What does a virtual assistant actually do all day?

Most answers to this question are a list of forty things a virtual assistant could do. That is not useful, because no one person does forty things well.

Here is what a real week looks like.

A realistic week for a general administrative assistant

Monday Clear the weekend’s inbox to zero and flag what needs you. Log every enquiry that arrived over the weekend into the CRM. Confirm the week’s appointments and chase anything unconfirmed.

Daily, throughout Monitor and triage the inbox in two or three passes rather than continuously. Log new enquiries within an hour of arrival. Send the standard follow-up to anything sitting at 48 hours. Handle scheduling changes as they come.

Wednesday Reconcile the week’s invoices. Chase anything over 30 days. Update the pipeline so it reflects reality rather than optimism.

Friday Prepare the weekly report from your template and send it for review by 2pm your time. Tidy the CRM: duplicates, missing fields, stale records. Send the week’s summary of what got done and what is outstanding.

That is a real 20 to 25 hour week. It is not glamorous, and it is roughly a day and a half of your own time that you are no longer spending.

What changes by role

The general assistant above is one shape. The specialists look different:

• An executive assistant spends most of the week on inbox filtering, calendar defence and project follow-through — and the value is in what never reaches you.
• A bookkeeper works in your accounting file daily: bank feeds, invoicing, payables, receivables, then month-end.
• An e-commerce assistant processes orders and returns, updates listings, and answers customer messages.
• An inside sales agent spends the week on the phone, working new leads fast and old leads consistently.

The full list is on our services page.

What a virtual assistant should not be doing

This matters more than the task list, because the wrong first role is the most common reason offshore hiring fails.

Anything requiring your professional judgement. If getting it wrong needs your expertise to even notice, it is not a first delegation.

Anything nobody in your business fully understands. If the process only exists in someone’s head and that person cannot explain it, writing it down comes first.

Anything client-facing on day one. Trust is built on demonstrated competence, and week one is not the moment.

Five hours a week of miscellaneous tasks. Below roughly 20 hours there is not enough contact time to build context, and the person stays permanently junior.

How much work do you need before this makes sense?

Write down everything you did last week that did not require you specifically. Time each item honestly.

If that list reaches 20 hours, a virtual assistant makes sense now. If it reaches 10, wait until it is 20 — a part-time arrangement below that threshold usually fails slowly and gets blamed on offshore hiring rather than on the size of the role.

The part that decides whether it works

Not the person. The documentation.

Your process lives in your head and you no longer know which parts are decisions and which are habits, because you stopped noticing years ago. Hand it over undocumented and you get it back 70% right, then quietly conclude offshore does not work.

The fix takes about four hours across the first month, and the whole method is in The Offshore Hiring Playbook — free, no email required.

Frequently asked questions

How many hours should I start with?

Around 20 a week is where this starts working properly. Enough contact time for someone to build real context.

Can one person do admin, bookkeeping and social media?

Sometimes, at a basic level, and rarely well. Those are three different skill sets. Better to pick the one costing you the most time and staff it properly.

How long until they are useful?

Useful in week one on simple tasks. Genuinely valuable at around week six, once processes are documented and they understand the business. Most people underestimate the second number.

What does it cost?

Market rates for the Philippines run roughly $7 to $18 an hour through an agency depending on the role. Our cost guide breaks it down, and the calculator will size it against a local hire.

What if I do not have enough work?

Then wait. Hiring before the work exists is how a good arrangement fails for reasons that have nothing to do with the person.