If you’re a virtual assistant (VA), you might offer a buffet of different services, but they all boil down to one key ingredient: you get stuff done. Your natural talent for organization and time management are critical to success as a VA.
But you can only do so much with whiteboards and homegrown spreadsheets. When you’re managing diverse needs like bookkeeping, email campaigns, and social media schedules of several businesses, virtual assistant software can be your secret weapon for staying ahead of your clients’ needs.
To help you choose from hundreds of options, we’ve researched and landed on more than 20 virtual assistant software products that could elevate you from valuable to indispensable. We’ve organized the list into categories, and every product offers a free trial period so you can get started right away.
20+ Best Virtual Assistant Software of 2023
Bookkeeping/Invoicing
You only get paid if you submit a timely bill to your customer. You may also be providing bookkeeping services to your clients like tracking income and expenses, running financial reports, and providing customer receipts.
The best bookkeeping software helps you simplify all these related tasks.
Quickbooks has been a favorite for business owners for many years, and its versatility makes it a highly-recommended accounting solution. It can be a little clunky for beginners, but because it has been around so long you can find hundreds of free tutorials to help you learn it.
Bonsai also offers versatility. According to their website, they are “the only business management tool that combines CRM, invoicing, accounting and banking.” Setup is quick and the first two months are free if you pay annually.
More to check out: Freely, Freshbooks, Harpoon, Xero, Wave.
Time Tracking
Virtual assistant software that helps you track your time takes the guesswork out of billing by recording how many hours you spend on a project or task. It can also help you project how much work you can take on without getting overloaded.
The more sophisticated platforms also create reports for customers and integrate with your payroll tasks. This can be especially useful if you are managing a team of VAs.
Toggl is deceptively simple given how many features it provides. Their free version lets you be up and running within seconds. Once you’re set up, your home base is a clean, easy to read dashboard that helps you quickly track and analyze your time.
Clockify has been a fan favorite for years, and still offers a free version that may be all you need if you’re just getting started as a VA. It lets you track time across multiple devices, which can be great for freelancers who work from anywhere.
More to check out: Harvest, Quicklo, Time Doctor, ClickUp, Tyme, Hubstaff.
Project Management
Good project management apps let you prioritize what to work on next and assign tasks quickly. This can bring order to the multi-faceted work of managing a team of virtual assistants or managing multiple jobs for different clients.
Trello works great if you are a solopreneur with a small number of clients. It’s visually stimulating which can make it fun to use and quick to learn.
Asana was designed from its inception to be a project management tool, so they’ve gotten good at it over many years. When software features overlap several categories, that can end up being a drawback because the tool tries to do too much. Asana is focused on giving you tried and true project management methods.
ClickUp is way more than project management software. If your VA business is growing, it may be worth learning this sophisticated tool because it does so much.
More to check out: Motion, Monday, Hubstaff, Basecamp, Hive.
Communications
The best freelancers respond quickly and communicate clearly with their clients. Messaging and video conferencing software with intuitive user interface and familiar features can distinguish your virtual assistant business.
For chat and messaging:
Slack is well known to many business owners and freelancers. It helps you organize instant conversations by setting up channels based on topic, client, or any category that works for you.
Chanty helps VAs collaborate with clients through messaging or video. Like Slack, it offers the ability to convert conversations into tasks in other platforms like Dropbox and Google Drive.
For video conferencing:
Google Meet is known for being free and does not require users to have an account to participate in the meeting. Whenever you can make communications between you and your client easy, you gain credibility. Google Meet is part of the broader platform Google Workspace, which gives you additional features and allows a 14-day free trial.
Zoom was already widely known before the pandemic, many of us know a student who literally could not have graduated in 2020 without taking classes over Zoom. Because of that familiarity, it may be your best option if you only need video meetings and not a tool that also maintains chats like Slack.
Around is a lesser-known video conferencing tool, but it’s what we use here at M$M, and it’s growing in popularity for its unique meeting formats.
Honorable mention goes to Loom, which allows you to easily create video recording your screen and camera at the same time. This can be a huge timesaver when you need to show, not tell, how to do something.
More to check out: Microsoft Teams, Flock, Twist, Troop Messenger.
File Sharing
As a virtual assistant, you will most likely need to share files with your clients. Email attachments take up huge amounts of storage and do not secure your client’s data. File sharing software reduces these risks.
Here are the best virtual assistant tools for file sharing:
Google Drive allows you to synchronize your files across devices and share them with others. Given that Gmail has over 1.8 billion users and is the most popular email service, leveraging familiar Google tools often puts clients at ease.
Dropbox may remind you of the olden days before Google Drive. But Dropbox has kept pace with the market by continuing to offer integration with commonly used tools like Zoom and Slack, and their pricing remains competitive.
More to check out: Box, Droplr, Huddle.
Appointment Scheduling and Calendars
To help your clients manage their calendars, you’ll need to stay on top of their scheduled meetings and appointments.
Calendly has an always-free option and the app makes it easy for potential customers to see a client’s availability and book a meeting that works for all parties. It also helps you connect calendars across several different platforms.
Google Calendar is like Ole Faithful and still works well for individuals and small businesses. Entrepreneurs you support may already feel comfortable using it or have a gmail account. In addition to supporting appointment scheduling, you can use it to manage tasks and To Do lists.
More to check out: Acuity, Hubspot Meetings, Doodle, Zoho Calendar, Microsoft Outlook.
Password Management
As a trusted virtual assistant, you may be logging in to several of your client’s accounts — social media, payroll apps, etc. — which means you’ll have potentially hundreds of passwords to manage.
These software products can help:
LastPass may already be something you're using in your personal life, so it’s a natural step to leverage it for business. It has a free version, but for around $4 to $7 a month, you get features like password management across multiple devices.
Dashlane is known for zero-knowledge encryption which means the company cannot see your passwords. That might be just the feature your clients want.
More to check out: 1Password, Bitwarden, Zoho Vault.
Social Media Scheduler
Running Facebook ads, posting on Instagram, or creating eye-catching Pinterest boards requires more than creativity. Social media manager VAs maintain a consistent posting schedule for clients so their profiles constantly have fresh content.
They also monitor and analyze the performance of content, and that feedback is critical to improving online presence and branding, as well as converting the audience to customers.
Scheduler software products like these can help:
Hootsuite has been around since 2008 and not only provides scheduling for posts, it determines why a post might be performing well. It supports integrations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok.
Tailwind combines social media and email marketing in one tool. Features include graphic design and branding help which is especially effective for Pinterest and Instagram.
More to check out: PostPlanner, Buffer, Later, Crowdfire.
Contract Signing
Virtual assistants, like any freelancer, should require clients to sign a contract as standard operating procedure. This critical document can help avoid misunderstandings in pay and work product.
To make it easy on customers, consider using a document signing software.
Docusign has been around since 2003 and lets customers provide electronic signatures on many different devices. If you’ve rented an apartment or bought a house in the last twenty years, you probably used Docusign. That’s true for many of your customers, too, so it’s a solid choice for your VA business.
Honeybook features contract signing, appointment scheduling, invoicing, and much more. After the free trial, they have plans as low as $8 a month which is not bad for all the extra features.
More to check out: HelloSign, Dubsado.
Final Word on the Best VA Software
Every software on this list offers at least a free trial, and several offer free versions, so you can try them out before committing. If the sheer number of choices feels overwhelming, we recommend trying one at a time.
Time tracking might be the easiest software to learn and most useful for new freelancers. If you are building your online business around social media services, on the other hand, you may want to integrate a scheduler into your business early even if you decide to change platforms in time.
FAQs
Yes, most likely. It’s hard to find a thriving VA business not using at least one software solution. Your needs will vary depending on the services you offer and how much you want to grow your business. But if you want to offer more than occasional support for low-complexity tasks, you’ll want to be as efficient as possible.
The best one is the one you’ll use. If spending an entire week setting up project management software sounds like a day at the beach, then you might prefer the feature-heavy tools like ClickUp. But if you crave simple and familiar options, start with Google tools — Workplace, Calendar, Meet, and so on.
About Millennial Money Man
Bobby Hoyt is a former band director who paid off $40,000 of student loan debt in 18 months on his teaching salary and then left his job to run Millennial Money Man full-time. He helps other Millennials earn more through side hustles, save more through budgeting tools and apps, and pay off debt. He is a personal finance expert who has been seen on Forbes, Reuters, MarketWatch, CNBC, International Business Times, Business Insider, US News, Yahoo Finance, and many other personal finance and entrepreneurship media outlets.
