50 Tasks You Can Delegate to a Virtual Assistant
The hardest part of delegation is often just naming the work. Owners know they are busy, but the busyness is a blur of small tasks that never make it onto a list. This list of fifty commonly delegated tasks exists to jog your memory. Tick the ones you do every week — that is your starting brief.
Administration
- Inbox triage: filing, flagging and drafting replies for your approval
- Calendar management and appointment scheduling
- Rescheduling and confirming bookings by SMS or email
- Data entry into CRMs, spreadsheets or job management software
- Formatting documents, proposals and presentations
- Organising cloud drives and naming conventions
- Booking travel and accommodation
- Transcribing voice notes into tasks, quotes or file notes
- Preparing meeting agendas and typing up minutes
- Maintaining templates for letters, quotes and emails
Customer contact
- Responding to new enquiries with your standard information
- Following up sent quotes on a set schedule
- Answering or returning phone calls during set hours
- Sending appointment reminders to reduce no-shows
- Requesting reviews from happy customers
- Responding to online reviews with approved wording
- Managing waitlists and cancellations
- Sending thank-you or follow-up messages after jobs
- Updating customers on order or job status
- Maintaining a simple FAQ document from repeated questions
Marketing
- Scheduling social media posts you have approved
- Resizing and tidying images for web and social use
- Drafting and formatting email newsletters
- Updating website text, prices and photos
- Writing first drafts of blog posts for your review
- Maintaining your Google Business Profile details
- Compiling content ideas from customer questions
- Basic video trimming and captioning
- Keeping a content calendar up to date
- Collating testimonials and case study material
Finance admin
- Creating and sending invoices
- Sending polite payment reminders for overdue accounts
- Reconciling receipts and forwarding records to your bookkeeper
- Chasing missing supplier invoices
- Maintaining a simple accounts-receivable list
- Preparing expense summaries
- Checking statements for duplicate or unexpected charges
- Keeping subscription lists current and flagging unused software
- Preparing quote documents from your pricing notes
- Recording petty cash and job costs into your system
Operations
- Writing up procedures as they learn your processes
- Ordering office or job supplies when stocks run low
- Coordinating contractors, couriers and suppliers
- Monitoring shared inboxes for time-sensitive items
- Maintaining registers: licences, insurances, vehicle rego dates
- Researching suppliers, venues or software options
- Setting up and tidying project management boards
- Onboarding paperwork for new staff or clients
- Basic reporting: pulling the same numbers into the same template each week
- Archiving completed jobs and closing the loop on loose ends
How to use this list
Do not delegate all fifty at once. Choose two or three tasks that are frequent, repeatable and easy to document, and start there. Write down how you currently do each one — even roughly — and refine the instructions together over the first few weeks. Once the first tasks run smoothly, add more. Delegation is a skill you build, not a switch you flip.
FAQ
Which task should I delegate first?
The best first task is one you do often, that follows the same steps every time, and that does not require your personal expertise — invoicing and inbox triage are common starting points.
Can one VA really cover all these areas?
Generalist VAs cover many of them at a basic level, but nobody is expert in everything. For specialised work such as bookkeeping or design, expect to engage a specialist or accept a simpler standard.