Virtual Secretary: Tasks, Rates and Contract Pitfalls
Short answer
A virtual secretary works remotely for your office: answering calls, managing your diary, triaging email, drafting correspondence and preparing invoices. You can hire one through an agency, which bills by minute or hour, or as a freelancer on a monthly block of hours. Get a data processing agreement in place and structure the work so the freelancer is genuinely self-employed.
Most people searching for a virtual secretary don’t have a phone problem. They have a time problem, and the phone is just its loudest symptom. Behind it sit unanswered emails, a diary nobody maintains, quotes that have been waiting for days and invoicing that always ends up on a Sunday.
Much of that can move to a virtual secretary. It works when three things are settled first: which tasks move, how access works and which contract model fits.
What a virtual secretary actually does
There’s no protected definition. It means someone doing office work for you from somewhere else, over phone, email and shared online tools. Typical tasks:
- answering calls, arranging callbacks, writing phone messages
- booking meetings and keeping the diary in order
- pre-sorting the inbox and answering routine enquiries
- drafting letters and minutes from templates or dictation
- preparing invoices and matching incoming payments
- booking travel and gathering documents
- keeping customer records current in the CRM
- distributing scanned post to the right people
What doesn’t delegate well: decisions that need your expertise, confidential HR conversations, and anything that has to happen physically on site.
| Criterion | Good fit | Fine with clear instructions | Keep in-house |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone and diary | |||
| Inbox triage | |||
| Correspondence from templates | |||
| Invoice preparation | |||
| Pricing quotes | |||
| HR matters, dismissals | |||
| Filing and post on site |
Three models side by side
Agency with a team. Answering-service companies often add secretarial work. Calls are billed per minute or per call, writing tasks by time. Holidays and sick days don’t matter because someone is always covering. The trade-off: you won’t always reach the same person.
Freelance virtual assistant. One fixed contact who learns your business over time, usually on a monthly block of hours. You get continuity. You also get a single point of failure, and you have to think harder about employment status.
Automation and AI. Online booking, an AI phone agent for routine calls, rules in your inbox. None of that replaces a secretary, but it removes routine from their plate. How a voice assistant works is explained in how an AI receptionist works.
Many small firms end up with a mix: online booking and an answering service for availability, plus an assistant for a few hours a week for everything written.
What it costs
Phone handling has clear market prices; the comparison is in virtual receptionist cost. Hourly office work is murkier because rates depend heavily on experience and country.
Pay data gives a floor. PayScale reports average pay for virtual assistants in the US at $19.70 an hour, with the 10th to 90th percentile running from $12.71 to $29.89 (June 2026). For the UK it shows £15.33 on average, from £9.82 to £24.61, though that dataset is small and dates from late 2024. Those figures describe what VAs earn as pay. Freelancers billing you directly have to cover far more than that:
- Target profit before tax per year
- £32,000
- Pension, insurance, accountant
- £5,000
- Software, hardware, training
- £2,000
- Billable hours per year (after holidays, illness, admin)
- 1,100
- Required hourly rate
- about £35
Illustrative assumptions, not market data. A freelancer pays their own pension, sick days and equipment.
That doesn’t mean every assistant charges £35. It shows why very low rates are a signal: the person works on the side, hasn’t costed properly, or lives somewhere with a different cost base. Any of those can work. You just want to know which one you’re dealing with.
The contractor-status trap
Someone who works only for you, keeps your hours and follows detailed instructions may legally be your employee. The IRS in the US looks at behavioural control, financial control and the type of relationship when deciding whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor. The UK applies its own employment status tests, with control, personal service and mutuality of obligation at the core. Germany’s equivalent turns on instructions and integration into your organisation.
Get it wrong and you can owe back taxes and contributions. Signs that point towards genuine self-employment:
- several clients, visible to the outside world
- their own equipment and their own hours
- payment per result or per block, not like a salary
- their own business presence and their own prices
Agencies mostly avoid the question, because their own employees serve many clients.
Access and data protection
Your virtual secretary will see emails, customer data, sometimes bank transactions. If you’re in the UK or EU, that’s processing of personal data on your behalf, and you need a processing agreement under Article 28 of the GDPR. Agencies have one ready. With freelancers you often have to raise it yourself.
Technically: delegate, don’t share passwords. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both let you grant another person access to your mailbox and calendar without giving out your credentials. For everything else, a password manager with shared items works. When the engagement ends, you revoke access in a few clicks.
Law firms and medical practices have extra confidentiality duties, covered in legal answering services.
How to spot a good one
CVs and reviews say little about fit. Paid trial tasks say more. Give two or three candidates the same real job: ten anonymised emails from your inbox, with a request to draft replies and sort them by urgency. Pay for an hour.
When you review the results, look less at polished wording and more at three things. Did they ask questions where something was unclear? Is the sorting logical? Does the tone fit your business? Someone who asks nothing in a trial won’t ask later when it matters.
During the interview, ask about cover during illness, which tools they use and how many clients they serve at once. With an agency, ask whether you’ll have a named contact and how handover works if that person changes.
Getting started without chaos
The first weeks decide whether it works. List every task you want to hand over, with estimated time per week. Record short screen videos of how you do the important ones today. And agree a fixed ten-minute slot each week to clear open questions.
Before handing tasks to a person, check what can be automated. Phone booking can often move to an online booking system, paper post to a virtual mailbox. If you want to go further and connect recurring workflows to AI assistants, OnlineBuilders offers advice on that. What’s left is the work where a virtual secretary really earns their fee.
Start the list today. For one week, write down every office task you do, with minutes next to it. Anything that comes up more than twice and doesn’t need your judgement is a candidate for handover.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between a virtual secretary and a virtual assistant?
In practice the terms overlap almost completely. Secretary leans towards classic office work such as phones, diary and letters, while assistant often includes research, social media or project coordination. What counts is the task list in the contract, not the label.
How many hours should I start with?
A small block of ten to twenty hours a month is usually enough to begin. After two or three months you'll see which tasks you actually hand over and how long they take, and can size the block properly.
Can my virtual secretary be based in another country?
Yes. If you're in the UK or EU, sending personal data to a country without an adequacy decision needs a transfer mechanism such as standard contractual clauses or the UK's international data transfer agreement. VAT on services bought from abroad is usually handled by you under the reverse charge.
Should I share my passwords?
Avoid it. Use delegation for mailbox and calendar and a password manager with shared items you can revoke at any time. That way it's always clear who did what.
