9 Free Tools You Can Use To Start Your Virtual Assistant Business

If you're thinking about becoming a Virtual Assistant and you're suffering from a little anxiety about what tools you might have to purchase to get started. ⠀

Have no fear!⠀

Here's a list of 9 Virtual Assistant free tools you can use to get started.

This post contains affiliate links through which I may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you. We only share products or services we personally use and love!

Paypal - Use this to accept payments from your clients. ⠀

Typeform - Use this to create online forms for your client to fill out. You can create intake forms to collect information about your client or to get feedback. ⠀

Acuity Scheduling - You're definitely going to need a way to schedule Discovery Calls. This is a free option that you can add to your website. ⠀

LastPass - You can store passwords for yourself and for your clients. ⠀

Zoom - This is a great tool to use for face-to-face Discovery Calls as well. ⠀

HelloSign - Under the free plan, you can send up to 3 contracts a month. If you send more than 3, there’s a monthly fee.⠀

Google Drive - You can create documents, spreadsheets, and slide presentations and store everything in Drive. In addition you can share files, folders, save images and collaborate. ⠀

Trello - Organize and prioritize your to-do lists in an easy, visual way. You can use it to keep up with client work too! ⠀

DropBox - If you want a place to store just about anything you create and you don't want to save it to your computer or a zip drive...use DropBox. The free basic plan gives you 2GB of space.⠀

There are also a few paid Virtual Assistant tools I can’t live without. 

Canva - Canva is where I create all of my social media content for myself. I’m no graphic designer. Canva is perfect when I create my graphics for Instagram and Pinterest. I also use it to create my freebies, workbooks, and ebooks. There is a free version but I use the paid one because it allows you to store your branding, upload typography and more images and tools are available with the paid version.

Dubsado - Dubsado is a website that I also like to use for invoicing, but it is a WHOLE LOT MORE! Dubsado is the leading tech I use for my business. I do everything with Dubsado. Proposals, contracts, invoices. It also serves as a CRM, and I store my information about my clients and my leads. Dubsado is not cheap. However, if you want to try it out, you can read this blog post I wrote about and decide if you want use it. If you do, you can use it for your first three clients/contacts for free to see how it works. When you enter your fourth client, you are charged. Click on the link, which is attached to my code and you receive a 20% discount on your first year.

Tailwind - Tailwind is my bread and butter when it comes to scheduling for my Pinterest management clients. Tailwind allows you to schedule pins, join Tailwind communities, and use their smart loop. The best thing about Tailwind is that it saves you time! Depending on the plan you choose, you can schedule anywhere from 100 to unlimited pins on Tailwind. If you want to read more about Tailwind, check out this blog post I wrote about it. If you want a free trial of Tailwind that allows you to schedule up to 100 pins for free, you can click the link above. The basic account is less than $15.00 per month.

Grammarly - It is a useful tool for checking your writing, especially if you’re not confident with your grammar or spelling. It is a great tool to check your website, email, and blog content before you publish it to the world. It is effortless to use, and if you also do a lot of writing for your clients, you can use it for that as well. Grammarly is free to use, but if you use the paid version, you have access to their plagiarism tool as well.

Get organized and ready by creating new accounts with these free tools. ⠀

This post is proof that you can start your online business with a limited amount of money and still have everything you need to run your business effectively and efficiently.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to drop in on me on Instagram - my favorite online hangout  - @skyrocketvirtual

Getting Ready for a Discovery Call? Download All The Right Questions To Ask To Get You From Call - to - Client!

7 Tools I Use In My Business

Owning an online business is a lot of work! If you’re an online business owner, you wear many hats: tech support, customer service, social media manager, copywriter, editor, business strategist, financial analyst.

It’s a never-ending list.

With limited resources and personnel to complete your unending to-do list, it’s essential to manage business operations to maximize your efficiency strategically. Often this includes embracing technology that allows us to automate systems and set them up to work for us while we’re working on other areas of our business.

This post is a compilation of my favorite business tools that I use to manage and streamline operations in my business.

This post contains affiliate links through which Skyrocket Virtual Solutions may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you. We only share products or services we personally use and love!

7 Business Tools I Love To Use In My Online Business

Canva

Canva is where I create all of my social media content for myself. I’m no graphic designer. Canva is perfect when I create my graphics for Instagram and Pinterest. I also use it to create my freebies, workbooks, and ebooks.

You Might Also Like: How To Use Canva For Your Online Business

Google Drive

I love Google Drive. I store everything in Google Drive. All of my blog posts, client notes, anything I write, I start in Google Drive. What I love the most about Google is that it is entirely online, which means I can take it with me anywhere. If you don’t want to purchase Microsoft Word, Google is the perfect alternate.

Wave

Wave is an app I use to invoice clients if I am a subcontractor. It allows me to track the invoices I’ve sent, when they pay and when they are unpaid. It’s straightforward to use, and it will enable me to duplicate previous invoices easily. It saves me so much time. I can create an invoice for a client in less than 5 minutes, send it off, and get paid in less than five days!

Dubsado

Dubsado is a website that I also like to use for invoicing, but it is a WHOLE LOT MORE! Dubsado is the leading tech I use for my business. I do everything with Dubsado. Proposals, contracts, invoices. It also serves as a CRM, and I store my information about my clients and my leads. Dubsado is not cheap. However, if you want to try it out, you can use it for your first three clients/contacts for free to see how it works. When you enter your fourth client, you are charged. Click on this link, use my code, which will give you a 20% discount on your first year.

You Might Also Like: How To Use Dubsado For Your Business

Tailwind

Tailwind is my bread and butter when it comes to scheduling for my Pinterest management clients. Pinterest allows you to schedule pins, join Tailwind tribes, and use their smart loop. The best thing about Tailwind is that it saves you time! Depending on the plan you choose, you can schedule anywhere from 100 to unlimited pins on Tailwind. If you want to read more about Tailwind, check out this blog post I wrote about it. If you want a free trial of Tailwind that allows you to schedule up to 100 pins for free, you can click this link here. The basic account is less than $15.00 per month.

You Might Also Like: How To Use Tailwind With Pinterest

Buffer

Buffer is similar to other social media schedulers like Planoly and Later. They all work in the same way, but I enjoy using Buffer and find it easy to use. The free version allows you to publish to schedule up to 10 posts to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a useful tool for checking your writing, especially if you’re not confident with your grammar or spelling. It is a great tool to check your website, email, and blog content before you publish it to the world. It is effortless to use, and if you also do a lot of writing for your clients, you can use it for that as well. Grammarly is free to use, but if you use the paid version, you have access to their plagiarism tool as well.

Final Thoughts About My Favorite Business Tools

As you can see, you don’t need to spend a ton of money on managing your business operations if you are starting.

This post is proof that you can start your online business with a limited amount of money and still have everything you need to run your business effectively and efficiently.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to drop them in the comments below.

6 Reasons You Should Be Using Dubsado For Your Online Biz

Affiliate Disclaimer: This blog post may contain affiliate links where I earn a commission if you sign up through them. However this in no way affects my recommendation. If I recommended it, I have actually used this tool and highly recommend it.

I have been in business for a little over one year. When I first started I had no idea what tools I was going to use to run my business. Contracts. Proposals. Invoicing. 

Girl.

The struggle was real. 

I signed my first few clients, sent proposals, contracts and invoices through email. 

Yeah. That’s what I did. 

Don’t shake your head at me. I didn’t know any better.

Until a client turned me on to Dubsado. 

Honey! It was O-V-A!!!

I saw the light! 

I couldn’t hit that “sign up for a free trial” button soon enough. 

And it’s been the best thing I could have ever done for my business.

What Is Dubsado?

Dubsado is a business management solution designed to cut out the needless busywork. It helps you build relationships with clients, schedule appointments easily, and create workflows to streamline your projects from proposal to invoice. From communication to automation, integration, reports, and customization, Dubsado does it all. 

And to tell you the truth, I didn’t know about half the stuff Dubsado did when I signed up for it. All I knew was that I could send a proposal, contract, and invoice all in ONE swoop with the push of a button.

Yep. That’s right. 

Now don’t get me wrong - there is some extensive set up you have to do first to make it flow the way you want it to, but once you set Dubsado up - IT. IS. SEAMLESS!!!! 

If you’re running an online business and you routinely sign clients, send invoices, proposals and contracts - I promise you - YOU NEED DUBSADO IN YOUR LIFE!!! 

For real.

6 Reasons Why You Should Use Dubsado

Lead Capture

Let’s get real, lead capture is our bread and butter, right? You NEED leads to keep your business running. And one thing you can do seamlessly with Dubsado is create a lead capture form, embed it on your website and go. This is the one from my website. 

Building the lead capture form is super simple. It’s simply a drag and drop feature. You can add text boxes, check boxes, drop-down menus, and more to create a custom form that will provide you with all the information you need from a prospective client before you jump on a discovery call. 

Contracts - Forms - Proposals

From Dubsado...Create form and contract templates to use across any project. Browse our template library or use your own design to build forms that look professional, accessible, and unique to your business.

You can create proposals, forms and contracts in Dubsado. I found this a huge plus as well because not only can you create them, you get examples!!! All you have to do is tweak them to say what you want them to say. You can create a proposal and contract for every service you offer. I have a contract for Virtual Assistant services and a contract for Pinterest services. Once someone agrees to be your client, you can automatically send them the proposal.

The benefit of the proposal is the tabs that allows you to offer your potential client choices. For example, for my virtual assistant services I have a 5 hour, 10 hour, 15 hour and 20 hour package. You can include all of these tabs on the proposal. Once the client picks the package they want, Dubsado seamlessly (there’s that word again), adds the package your client selected to the contract AND the invoice. So again, you don’t have to go into Dubsado and pick that option for them. Dubsado does it for you because you created “packages” when you set up your workflows. 

Automations & Workflows

From Dubsado...With automated workflows you can trigger actions such as sending emails, completing tasks, and creating invoices—all without a single click. Additionally, set up automatic appointment and payment reminders personalized for each client.

Seriously. This is what sold me on Dubsado. Everything is automated. Dubsado allows you to create workflows so all you have to do is sit back and wait for the contract to be signed and the invoice to be paid. 

This is how one of my workflows is set up…

I have several workflows set up depending on the service. I have two workflows set up for Virtual Assistant services and two set up for my Pinterest services and a couple of others. 

One workflow goes from lead capture to discovery call. Once the discovery call is over, I start the next workflow and it goes from proposal, to contract, to invoice, to client onboarding with canned emails in between. A couple of possible tweaks on a contract, and a push of a button and I’m done. 

That’s how seamless Dubsado is. 

Invoices  - Payments

From Dubsado...Send invoices to get paid, either in full or through multiple scheduled payments. Set up automated recurring invoices for subscription-like services. Connect to a payment processor so your clients can pay at any time on any device.

So this part is a no-brainer. I already stated that what sold me on Dubsado was the workflow. Proposal -> Contract -> Invoice. 

Sold. Me. 

Now, after the first invoice is paid, you can go in and set up automated recurring invoices or you can send them out one month at a time. It’s really all up to you. I’ve done both and have found it to be super easy. If you do it month by month all you have to do is change the date, pick the correct package and hit send. If you want it to be automated, set up a recurring invoice for the duration of your contract. 

Get paid, Boo! 

Online Scheduler

From Dubsado...Send or embed your scheduler so clients can easily book with you based on your availability. Create requirements for booking, such as filling out a form or paying a deposit, and set scheduling limits to ensure that clients can only book appointments that work best for your schedule.

I started out using the free version of Acuity when I began my business but Dubsado has its own scheduler. Once I set up my calendar, I embedded the scheduler on my website and boom. When someone finds my website, my workflow is going to start one of two ways. If they go ahead and book a discovery call from the embedded scheduler, a workflow will start that sends a series of canned emails that reminds them one day, two hours, and one hour before the meeting. In addition, it sends them my Zoom link so all they have to do when it’s time for the call is click the link. 

If a potential client uses the lead capture form, then a workflow starts that sends them an email with a link to my scheduler to set up an appointment  and then the canned email reminders start from there. 

But did you notice that I haven’t had to do anything in this process. 

Nothing.

All I have to do is show up prepared, bossed up and ready to rock my discovery call. 

That’s it.

I love it! 

Pricing

You can get a free trial of Dubsado for up to three clients/leads and this isn’t something that “ends.” It doesn’t matter if you get three leads/clients in one month or three leads/clients in six months, you won’t be charged until that FOURTH client/lead is added in Dubsado. So take advantage of it now. Learn Dubsado. Create those packages and workflows and start capturing those leads.  You can see the price scale below. 

When I tell you that Dubsado has transformed my business and made it EASIER, I mean it.  Try it today! 

Use the Dubsado code SKYROCKET to get 20% off when you sign up for your own Dubsado account. And hey, you’ll get to try it before you buy it. SIGN UP FOR A FREE TRIAL (use the code) and you’ll get to use it with your first THREE clients/leads FOR FREE!!!!