Top 5 Must-Have Tools to Use as a Virtual Assistant
As a Virtual Assistant, it is easy to lose track of where your business is going; all the deadlines, meetings, and never-ending emails. Thankfully, there are some amazing tools that will streamline your work and help you run your business stress-free. Here is a list of 5 tools that have proved to be the ultimate help in my VA Business. These tools have helped me grow and streamline my work to a point where all aspects of business are taken care of, and there is no feeling of overwhelm. As virtual assistant work is remote, it is easy to get carried away with unlimited resources available, but it doesn’t have to be stressful. So this is a list of 5 must-have tools that will save you time and make sure you’re ready and well equipped to start your VA business.
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1. Dubsado
Dubsado is a life-saving business management tool for virtual assistants. It’ll ensure your business keeps running smoothly as butter and save time. From building rapport with your clients with organized communication to booking appointments, creating workflows, and streamlining your projects, Dubsado will take care of it all.
Instead of having an overwhelming number of tabs open in your browser, you can do it all simply in Dubsado.
Inside Dubsado, you can customize and reuse templates for various onboarding procedures like contracts, forms, proposals, invoices, questionnaires, and even emails. Your clients will always see your branding on anything you send. On the subject of contracts, I highly recommend The Contract Shop for U.S.-based Virtual Assistants.
You can also create payment plans and track your money coming in and going out.
The best part is you can automate workflows and clear off repetitive tasks from your plate. You’ll get new clients coming in quicker and easier because of the automated onboarding process.
It will also help you manage your clients; and organize your communication with client portals, task boards, and emails.
You can connect the scheduler to your website for clients to book calls and save time coordinating with them.
2. Canva
The easiest tool to create professional designs for your own business or your clients. You can create, edit, collaborate, share or print your work. The free version is super useful but you will find getting Canva Pro worth it because of extra choices for stock images, and thousands of templates, making it easy to get your best ideas to life.
As a virtual assistant, you can get all your creative work and communication done here, on-brand every time. The awesome collaboration features allow you to invite people to edit with you or set up a team to manage brand assets, leave comments, and work seamlessly as a team.
You get to play around with templates and can do it all on Canva - presenting, scheduling, downloading, printing, and sharing.
Here’s a list of the many perks you get with Canva:
- You get to download the desktop app for free, which is great because opening a browser and then opening the tab is too long a process.
- You get a video editor in Canva with templates, easy animations, and audio. Professional video content sorted!
- Canva is utterly simple to explore, experiment with, and create quality content for your business. It has everything you could ever need and more.
- The ever-growing template library makes the design process feel like play.
3. Google Calendar with Calendly/Zoom Integrations
As a VA, you want to spend less time managing your schedule and more time enjoying it. And a calendar is a must to manage a schedule to grow your business while keeping up with the time required to complete client work. Google Calendar integrated with Calendly works perfectly to create a workflow and automatically send your leads a Zoom invitation. Calendly is your hub for booking discovery calls efficiently and professionally, reducing the hassle of back-and-forth emails.
Prospects can set up meetings in a few clicks, whenever it is convenient. Lesser cancellations occur because rescheduling is simple, quick, and on their terms. For your virtual assistant business, Calendly will automate every step of your meeting workflow, delivering anything from reminder emails to thank you notes. It is like having your own Calendar management assistant!
4. Quickbooks
If you are a new virtual assistant, you need an easy-to-use finance management tool. QuickBooks is just that. You need not be an accounting or finance expert to use Quickbooks Accounting Software. It is a full-featured tool that will help you take care of accounting, tax filing, invoicing, bank account tracking, expense management, budgeting, and more. All your data will be organized, making it easy for you to track sales, create and send invoices, and know your how business is doing at any time.
You can connect your bank account to automate the process of importing and categorizing your transactions. You can also sync with popular apps and easily take photos of your receipts to store them with QuickBooks Mobile. If you have an account with both Quickbooks and Dubsado, you can seamlessly integrate the two services, allowing invoices and actions taken in Dubsado to reflect on the QuickBooks side. Click here to learn more about it.
5. Website
Why do you need a website for your VA business?
Without a website, prospects may question your trustworthiness. A website gives you the chance to make a fantastic first impression and reassure potential customers that you’re a real business. It is crucial for you to showcase your brand to prospects.
Building a website doesn’t have to be a herculean task. I show you how to build your first website step-by-step in my course Website In A Weekend. Together we will create a professional-looking website without having professional website designing skills. There are several platforms in the market where you can build and launch your website but we will be utilizing the affordable, low-tech, beginner-friendly, yet sleek and sophisticated platform SquareSpace.
Check out my course to get templates and a follow-along tutorial on building each page to give you a foundation to do business with clients via your very own website.
A website will make your VA brand look beautiful and professional. It will help you catch the eye of potential clients from day one. And you can do this even if you have ZERO tech skills!
Hope this helps you make work easier to grow your business!
Let me know if you found this list of tools valuable or if you have any of your favorite tools to add to the list.
Pin this post to your business planning board on Pinterest and by the way, I created this Calendar Template to help you manage tasks each week to keep you on your way to your first client!
I would also love to see you in Build Your Virtual Assistant Business Bootcamp before the price goes up this Fall 2022! Click below to learn more.
P.S. Are you committed to getting your Virtual Assistant business up and running quickly for a low cost?
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