Virtual Assistant Contract

Define your scope of works

As a Virtual Assistant, you provide invaluable services to your clients. You might take on one or multiple on-going tasks for your clients to assist in streamlining their processes as well.

Regardless of the scope of work, it’s a great idea to have a comprehensive, legally drafted Virtual Assistant Contract in place to ensure the scope of work is well-defined and so your client is clear on what is included and what is not.

Don’t leave your business’s legal protection to chance. Contact us to receive reliable legal guidance that’s specifically tailored to business.

Limit your liability

Most importantly, it’s crucial that your client knows exactly what you’re not responsible for and limiting your liability as much as legally allowed if there are any issues in as many circumstances as we can do (as is allowed under Law).

By having Terms and Conditions for your Virtual Assistant business in place, you ensure you protect the interests of your business and have everyone on the same page in terms of your services and your client’s rights and obligations.

You want to set things up right from the start – our team will help with that.

What are some key things to consider in your Virtual Assistant Contract?

This article explores the key areas that are essential to include in your Virtual Assistant Contract.

Defining your services as a Virtual Assistant

It’s vital your Virtual Assistant Terms and Conditions clearly state what your services involve, to ensure your clients are clear on what you will provide to them.

Your Terms and Conditions should cover:

• The services you will provide on an hourly or daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
• How many hours you will be able to work for this client and any minimum or maximum set of hours you wish to allocate to this client.
• The scope of work – will you be engaged for one task or a range of on-going tasks?

Establishing general obligations of your clients

Your Virtual Assistant Contract should specify that your clients are required to:

• Provide you with any information and documents you require in order to carry out your services and respond to communications from you and your employees (if any) in a timely manner; and
• Work with you in a professional and friendly manner.

Payment terms

The payment terms should be expressly set out in the Terms to ensure everyone is on the same page.

How do you expect to be paid? Weekly, monthly, in arrears? This should be considered and included in the Terms.

Confidentiality

As a Virtual Assistant you will be privy to a substantial amount of confidential information about your client’s business and their clients.

So, in order to provide your clients with confidence that you will handle their confidential information responsibly, you should include confidentiality provisions in your Terms that specify that you agree to keep any information about your client’s business and their clients strictly confidential, not disclose the confidential information to any third party, and will not use the confidential information, other than to fulfill your services.

Your Contract should also specify that you agree to use reasonable measures to ensure that the confidential information is kept in a secure location and password protected, where possible.

Termination

If you or your client wish to terminate your services, there should be a termination clause that outlines the termination notice period required and a list of circumstances which allow a party to terminate immediately.

For example, if a client fails to pay your fees or engages in serious misconduct, it would be advisable to terminate their services with immediate effect.

It’s also worth including in your Terms that upon termination, all confidential information, intellectual property and any other property of your client’s business is to be returned to your client within a reasonable time.

Keep in mind that even if your services are terminated you are still required to maintain its obligation of confidentiality for the period of time stated in the Terms and any other obligations that may survive termination.

Relationship of the parties

The Terms should state that neither party has any power, right or authority to bind the other, or to assume or create any obligation or responsibility, express or implied, on behalf of the other or in the other’s name.

It should also be noted that the parties are independent contracting parties, and nothing in the Terms will make any party the employee, partner, agent, legal representative, trust or joint venturer of the other for any purpose whatsoever, nor does it grant either party any authority to assume or to create any obligation on behalf of or in the name of the other.

Exclusivity or Not

You should specify in your Terms that you provide your services on a non-exclusive basis if this is the case. Just so it’s abundantly clear. It needs to be really clear whether or not you can act for other clients in the same industry, just to avoid any disputes.

It’s the nature of your Virtual Assistant’s business that you would service multiple clients and shouldn’t be impeded in your ability to do so.

If you happen to serve clients in the same industry, you can provide your clients with comfort that you will always abide by the confidentiality provisions in your Terms and will never disclose any confidential information of a client to another.

Indemnity

It’s highly advisable to include an indemnity clause in your Virtual Assistant Contract, which states that your client agrees to compensate your business for any damage or loss your business suffers which is caused by your client’s breach of the Terms.

This will ensure that your business is compensated in the event that your client causes damage to your business and should be included as an extra protection.

Limiting Liability

You should include a limiting liability clause that limits your liability to the highest degree possible and includes capping any amount that may be claimed by your client against your business to the amount that was paid for your services.

Non-disparagement

Throughout your time trading as a Virtual Assistant, you’ll no doubt receive positive feedback from clients, but from time to time you may come across a difficult client who decides to turn to social media or Google reviews instead of raising a particular issue with you directly and giving you an opportunity to address it.

Including non-disparagement provisions in your Virtual Assistant Contract is advisable and means your clients agree not to make public or private disparaging statements about your business or your services, whether online or by any other means, and instead will first attempt to resolve an issue with you.

Key takeaways

As a Virtual Assistant you add immense value to your client’s businesses by streamlining various processes of their businesses and saving them a great deal of time to focus on their clients and customers.

By having Terms and Conditions for your Virtual Assistant business in place, you ensure you protect the interests of your business and have everyone on the same page in terms of your services your client’s rights and obligations.

Remember, you can’t enforce any rights you don’t have, having things really clear in black and white with no ambiguity means that you’re way less likely to get into disputes with your clients – which really should be avoided at all costs, given it takes a lot of time to gain their trust and the relationship is very valuable long term.

You want to set things up right from the start, and it looks so much more professional having comprehensive terms which set everything out – you appear to be in a different league to those that may just have a 1-page document that doesn’t really do much to protect anyone’s legal rights.

The more professional you look, the more likely you are to get the work. So even if you think of it from that perspective, it’s a “no-brainer” right?

Our fee for drafting Virtual Assistant Contracts starts from $1,400 + GST, which includes calls with our Commercial Lawyers to discuss the document and make sure it’s tailored to your business.