Tasks to Hand to a Virtual Assistant First
By CodexierPublished 6 min read
The first month with a virtual assistant decides whether the arrangement works, and it is usually decided by what you hand over. Give too little and you spend more time explaining than you save; give the wrong things and you spend the month fixing them. This guide is a starter list ordered by how safely each task transfers, plus the honest short list of what to keep yourself.
Inbox and calendar tasks
- Inbox triage: sort into act, read, archive; flag anything from clients or authorities; draft replies to routine questions for your approval.
- Unsubscribe and filter: clear newsletters and notifications you never read, set up rules so they stay gone.
- Scheduling: propose times, send invitations, handle rescheduling, add travel time and video links.
- Calendar hygiene: confirm tomorrow's meetings, chase missing agendas, block focus time you keep losing.
- Booking: travel, restaurants, rooms and equipment within a budget you set once.
Follow-ups and reminders
Follow-up is where small businesses lose money quietly: the quote nobody chased, the invoice thirty days overdue, the customer who said call me in the spring. These tasks are ideal to delegate because they are procedural and time-triggered, and an assistant will do them on the day rather than when you remember.
| Task | Trigger | What the assistant does | What you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quote follow-up | Five working days after sending | Sends a short check-in from a template, logs the answer | Handles any negotiation |
| Overdue invoices | Day after due date, then weekly | Sends the reminder, updates the list, escalates after two | Decides on payment plans or collection |
| Customer check-ins | Date noted in the CRM | Books the call or sends the email you agreed | Takes the call |
| Supplier and subscription renewals | Thirty days before renewal | Lists what renews, cost, and whether it is used | Decides keep or cancel |
| Review requests | Job marked complete | Sends the review link and thanks | Nothing |
Documents and file order
Document work is safe to delegate because it is verifiable: either the file is in the right place with the right name or it is not. It is also the category most owners never get to, so the backlog is large and the relief immediate.
- A folder structure and naming convention, applied to the backlog and then maintained weekly.
- Receipts and supplier invoices collected from inboxes and portals and uploaded to Fortnox or your accountant's system, ready for booking.
- Contracts, insurance and agreements in one register with end dates and notice periods.
- Templates for quotes, proposals, onboarding emails and meeting notes, kept current with your latest wording.
- Formatting and proofreading of documents you have drafted, with tracked changes for you to accept.
Note the boundary: collecting and uploading receipts is admin; coding them to accounts and reconciling is bookkeeping, which is a separate skill and a separate service.
Research and preparation
Preparation tasks have a defined output and a deadline, which makes them easy to brief and easy to check. They are also where an assistant starts to add value beyond time saved, because the work arrives ready for a decision instead of as a raw problem.
Before meetings
A one-page brief on the company and person, recent news, your previous correspondence and open items. You walk in prepared without opening ten tabs.
Lists and comparisons
Suppliers, venues, tools or prospects compiled in a spreadsheet against criteria you set, with sources. You decide from a shortlist, not from a search engine.
Data entry and updates
Contacts into the CRM, products into the shop, hours into the time system, all from the material you already have. Repetitive, precise, and easily checked.
Give each research task a scope line: how many options, which criteria, how much time to spend. Open-ended research is the one kind that burns hours without producing a decision.
Tasks to keep yourself
Some things are cheap to do and expensive to delegate, because the cost is not the hours but the consequences of a wrong call. Keep these, at least until the assistant has worked with you for months and you have written rules for them:
- Pricing, discounts and anything that changes what a customer pays.
- Hiring, firing, salary and performance conversations.
- Client complaints, disputes and any message that could end a relationship.
- Tax filings, VAT returns, and signing anything with legal effect, even if the assistant prepares it.
- Access to bank accounts and payments; an assistant can prepare a payment file, but approval stays with you.
- Strategic decisions about what the company sells and to whom.
When you do not need a virtual assistant: if your admin takes under a couple of hours a week and it is mostly the tasks in the last list, the fix is a better routine and a few tools, not a person. If the load is real and mostly in the first four sections, start with a few hours a week and grow it; the cost comparison against hiring shows where each option wins. To see whether your particular list transfers, book a short call and bring last week's calendar.
Frequently asked questions
What should I delegate to a virtual assistant first?
Inbox triage, scheduling and follow-up reminders. They repeat weekly, have clear rules and are easy to check, so they build trust quickly. Add document filing and receipt collection in the second week, and research and data entry once the routines are stable.
Can a virtual assistant do my bookkeeping?
An admin assistant can collect receipts and invoices, upload them to Fortnox or your accountant's portal and chase missing ones. Coding transactions, reconciling and preparing VAT returns is bookkeeping, a different skill; we offer that as a separate hourly service and it should be done by someone trained for it.
How do I hand over a task without spending hours explaining?
Write the task as a short routine: trigger, steps, where things go, what to do when unsure. Record a five-minute screen video the first time you do it. Have the assistant do it twice with you checking, then let it run. Most tasks in this guide transfer in under an hour of your time.
Want to know which of your tasks would transfer cleanly?
Bring last week's calendar and inbox to a fifteen-minute call. We will sort your tasks into delegate now, delegate later and keep, and tell you what a starting number of hours would look like.
Book a free 15-minute call