A Few Of My Favorite Virtual Assistant Tools

Hey there!

When I first began my VA Business I had to learn very quickly which tools would help me and which tools didn’t work for me. I didn’t want to make major investments of time and or money into products that didn’t help or offered very little help.

There are so many tools that are out there that make being a virtual assistant easier. I find myself using these tools several times a day. Trust me, if there’s a faster, cheaper, better way to do something, I am going to find it.

My favorite tool of all time is Canva. I am so glad that I found this tool! It’s great for creating logos, letterhead, newsletters, invitations, social media frames, etc. You name it, you can create it in Canva. You don’t have to know anything about design or fancy graphics. Canva walks you right through everything. If you aren’t sure how to use Canva there are many videos on YouTube that you can watch. And, while Canva’s free service is robust and fantastic, I do think it’s worth paying the monthly fee ($9.95 - $12.95) if you create a lot of graphic design content for your clients or yourself.

My second favorite tool is HootSuite. I schedule most of my Instagram posts in advance. I know that there is some controversy over whether or not you should use scheduling platforms for scheduling social media posts. I personally love it and all of my clients use it. I’ve only had minor problems with it so I’ll probably continue to use it until something major happens or something better comes along.

The entire Google suite is my jam! I love it. I can work on documents with others and I can work on them anywhere as long as I have my google password. I can provide documents to someone else and we can edit and craft it in real time and track all of the changes. It’s easy to use and it is free!

And finally, Toggl Time Tracker is my favorite way to track time. I do quite a bit of stopping and starting on projects and being able to push a button to start the countdown on a project (and then push it again to stop) makes billing my clients so much easier. And it doesn’t hurt that Toggl creates very nice reports...for free! You can do a lot more with the paid version but if you are just starting out, free is the way to go.

Having the right tools is important to your company. You can waste a ton of non-billable time if you don’t have the right ones. Make sure that you take the time to research a tool before trying it out. Ask other virtual assistants what they use and try the ones with a free trial period first. Really run it through the ringer so that you’ll know if it’s worth the investment.