A vital concern for business entrepreneurs who are planning to outsource their activities is-“how much does a virtual assistant cost and how to pay the cost?” For solving all your issues related to these costs, this blog has highlighted different payment modes for virtual assistants. Furthermore, it is going to guide you to know the factors that influence the costs.
1. Using popular platforms for payments
One of the important benefits of recruiting virtual assistants is you don’t need to bother about their locations. No matter where they are working from, you can pay their costs by using any popular platform for payments, accepted worldwide. Some of the well-known payment platforms are-
● Payoneer-This is a common payment platform, simplifying the payment procedure to the virtual assistant across different locations.
● PayPal- If you are running any startup or corporate, you can use this leading platform for payments.
● Wise-It works as a worldwide platform for money transferring with transparent fees and low charges on every transaction. The advantages of using this platform are free registration of accounts, offering real exchange rates of mid-market and support above 40 currencies.
You can use any one of these payment platforms at your convenience.
2. Selecting the proper payment structure
A payment structure for virtual assistants helps to determine the criteria through which they charge clients. Payment structure can be different for different virtual assistants; you can go with any of the structures as per your comfort. To decide on virtual assistant price, some of the standard structures of pricing are-
a) By the hour- In this structure, the virtual assistant is paid for every billable hour. It is suitable for professionals who handle recurring tasks (such as attending phone calls).
b) Flat rates- This method is applicable when you pay fixed salaries for specific hours on a monthly or weekly basis.
c) By the project or task- In this structure, you can go with task-dependent or project-dependent rates.
You can select the mode of payment by discussing it with your virtual assistant.
3. Using software for performance monitoring
In most cases, virtual assistants choose hourly rates; hence, it is necessary to keep track of accurate hourly rates. However, if you fail to track the working hours, then you cannot verify the time of the project. Furthermore, you cannot know whether the expert is passing off some idle hours while doing the job. To avoid such problems, you can use a tool of performance monitoring (for example Time Doctor) for monitoring virtual assistants. With the help of this tool, you can easily monitor the app and web usage at the time of working hours.
Now, coming to the cost amount, there is no standard or fixed rate for full-time or part-time virtual assistants-from $10 to $100 in one hour- anything they can charge. However, these costs are dependent are different factors, such as-
● The duration and size of the project
● The location
● The level of experience or skill
● The work type
4. Deciding proper costs
Are you struggling to decide the correct costs of your virtual assistant? Then, you can consider 3 main factors!
a) First factor-the level of experience
Virtual assistants with high experience can have high charges due to their efficiency and skills. To avoid such high virtual assistant price, you can go with less experienced virtual assistants with fewer charges. Though it is very economical, you may face issues due to lacking skills. In this case, you have to bear the expenses to train them for jobs. Hence, to avoid these issues, you can recruit a virtual assistant who has a minimum of 3 or 4 years of experience.
b) Second factor-The work type
The virtual assistant cost mainly depends on the services they provide. Hence, before committing to a virtual assistant, look at their job descriptions carefully. In this way, you can understand their activities and help to determine the exact rates. For getting an idea, this blog highlights a few service types as well as their hourly rates.
● Executive services-Virtual assistants who are skilled in executive services are skilled in doing high-level administrative activities, such as planning organizational events, making business proposals and managing project schedules.
● Administrative services- Here, virtual assistants perform routine admin and clerical tasks. Examples of such tasks are handling emails and phone calls, managing lists of contacts and others.
● Miscellaneous Services-If you are a professional in real estate, you need marketing and data entry which are some commonly available miscellaneous services. These services include email marketing, SEO, management of social media platforms, data entry of e-commerce products and others.
● Bookkeeping and accounting services
You can take help from financial assistants for performing the following tasks, like reporting sales tax, bill payment management, invoicing and preparing balance sheets and ledgers.
Based on the services they provide, costs can be decided.
c) Third factor-The location
The costs can vary as per the location from where they work. For example, virtual assistants who are working from the Philippines or India charge less in comparison to European nations. However, you can have experienced and talented virtual assistants from nations only at a small amount of price you need to pay.
For your convenience, India Virtual Assistant has brought plans with different virtual assistant cost-starter, basic, corporate and business plans. With all of these plans, you can enhance your business productivity.
