I’m sure you’re thinking that there’s a mistake in the title. How can a business owner possibly take a day off every week and continue to grow their business – and to top it off, while the economy is struggling? This is not a riddle. Let’s start explaining with some facts.
Small businesses spend about one-third of the year on admin tasks
Research from enterprise software company Unit4 found that office workers in the UK spend roughly one-third of their working year on administrative or repetitive tasks. Closer to home, a 2017 survey which included South Africa found that small businesses spend up to 240 days per year working on admin tasks.
With the above information in mind, would it be safe to assume that business admin is holding small business owners back from growing their business? If they could actually spend that time on through marketing and networking opportunities that put them in touch with their ideal customers, how would that impact their business growth, and ultimately their revenue?
Grab your calculator and let’s do a little math:
52 weeks x 5 working days = 260 working days a year.
Divide 260 by 3. That totals just over 86 working days a year spent on admin (based on the one-third statistic). Divide 86 by 12 months, and you’re left with about seven days a month spent on business admin.
Keeping these statistics and calculations in mind, why would any savvy business owner even think about employing a full-time admin person, if they have to pay a salary for someone to only work seven days a month? That does not make any financial sense.
Every potential problem has a solution
What does make sense for a business owner to outsource their business admin to a Virtual Assistant (or VA).
Wikipedia provides a short explanation of what a VA is: “
A virtual assistant (typically abbreviated to VA, also called a virtual office assistant) is generally self-employed and provides professional administrative, technical, or creative (social) assistance to clients remotely from a home office. Because virtual assistants are independent contractors rather than employees, clients are not responsible for any employee-related taxes, insurance or benefits, except in the context that those indirect expenses are included in the VA’s fees. Clients also avoid the logistical problem of providing extra office space, equipment or supplies. Clients pay for 100% productive work, and can work with Virtual Assistants, individually, or in multi-VA firms to meet their exact needs. Virtual Assistants usually work for other small businesses, but can also support busy executives.”
Jack of all trades, master of…
As business 
owners cannot possibly know everything about everything and stay on top of the latest developments, it makes time and money sense to outsource mundane tasks that fall outside their area of expertise to someone with the right experience to support their business.
Looking specifically at how a VA can support a small business owner, here is an alphabetical list of common tasks to outsource:
Organisation and administrative tasks:
- Compiling and cleaning up contact lists
- Creating and managing spreadsheets
- Creating and updating charts, graphs, and pivot tables
- Creating reports
- Creating templates and forms
- Data entry
- File storage and organisation
- Online research
- Planning and arranging travel
- Preparing online meeting minutes
- Preparing presentations
- Scheduling appointments / diary management
- Tracking deadlines and sending reminders
- Transcription of minutes or notes
- Translations
Marketing and creative tasks:
- Compiling, editing, and publishing newsletters
- Creating images for website posts
- Creating information packets
- Designing logos
- Maintaining backend of the website
- Proofreading / editing material
- Setting up layout of newsletter
Bookkeeping tasks:
- Billing clients
- Chasing late payments
- Inputting receipts into a spreadsheet
- Performing accounting-related transactions
- Performing basic bookkeeping
- Processing invoice transactions
- Processing receipts
- Reconciling transactions
- Reporting or emailing lists of expenses
- Tracking and logging business expenses
It is important to note that a business owner might find a great VA who has experience in some tasks, but not in everything. It is highly recommended that business owners do their research to find the person who can assist with the most pressing tasks and grow the relationship from there.
What are the benefits of hiring a VA?
Below is an illustration to indicate some of the benefits:
- Only pay for actual time spent, as VAs keep track of their time spent.
- No office space or equipment required as both are provided by the VA.
- No benefits are payable – VA’s own responsibility.
- No tax deductions – VAs are responsible for their own tax, and the amount paid can be deducted as an expense.
All the above leads to a cumulative cost saving.
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