Building a virtual assistant agency service menu for a small operation

What to take away

This page shows how to build a virtual assistant agency service menu, not set prices. No rate, fee or margin appears, and the arithmetic uses your own figures.

Step one: the task inventory

Spend an hour writing down every task you have actually performed for clients in the last quarter. Not categories. Tasks, in the words the client used.

Then mark each task against four flags: frequency, estimated effort, interruption or context demands, and whether it requires client approval or sensitive access.

You now have the only document that matters. Packages are built from this, and every disagreement you will have with a client about scope is a disagreement about a row on this list.

Step two: find the anchor

The anchor is the task the client would be most upset to lose. It is rarely the one that takes the most time.

Look for the row that is high frequency, high interruption and high context. In most agencies it is inbox triage or first-line customer response. That row goes in every tier, because it is what makes the retainer feel like a retainer rather than a series of favors.

Everything else is arranged around it.

Step three: three tiers, each with one reason

Notice what does not change between tiers: quality, response standard and the review step. Selling a lower response standard at the entry tier is tempting and it teaches buyers that your promises are negotiable.

Sample service menu and task-family fit

For staffing, group related work where the systems, timing, permissions, and approval boundaries fit: inbox triage with customer response; calendar work with appointment and travel coordination; and CRM updates with routine reporting. Keep bookkeeping data entry and social scheduling as distinct task lines unless your inventory shows they fit the same person's workflow.

For example, an inventory row for scheduling client calls should record its frequency, effort, interruption or context demands, and approval or access needs. If it recurs and fits the calendar workflow, list it in Standard; if it is occasional or depends on extra approvals, scope it separately instead of implying it is included.

If you cannot state each tier's reason in one sentence a buyer would repeat, you have two tiers with a decoration between them.

Step four: write the four rules that make a package hold

Packages fail on operations, not on price. Four rules close the usual gaps.

Write them in plain sentences in the agreement, not in a footnote.

Step five: the exclusions list

This is the section clients read most carefully and owners write most carelessly.

Three sentences of specific exclusions prevent more disputes than three pages of general terms.

For example: The retainer excludes initiating or approving payments, moving funds, and changing banking details; the client retains those controls. It excludes legal, tax, or accounting advice and preparing or filing tax returns; bookkeeping support is limited to the data-entry tasks expressly listed. It excludes nights, weekends, and urgent same-day coverage unless the tier names those coverage windows.

What you may say about the package

The package description is advertising. The Federal Trade Commission's Advertising FAQs: A Guide for Small Business explains that advertising claims must be truthful and not misleading, and that businesses need a reasonable basis for their claims. Implied claims count too.

For packages, that means being careful with three habits: naming a response time you have not staffed for every hour you advertise it, implying a level of experience across a bench when only one person has it, and describing savings or results that depend on the client's own business rather than on your work.

Describe capacity, coverage and process. Those you can evidence.

Where the tiers get their cost

A tier's floor is what it costs you to reserve the capacity it promises, not what the tasks would take if performed back to back. Availability costs more than output for the same hours, and the difference is real.

Derive that cost from your own delivered-hours arithmetic before you set any tier price. The method sits in the pricing and profit guide, and the question of which lines actually earn once costed is worked through in the most profitable virtual assistant agency services.

The staffing consequence is immediate: the extended tier promises a named person and a documented backup, which is two people trained on one client. Whether you can hold that promise depends on the bench, and building it is covered in the hiring and training guide.

The sample menu above shows how to group related tasks; the services guide for agency owners offers a broader inventory, not a substitute for deciding what your team can deliver. How the packages are then presented to a buying audience belongs in the marketing and growth guide.

Testing the package before you publish it

Take your three most recent months of work for one client and score them against the new package. Which tier would they have been on? What would have been overage? What would the intake rule have caught?

If the answer is that they would have been on the extended tier and still exceeded it, your tiers are too small. If everything falls in the entry tier, the ladder is decoration.

Then keep the records that let you repeat the test each quarter. IRS Publication 583, Starting a Business and Keeping Records, covers business recordkeeping; per-client time and task records can help you price from your own delivery history.

One more check: confirm that the people delivering each tier are engaged in a way that matches the reality of the work. The Department of Labor's Misclassification of Employees as Independent Contractors page explains that the arrangement's label does not settle the question. A tier promising a named, always-available person is a different working relationship from occasional overflow help.

Common questions

Should I publish package prices?

Publishing the entry tier and the unit works well, because it filters out buyers you cannot serve. Publishing the extended tier invites a comparison against a scope that is not yours.

Can a client mix tiers?

Let them buy one tier and add named extras. Letting them assemble a custom package removes the operational reason tiers exist, which is that you can staff a small number of known shapes.

What if a client wants a service outside every tier?

Quote it separately, with its own scope, and see whether anyone else asks for it. Two requests make it a candidate line. One request makes it a favor.

How often should packages change?

Rarely, and never quietly. Change them when the inventory shows the work has moved, and give existing clients notice and a date.