Also known as virtual personal assistants, virtual executive assistants are skilled professionals who provide administrative, technical, and creative support to clients remotely. While they typically work from a home office, others work in coworking spaces. 

People employed in this field typically have several years of experience as office managers or administrative assistants. As they’re either independent contractors or are employed by companies that provide VA services, clients aren’t responsible for any employee-related taxes, insurance, or benefits. Neither do clients have to provide their VAs with office space, computers, or related equipment. Clients simply pay for the work they need done, when they need it done.  

What Does a Virtual Assistant Do? 

Aside from performing standard administrative tasks like scheduling appointments, making phone calls, booking meeting rooms, and making travel arrangements, today’s new breed of virtual assistants can perform a wider range of tasks and have unique areas of expertise.  

Virtual assistants who are proficient in social media and content management, graphic design, and IT support, just to name a few specialties, are in high demand among clients. Specific professions—like lawyers, real estate agents, and eCommerce entrepreneurs—would also benefit greatly from the expertise of executive virtual assistants.

To ensure that clients are getting the full range of support, Sigrid, which provides professionally managed virtual assistant services, pairs each client with their own dedicated VA. This VA, in turn, is backed by a team of highly trained Specialists who can supply specialized services to clients as needed.

Listed here are some of the tasks that can be delegated to your Sigrid Virtual Executive Assistant: 

• Scheduling & Calendar Management 
• Making Reservations 
• Travel Management 
• Project Management
• Presentation Design 
• Human Resources
• IT Support 
• Bookkeeping 
• Expense Management 
• Specialized Research 
• Document Management & Data Entry
• Online Shopping & Delivery
• Online Bills Payment & Subscription Management
• Service Procurement
• Handling Insurance Claims
• Social Media Management
• Event Management
• Household Management
• Child & Family Logistics 

Scheduling & Calendar Management

The average executive has a weekly schedule packed with numerous meetings with investors, clients, and colleagues. Moreover, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, more and more meetings are taking place virtually—and that means sending out Zoom and Google Hangout invites to attendees who might be located in different time zones and adhering to different schedules. 

Aside from the logistical challenge of setting up business meetings and managing project deadlines, you’ll also need to take into account your personal life. Those doctors’ appointments, family dinners, and children’s recitals all have to be integrated into your schedule.  

Thankfully, your Sigrid Virtual Administrative Assistant can handle all aspects of your calendar management. This ensures that all major events and priorities in your professional and personal life are seamlessly integrated into your schedule. Just give your Sigrid VA access to your calendar and they can proactively plan your life weeks in advance. This, in turn, gives you more time to focus on the things that really matter to you.  

Your Sigrid VA can also handle other general admin tasks, including:

• Managing your email inbox
• Responding to your emails and phone calls
• Managing your contacts list
• Reminding you of important dates and events
• Updating your online records

Making Reservations 

Whether you need to make reservations at your favorite restaurant, hotel, or entertainment venue, or book a conference room for an important presentation, your Virtual Executive Assistant can handle all of your reservation needs.

If you need help researching venues and prices, your Sigrid VA can take this task off your plate. Just give your VA all of the requirements and your budget and they’ll look for suitable venues. 

Your VA will create a short list highlighting the features, pros and cons, and prices of each venue. Once you’ve made your final decision, they’ll make the reservation. 

Travel Management

CEOs, senior executives, and entrepreneurs often have to travel a great deal for work. Managing the intricacies of your travel itinerary, researching and booking flights, booking accommodations, as well as dealing with ground transportation can be time-consuming, and oftentimes, frustrating.  

Delegating your business travel needs to your dedicated Sigrid VA will relieve you of these responsibilities, enabling you to focus on getting your objectives done on each trip. Your VA can proactively manage all aspects of your trip and make sure that every detail is seamlessly integrated into your schedule.  

Their services will prove particularly invaluable when flights or accommodations get canceled at the last minute. Your Sigrid VA will take charge of the situation and rebook flights or accommodations in a timely manner, helping you stay on track. 

At Sigrid, your VA is supported by Travel Specialists to ensure that you’re getting premium travel management services. Once you give them access to your calendar, your VA and Travel Specialist can assist you with the following: 

• Researching the best prices on flights, hotels, restaurants, car rentals, and meeting venues 
• Researching health and travel measures taken by host countries
• Finding the best price for remote airport parking 
• Flight check-ins and booking your preferred seat 
• Visa assistance and applying for the renewal of your passport 
• Calling the airlines for travel-related inquiries 
• Tracking lost or delayed luggage 

Project Management 

If you’re looking for a Project Management Assistant who can provide highly structured support as a demonstration of good corporate governance, look no further than Sigrid. 

Your Sigrid Project Management Assistant can handle all aspects of your projects—anticipating challenges and devising solutions, updating your SOPs, and proactively scheduling meetings. 

By accomplishing tasks in an efficient and timely manner, your team benefits immensely. You’ll save time and money, see an improvement in team morale and employee engagement, as well as improve customers’ perception of your professionalism due to your excellent project management governance.

Your Sigrid Project Management Assistant can accomplish the following:

• Set up an MS Teams site & Workstreams for every project
• Set up meeting scheduling templates for every project
• Manage meeting scheduling and calendars 
• Manage meeting room and event bookings/rebookings
• Schedule conference calls on Zoom, Hangouts, Skype, etc. 
• Implement and maintain an online project documents structure
• Conduct client profiling 
• Conduct competitor analysis and specialized research 
• Conduct process management
• Perform personal admin

Presentation Design

Do you need beautiful, professionally-designed presentation slides prepared in time for your next meeting? Your Virtual Executive Assistant, supported by a Designer, will design impactful presentations for you using PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, Canva, and other software. 

Human Resources

If you’re too busy to handle the HR functions of your business but do not want to commit to a full-time HR professional, Sigrid can help. Our highly-experienced HR Virtual Assistants can handle all of your HR needs at a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house team. 

Your Sigrid HR VA can handle the following: 

Recruitment Management

• Advertising job openings on Workable, LinkedIn, and other job sites
• Screening, interviewing, and processing job applicants
• Reviewing applicants’ resumes and online profiles
• Conducting initial interviews & scheduling one-on-one interviews with team leads
• Preparing and sending offer letters
• Preparing on-boarding documents
• Facilitating new hire orientation

Attendance Monitoring & Timesheets

• Maintaining your employee attendance & time tracking system
• Preparing monthly attendance timesheets

Payroll Management 

• Preparing the monthly employee payroll 
• Processing confidential salary information 
• Keeping all employees’ financial records as required by law
• Submitting government tax reports in relation to employee incomes

General Admin & Performance Management

• Maintaining your Human Resources Information System
• Ensuring the complete documentation and updating of employee records, correspondence, and memos
• Monitoring employee performance
• Implementing performance management processes that foster engagement, productivity, and excellence 
• Liaising with government entities to comply with local labor laws
• Conducting off-boarding of employees and exit interviews

IT Support

IT-related issues can be a major impediment to your work and recreation. Perhaps you’re having difficulty installing new software, need to retrieve media that was accidentally deleted, or can’t properly connect to the Internet using your new iPad Pro. Your Virtual Executive Assistant can handle these and other IT-related concerns and identify the solutions.  

If they can’t find the solutions themselves, they’ll willingly call IT support companies that may have long hold times and patch you into the call once a representative becomes available. They’ll also spend days corresponding with tech support teams until your issue is resolved.  

Other services include recommending the best IT software and hardware and suggesting productivity hacks. Your VA can also recommend best-in-class software solutions if your company wants to establish a viable remote workforce.  

Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping is an important part of any business but can be time-consuming. Your Sigrid VA can assist you by taking over all of your bookkeeping responsibilities with the help of professional bookkeepers and the best bookkeeping software. As your remote team will help you establish good bookkeeping practices from the very beginning, you’ll have ample time to focus on business growth. 

Among other tasks, your Bookkeeping VA can categorize your daily expenses into manageable labels, pay bills on time, generate and send invoices to clients, collect payments, and keep an eye on revenues versus expenses. They can also assist with payroll and send you weekly reports to help you track the movement of your money. 

At the end of each month, your Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant will work on reconciliations by making sure your bank statement matches the information displayed on your financial software. Duplicate entries will be deleted, any inaccurate entries will be removed, and all transactions will be meticulously vetted to ensure they’re categorized correctly. Lastly, your bookkeeping VA can prepare all of your year-end reports for your accountant to look at.  

Expense Management

While few enjoy keeping track of their expenses, saving their receipts, and generating expense reports, these need to be done regularly and in a timely manner. To stay on top of your expense management, consider delegating this task to your remote Virtual Assistant.  

Your VA can work with your existing software and expense management processes. You can send photos of your receipts in real-time, which your VA will properly categorize and file. All you have to do is sign off on the expense reports on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. Moreover, if your VA has access to your calendar, they can log expenses against agreed dates and approved accounting codes (if your company uses accounting codes to track expenses).  

Your Sigrid VA can also perform the following tasks: 

• Reconcile and match card and bank statements 
• Process invoices 
• Update and streamline your expense management processes 
• Assist with VAT or GST filing 
• Encode expenses in accounting-related software, such as Xero and Concur

Specialized Research

Do you need detailed and actionable answers to some very complicated questions? Perhaps you’re looking for the best sushi restaurants in downtown San Francisco, or need to obtain a list of the top 500 most successful realtors in Vancouver. Your dedicated Virtual Assistant can conduct the necessary research and compile the information for you using online and offline sources.

Here are other real-world examples of the kind of research your Sigrid VA can conduct for you:

• Identify the best service providers in a given geographic area 
• Research and compare different vendors 
• Obtain the emails and phone numbers of people within an organization 

• Recommend the best museums, cultural activities, and sports events in a particular city 
• List down the best private tutors for your kids 

Document Management & Data Entry 

Document management and data entry are both time-consuming and repetitive tasks that should be delegated to a trusted Virtual Assistant. Let your Sigrid VA handle these clerical tasks so you can focus on strategic and revenue-generating tasks.

Some of the document management and data entry tasks that can be delegated to your Sigrid VA include: 

• Creating an online filing system on Google Drive or Dropbox
• Capturing, organizing, and archiving e-documents, images, and videos in online folders
• Standardizing file and folder names for easy organization and retrieval 
• Creating a secure (albeit accessible) repository so you can access your files from different devices
• Converting files into new formats (e.g. converting Google Docs into PDFs)
• Creating and managing Google Docs and Sheets  
• Typing information from a PDF into Excel 
• Transferring hand-written notes to a Google Doc 
• Transcribing audio to text 
• Keeping documents on file as long as is needed for compliance

Online Shopping & Delivery

While you might enjoy the convenience of buying and selling products online, the process can be time-consuming. Your Virtual Executive Assistant can free up more time in your busy schedule by handling your online shopping needs. 

Your VA can manage recurring orders, such as your weekly grocery shopping, as well as stocking up on stationery supplies for the office. Special requests (such as buying birthday presents and ordering catered food) can also be handled by your Sigrid Virtual Assistant. 

Your VA will ensure that all orders are processed correctly, paid for (using a virtual debit card), and delivered to the right destination.  

Other online shopping tasks your Sigrid VA can handle include: 

• Finding eBay or Amazon listings for particular items 
• Uploading items on eBay that you want to sell 
• Managing your Amazon seller’s account 
• Obtaining quotes from service providers and comparing prices 
• Tracking the real-time status of orders 
• Ordering the reshipping of lost items that you purchased online 
• Booking and managing the pickup of a parcel for shipment 
• Calling stores and inquiring if they have certain items in stock 
• Providing gift ideas for family members, friends, and clients, etc. 
• Sending flowers and presents to recipients

Online Bills Payment & Subscription Management 

Paying your bills and managing your subscriptions can be a time-consuming process. Thankfully, you can delegate your online bills payment and subscription management to your Sigrid Virtual Executive Assistant. 

From electric and internet bills, to your mortgage payments and homeowner’s insurance, your VA will make sure that all of your bills are paid on time—preventing any interruptions in service and penalties. 

Your VA will also manage all of your existing subscriptions, canceling services you don’t use to avoid unwanted charges and renewing relevant subscriptions to avoid any service interruptions. 

Service Procurement 

Do you want to hire reputable service providers for your business but don’t have the time to conduct in-depth research? Whether you’re looking for a digital transformation consultant to upgrade your business processes or a law firm to handle your legal affairs, your Sigrid VA can handle all aspects of the procurement process. 

Your VA will take note of your needs, expectations, and budget and will perform extensive research. They’ll then present you with a short list of viable candidates. Once you’ve made your choice, they’ll handle all aspects of contract drafting, invoicing, and contractor management. 

Handling Insurance Claims

Did you damage a rental car while on a business trip or wreck your own car in a roadside collision? Or perhaps you lost your luggage at the airport while on vacation? Processing an insurance claim can be both time-consuming and frustrating, but thankfully, your Sigrid VA can handle all aspects of your insurance claim and will track the progress of your claim until you’re fully reimbursed. 

Social Media Management 

Social media has become a viable means of attracting new customers and engaging existing ones. However, managing multiple social media accounts, responding to comments, monitoring brand sentiment, and creating new content is practically a full-time job. 

In order to stay focused on your core objectives, consider delegating all of your social media tasks to your Sigrid Social Media Virtual Assistant. 

Here are some of the tasks that can be delegated to your SocMed VA: 

• Executing your social media strategy
• Developing content for your SocMed channels
• Managing your social media content and calendar in Hubspot
• Measuring the success of your social media campaigns
• Staying up to date with the latest SocMed best practices and techniques

Check out our blog post to learn more about the tasks that can be delegated to a Social Media Virtual Assistant. 

Event Management

Have an upcoming private or corporate event and need a professional event planner to manage logistics? Your dedicated VA can handle all aspects of the event remotely, including vendor management, budgeting, people management, and logistics management. Your dedicated VA can also plan and manage business conferences, sales meetings, and panel discussions. 

Household Management

Managing your home and its upkeep can be just as demanding as a full-time job. Free up more time in your schedule by delegating recurring household-related tasks to your Sigrid VA.

Whether you need to have your home cleaned, your sofas reupholstered, or your roofing inspected, your Sigrid Virtual Assistant can manage all of these household maintenance tasks remotely. What’s more, your VA will add recurring maintenance tasks to your diary so that they can be scheduled seamlessly without you having to keep track of them. 

Your VA will vet vendors and contractors based on your budget and requirements, book the appointments, and ensure that they arrive at your property on time to perform the service.

Child & Family Logistics 

Managing the needs of your children and family can be time consuming. By delegating your child and family logistics to your dedicated Sigrid VA, you can regain the countless hours spent on family administration, research, bookings, to-do’s, and other related tasks.

Looking for the perfect summer camp program for your children, or need to schedule doctors’ appointments for your elderly parents? Perhaps you need to book a venue for an upcoming birthday party, or need to buy art materials for your childrens’ school projects?

No task is too complex or menial for your dedicated Virtual Assistant, who will go out of their way to ensure that all projects are completed according to your specifications. 

Check out our blog post to learn more about the benefits of hiring a remote VA to manage your household affairs. 

Benefits of Hiring a Sigrid Virtual Executive Assistant

Unless you’re able to effectively delegate secondary tasks and responsibilities to your subordinates, a significant chunk of your day is likely spent doing repetitive and non-core tasks that don’t move the needle forward. 

By choosing to partner with a Sigrid Virtual Executive Assistant, you can clear your agenda of any distractions and focus on the goals that really matter. You can also enjoy other business benefits, like reduced overhead expenses and acquiring specialized skills as needed. 

"Many businesses have benefited immensely from the structured support they receive from Sigrid." Case in point is LCR Capital Partners, a private investment and advisory services firm.

Check out our use case to see how we positively impacted their operations with our world-class care. By partnering with Sigrid, you’ll also enjoy greater work-life balance. You’re less likely to suffer from the health problems that come with burning the candle at both ends. You can also invest more time in your hobbies, relationships, and wellness activities—factors that can improve overall life satisfaction. 

Stay Focused on Your Top Priorities by Hiring a Sigrid Virtual Executive Assistant 

Partnering with Sigrid allows you to enjoy world-class care and a highly structured support system. What sets us apart from our competitors is our commitment to seamless continuity and personalized service. 

Seamless continuity means that even if your dedicated VA goes on leave, another VA will step in and provide the same high level of service and personalized care. This is possible because all the important details about our clients are noted in our Client Fact Book. This allows us to provide support that is fully tailored to our clients’ needs and expectations.

What’s more, we offer flexible subscription plans, starting at only US$450/month. You can purchase subscription hours for yourself or your team. 

Aside from having a dedicated VA as your single point of contact for all requests and tasks, you’ll also receive support from our team of Specialists and a Customer Success Manager.