is a much more effective, sustainable approach.

Work with your VA to build out a solid process for them to follow for each responsibility you need them to manage, ensure all steps have been explained clearly... and then enjoy the benefits of having a talented professional look after that process, every single day, so you don't have to!

Question 4

Can my VA incur expenses?

Accepted Answer

Whilst most costs or bills incurred by your business will be managed by you directly, we appreciate that it can sometimes be more practical or convenient for your VA to have the option to incur small, occasional expenses too.

Examples of these types of expenses could include:

Postage costs
Software licenses (for specialist software you would like them to use for you)
Stationery
Printing costs

Your Virtalent VA will always first ask your permission and outline their estimate of any costs, as necessary.

If you are happy, your VA will then make the purchase using their own payment method (e.g. a credit card) and then upload the details of the expense incurred to our Task Portal - you will then see the expense inside the Billing section of your account. The value of the expense will then be added to your invoice from us, on your next billing date.

This means your VA can - for example - send a few letters by post, without you first needing to find a way to pay for a book of stamps for them. They simply make the purchase and we will reimburse them, as well as pass the expense on to you.

If frequent expenses are likely to be encountered, we recommend instead arranging a prepaid debit card that you can "top up" for your VA to use. Good examples of this are Pockit, Revolut, Google Pay and Soldo. You can then ensure any receipts/bills are billed directly to your business, rather than being added to your next invoice from Virtalent.

Please note, Virtalent makes no financial gain from offering this facility. However, as per HMRC's VAT legislation, we must add 20% VAT to any expenses added to your invoice, as these items form part of our service to you. They cannot be treated as disbursements.

Question 5

What's your phone number?

Accepted Answer

You can reach your Client Success Manager on +44 (0)330 120 0477.

If they are unavailable, our Virtual Receptionist will take a message and your CSM will call you back as soon as they can.

Remember, you can also get in touch by email on support@virtalent.com.

Question 6

Do you have insurance in place?

Accepted Answer

As well as our terms and conditions, which outline the promises we make when servicing your account with us, we also hold a range of comprehensive insurance policies.

These policies mean that you can be safe in the knowledge that, not only do we make certain promises (this is easy for any company to do!), but we also have the necessary insurance policies in place needed to deliver these same promises without causing any operation disruption to Virtlent or your business.

This includes the following policies with Hiscox:

Professional Indemnity (worldwide)
Cyber and Data (worldwide)
Public liability (UK and EU)
Employers liability
Legal protection and expenses

Question 7

How do I use the Task Portal?

Accepted Answer

You can access the Virtalent Task Portal at virtalentportal.com.

Don't have login details? Please get in touch with us on support@virtalent.com so we can grant you access.

The portal acts as a hub for you to manage all important aspects relating to your account with us and is, importantly, where your Virtalent VA logs their time for any work they do for you. You'll receive a monthly billing update by email, but the portal can be accessed 24/7 and so is a useful way to check the current status of your account, at any point.

The current system was designed entirely from scratch and launched in April 2021.

Dashboard

When you first log in to the portal, you'll find:

Details of our client referral scheme
A summary of your remaining balance and any time logged during the current billing period
Your current monthly plan and when this is due to renew
Your 'Extra Hours' settings
Links to a few useful help articles

Tasks

This tab shows:

A summary of your account balance, in the side bar
TASKS - All tasks that your VA is currently working on for you (and an archive of older tasks). You also have the option to send your VA a task, if you would like to work in this way
TIME - a full record of all time logged by any Virtalent VA working on your account. This can be filtered by team member, task or date, and can be exported in both PDF and Excel formats, if you would like to review the data. Whenever your VA logs time to your account, they must select the task they are working on (this acts as a broader "category") and then provide a short explanation of the work they carried out (this is the granular detail you might want to see - there is complete transparency here).
EXPENSES - a full record of any additional expenses your VA has incurred and the status of whether these have yet been charged to you, or not. More information on our expenses process can be found here.

Team

This tab shows the details of any Virtalent VAs currently assigned to your account. You can find:

Their contact details
A summary of their skills and experience
A link to their "profile" - you might find this useful if you're trying to understand whether they can help you with something!

Billing

This is where you can manage your account with Virtalent. You can:

See a full breakdown of your current balance and the time logged to your account during the current billing period.
Understand where your balance has "come from" - this is made up of rolled hours from the last period, hours from your latest monthly subscription and, if your balance has hit zero this period, additional 'extra hours'.
View and download your invoices. Need an extra note added to your invoice, such as a project code or PO number? Just let us know!
Make a request to change your monthly Plan with us (this is reviewed and approved by your CSM, to ensure your VA can accommodate the change).
Change your Extra Hours settings, which kick in if your remaining balance ever hits zero, before your next monthly billing date. These help to ensure you're never left without support!
Update your payment details (update your bank details, for example).
Add additional company users to your account

Question 8

I have something that my Virtual Assistant can't me help with. What should I do?

Accepted Answer

We ask all clients to keep the tasks they delegate to Virtalent within the realm of what should reasonably be expected of a professional Virtual Assistant. You can see the tasks we can help with here (and on our website - here).

We can help with a wide range of tasks, but there are a small subset of tasks we can't help you with (more info here).

The best question to ask your VA is "are they the most suitable person to handle this task?".

If you don't feel this is the case:

Could another Virtalent VA could be added to your account to do this work? This is our preferred approach as it is more convenient for both you and your VA to secure extra help this way. Just because your usual VA doesn't have a particular skill set, doesn't mean another Virtalent VA won't!
Alternatively, if you are 100% sure that Virtalent cannot provide this support (please always feel free to ask us on support@virtalent.com), your VA can help you resource this externally by researching and hiring another supplier. These tasks could include preparing legal contracts, complex graphic design projects or providing tax guidance, for example.

Do speak with your Client Success Manager if you're unsure - we're always happy to help!

Question 9

Can I use more hours than my plan allows? How do extra hours work?

Accepted Answer

Our service is designed for growing businesses. We know that without a crystal ball to hand, it’s impossible to forecast exactly how much support you’ll need from your VA every single month.

That means that your VA will simply continue working for you throughout the month - following your instructions - and, if they exceed the prepaid hours you have on account with us (your remaining balance at any one time), the portal will automatically top up your balance with 'extra hours'.

You can see the number of 'extra hours' already added to your account during the current billing period within your Account History.

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You can find your current Billing Preferences in the Billing tab or within the sidebar in the Tasks tab.

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This can be set to any number you prefer - we can set the portal to 'add 1 hour' when your balance hits zero, for example.

You will have set your preference here when creating an account with us, however can manage this at any time by visiting the Billing tab at virtalentportal.com or by contacting your Client Success Manager.

If you find you are consistently using above and beyond your hours every month, you may wish to consider moving up to the next plan - you'll find there's a saving to be made on your hourly rate by doing this too.

Likewise, if you are receiving frequent emails from us related to these top-ups, consider changing your setting around 'extra hours'. This will reduce the number of invoices and emails generated for you to then manage!

Just like with your monthly plan, any unused extra hours will also roll over to your next billing period.

We recommend discussing how you feel about 'extra hours' with your Virtual Assistant. Are you happy for them to log as much time as they feel is necessary or would you prefer to stick closer to a set monthly budget?

Question 10

What tasks CAN Virtalent help me with?

Accepted Answer

The term "Virtual Assistant" is broad. We certainly know this makes it hard to know, for sure, what you can delegate to Virtalent.

You can find a list of the services we generally provide here, as well as an overview of the tasks we do NOT help with here.

To give you more context, team members at Virtalent generally fall into 3 'categories'.

1. Some of our team come from a PA or Executive Assistant background. They will have supported senior business leaders (CEOs, VPs etc) or have worked with the Director of a small business before. As such, they can comfortably handle a variety of administrative support tasks, however complex! This could range from diary management to booking travel.

2. Others come from a marketing background. They will have usually worked in senior marketing roles (e.g. Marketing Manager) or as an independent Marketing Consultant before. Marketing VAs support clients with a range of (usually digital) marketing tasks and projects.

3. Others in our team then fit into the “all-rounder” category. They have solid experience in both EA and marketing roles, and may also have additional skills in customer service (replying to customer enquiries, taking payments, etc.), financial admin, website maintenance and more.

You'll likely to know which category your current VA falls into and the kind of tasks they enjoy the most. If they can't help you with something, does it fall into one of the categories above?

Perhaps you would consider your main VA to be a PA, but you now need help with your social media, for example.

In this case, the best option is to discuss this with us - we can simply consider adding an extra team member to your account to take care of this work!

You can reach your CSM on support@virtalent.com or by dialing 0330 120 0477.

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