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What Can a Virtual Assistant Do? 25 Tasks to Delegate Today
You already know you need help. The real problem is figuring out what to actually give someone. Most founders stall here. They spend more time thinking about what to delegate than it would have taken to just do the task. This article fixes that.
What can a virtual assistant do? Quite a bit. But the list only matters if it connects to your actual day. Below are 25 specific tasks organized into five categories. By the end, you'll know exactly what to hand off in week one.
The 25 Tasks a VA Can Handle
Admin
1. Inbox management. Your VA monitors your inbox, labels and sorts incoming messages, drafts replies for your approval, handles anything routine without you, and flags only what actually needs your attention. Most founders running their own inbox spend 1.5–2 hours daily on this. It's almost entirely delegatable.
2. Calendar management. Booking meetings, blocking focus time, rescheduling conflicts, sending confirmations. Your VA becomes the gatekeeper so you stop losing 20-minute chunks to back-and-forth scheduling.
3. Travel booking. Flights, hotels, ground transport, itinerary docs. Low-judgment, high-friction tasks that eat time when you're the one doing them.
4. Expense reporting. Collecting receipts, categorizing spend, updating whatever finance tool you use. Tedious but important. A VA handles it cleaner than you do because they're not rushing through it at 11pm.
5. Data entry. Updating spreadsheets, logging contact information, maintaining records. Anything requiring attention to detail but not decision-making.
CRM and Sales Support
6. Pipeline updates in GHL. Moving leads through stages, logging call outcomes, keeping your pipeline current so you're not guessing where deals stand.
7. Call note logging. Your VA listens to call recordings or reviews notes from George, extracts key points, and logs them into GHL. No more lost context between touchpoints.
8. Follow-up sequences. Sending follow-up messages on schedule, flagging leads who've gone quiet, making sure no one falls through the cracks. This is one of the highest-ROI tasks you can hand off.
9. Prospect list building. Pulling contacts from Apollo or LinkedIn, formatting into a usable spreadsheet, checking for duplicates. Feeds the outbound machine without requiring your time to build it.
10. Re-engaging cold leads. Identifying leads who haven't responded in 30+ days, drafting re-engagement messages for your approval, running outreach on a defined schedule.
Client Success
11. Onboarding emails. Sending welcome sequences, sharing onboarding docs, booking kickoff calls. A VA ensures every new client gets the same structured experience without you managing it manually each time.
12. Check-in messages. Weekly or biweekly touchpoints with active clients. Relationship maintenance that prevents churn without requiring your direct involvement on every account.
13. NPS surveys. Sending satisfaction surveys, collecting responses, flagging anything below a threshold score so you can intervene before a client decides to leave.
14. Churn flags. Monitoring for warning signs — missed check-ins, support complaints, billing issues — and surfacing them before they become lost clients.
15. Review requests. Asking happy clients for Google or social reviews at the right moment in the relationship. Most founders skip this. A VA makes it systematic.
Operations
16. Weekly reporting. Pulling numbers from your tools, formatting into a summary, sending to you every Monday. You get visibility without spending time on the compilation.
17. SOP documentation. Your VA watches you do a task, writes up the process, and creates a reusable guide. This is how you stop being the only person who knows how things work.
18. Vendor communication. Coordinating with contractors, suppliers, and service providers. Tracking deliverables, following up on open items, keeping you out of the middle.
19. Project tracking. Updating task lists in Notion or Asana, chasing down status updates from team members, keeping project timelines current.
20. Invoicing. Generating invoices, sending payment reminders, tracking which clients are overdue. Keeps cash flow visible without you monitoring it daily.
Marketing Support
21. Social media scheduling. Your VA formats content you've approved and schedules posts across platforms. You stay in control of what goes out while offloading the mechanical work.
22. Content analytics. Pulling weekly performance data from Instagram, LinkedIn, or Meta Ads and formatting it into a simple summary. You make decisions; they pull the numbers.
23. Competitor research. Monitoring what competitors are posting, running, or changing. A VA compiles a weekly summary so you stay informed without spending time on surveillance.
24. Email list building. Finding and formatting contacts for campaigns, checking against suppression lists, keeping your list healthy.
25. Newsletter formatting. Taking your draft content and formatting it in your email tool of choice, checking links, scheduling sends. The last 30 minutes before a send that always seems to eat your evening.
For a deeper breakdown of role types and specializations, see the roles we source at Jarvis and browse how other founders are using VAs.
What a VA Cannot Do
This matters as much as the list above.
A VA cannot set strategy. They cannot make judgment calls on pricing, offers, or creative direction. They cannot run client-facing sales calls. They cannot decide which leads are worth pursuing or what your business should do next quarter.
VAs execute. You decide. The moment you expect a VA to make strategic decisions, you've misaligned the relationship and set them up to fail. Keep the high-judgment work. Hand off the repeatable work. That line is where delegation works.
Want a deeper breakdown of the role? Read what a virtual assistant actually does.
How to Choose Your First 3 Tasks
Here's the simplest framework for figuring out where to start.
Write down everything you did yesterday. Every task. Then mark anything that fits either of these criteria: (1) you did it more than once, or (2) it's worth less than $50/hr of your time to do it. Every task with a mark is a delegation candidate.
Most founders end up with the same starter pack: inbox management, CRM updates, and scheduling. Those three tasks alone add up to 3–4 hours a day for most $10K–$100K/month operators.
If you're not sure whether you're ready to hire, read the signals that tell you it's time. The short version: if you're doing tasks that cost less than your hourly rate, you're leaving money on the floor.
Not sure where to start? Download the Jarvis Delegation Checklist — a one-page doc that helps you identify your first 3 tasks, define success metrics, and set up a simple daily report system. It takes 15 minutes to complete and gives you a clear brief to hand your VA on day one.
The Tasks That Give the Most Time Back
Some tasks are worth more than others to delegate — not because they're harder, but because of how much daily time they consume.
Inbox management: 1.5–2 hours/day. This is the biggest single time drain for most founders. It's also almost entirely automatable through a trained VA with the right filtering system.
Lead follow-up: 1 hour/day. Chasing down leads who went quiet, sending the third and fourth touch that closes deals. Founders who do this themselves are inconsistent. A VA is relentless.
CRM updates: 45 minutes/day. Keeping GHL current takes under an hour when someone is dedicated to it. When it's you, it never gets done because something more urgent always comes up.
Scheduling: 30 minutes/day. Every back-and-forth email to find a meeting time is 8–12 minutes. Multiply that by 4–6 scheduling conversations a day and you're spending half an hour on nothing.
Combined, those four functions alone account to 4+ hours daily — or about 20 hours a week — of tasks that don't require your brain.
How Fast Can a VA Get Up to Speed
A standard VA hire takes 3–4 weeks to reach confident independent operation. Week 1 is orientation and shadowing. Week 2 is supervised execution. Weeks 3–4 are independent operation with daily check-ins.
A Jarvis pre-trained VA cuts that timeline to 1–2 weeks. They arrive already trained on GHL, Gmail, Notion, and Calendly. You're not spending week 1 explaining what a pipeline is or how to use filters in Gmail. They know. You just configure the specifics of your setup.
A Real Example
James runs a B2B agency doing $120K/month. He was spending 25 hours a week on inbox management, CRM updates, and scheduling. Not 25 hours on strategy, business development, or client work. On admin.
He hired a Jarvis VA in week one of Q1. Within 10 days, his VA owned all three functions. James used the reclaimed 25 hours to focus on sales. He closed 3 new retainers in month 1 worth $18K/month in additional recurring revenue.
The VA cost him $1,600/month. The retainers paid $18,000/month. You can do that math yourself.
What's Stopping You
Most founders say the same thing: "I don't have time to train someone right now."
That's the trap. You don't have time because you're doing everything yourself. The way out of the loop requires going through it once. You spend 2–3 weeks getting a VA up to speed, and then you have 20 hours back every week for the rest of the year.
The founders who say they don't have time to train a VA are the same ones still doing their own inbox 18 months from now. Don't be that person.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can a virtual assistant do for a small business?
For most small businesses, a VA handles inbox management, CRM updates, scheduling, client communication, and basic operations. These four to six functions typically account for 15–25 hours of the owner's week that don't require the owner's judgment.
Can a virtual assistant handle customer service?
Yes. A VA can manage inbound messages, respond to FAQs, escalate complex issues, and handle follow-up. You set the templates and guidelines; they execute consistently. This works well for ecommerce, service businesses, and agencies with high message volume.
What tasks should I not delegate to a VA?
Sales strategy, pricing decisions, creative direction, and any judgment call that requires full business context. Also don't delegate tasks you haven't documented. If you can't explain the process clearly, a VA can't execute it reliably.
How many hours does a virtual assistant typically work?
VAs are typically hired part-time (20 hrs/week) or full-time (40 hrs/week). Part-time works when you have a defined and limited task set. Full-time works when you're genuinely overwhelmed and need real capacity added.
Can a virtual assistant manage my social media?
A VA can handle scheduling, formatting, pulling analytics, and basic community management. They shouldn't be creating strategy or deciding what content to make. That stays with you.
What tools should a VA know how to use?
At minimum: Gmail or Outlook, a calendar tool, and whatever CRM you use. For most businesses that means GHL, Notion, and Calendly. A pre-trained VA through Jarvis arrives already proficient in all four.
Stop Doing the $20/hr Work Yourself
You know what to hand off now. The next step is getting the right person to hand it to — fast.