FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Whether you have a virtual staff with us or still looking to have one, we want to make it easy for you to find answers.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Whether you have a virtual staff with us or still looking to have one, we want to make it easy for you to find answers.
Recruiting & Setting Up Staff
- Hiring
- Management
- Staff Schedule
Virtual assistants can do a range of tasks. You may visit the links below for more on what VAs can do for you within the main industries we serve.
- Financial Planning
- Mortgage Broking
- Bookkeeping & Accounting
- General Administration and Customer Service
If you don’t see your industry on the list, our bespoke recruitment services can help you connect to the right VA for your business. For assistance, send your queries to service@vaplatinum.com.au.
Pro Tip: Hire for the role – not the task. For example, you can have an Executive Assistant who takes care of the day-to-day admin, calendar tasks, and bookings; or a digital marketing VA who takes care of your SEO, content, and video editing.
We follow a Gold Standard for recruitment that ensures we hire people with the same purpose, who have integrity, and who believe in the value of a productive work environment and customer service.
We look for team players who are kind and optimistic, who express their opinions succinctly for the good of the organisation without sacrificing empathy, and who demonstrate an explicit learning curve, or, at the very least, possess self-awareness and curiosity that pushes them to learn.
Our recruitment prioritises hiring prospective staff via staff referrals. This way, the candidates have already been screened by their peers and are far likely to fit into VAP culture. A willingness to work with us long-term is also important.
Watch the video for more on our recruitment process:
General Mortgage Broking/Financial Planning – 3 weeks to source and endorse
Specialised – 1 to 2 months to source and endorse
Yes. English is one of the lingua francas used in the Philippines along with Tagalog/Filipino, the country’s national language, and one of the first things we assess in our 6-step recruitment process. The English subject is in school curriculums from Elementary to University.
Your staff is hired to be fully dedicated to your business. The only exception is when two businesses have agreed to share a resource and have approached us with this prior arrangement.
We set NO minimum number of staff you can hire.
Over 95% of our VAs work from our office. The only exception is during very rare circumstances, such as COVID-19, where most staff are working either from their homes or from our backup office location.
We manage your staff together. The staff are hired specifically for your business and are effectively your staff. You manage the work your staff does for you. Our role at VA Platinum is to create a work environment and culture where your staff can thrive. We manage the day-to-day HR, such as paying salaries, sick leave, and annual leave. Our Business Development Manager do coaching calls with you and your staff to ensure everyone’s needs are met and challenges have a clear action plan.
Role-specific training is best performed by you as you are the expert in your business. To help, we offer a range of services to support training and development. We deliver onboarding training and provide a comprehensive knowledge base with 700+ systems, templates, and a glossary of terms.
Your team members will be added to knowledge groups for their specific role and can be seated in an area with other staff using the same software and performing similar tasks. This gives them access to other experienced staff and promotes knowledge-sharing.
We can also organise for your team member to shadow other experienced staff for as many hours as you like. Video calls and video sharing come in handy for this purpose for staff working from home during the pandemic. We also provide optional coaching for you and your staff.
If an employee resigns, we will work closely with you to select a new staff member and support you during the transition. We make the transition easy before any resignation happens by training staff to document processes and systems throughout their time in VAP. These videos and documents function to help new staff be brought up to speed with little interruption to your business in the event of a resignation.
We assign your staff an Australian phone number for you to ring, as well as emails, and video conferencing tools like Teams, Google Hangouts, Skype, and Zoom to facilitate smooth communication.
Your staff has an assigned Team Leader (also called Success Manager or SM). The Team Leader is your number one point of contact regarding any issues or concerns. Watch the video below for a better understanding of how our Team Leaders can help you with staff management.
Like your staff in Australia, your VA/s are entitled to sick leaves. We help you manage their sick leave allocation and provide health insurance to help keep them healthy and productive.
We require all staff to notify us when they are sick and can’t make it to work. The Team Leader/Success Manager assigned to your staff will notify you immediately.
The standard working shift is 6 AM to 3 PM Philippine time. Your VA does not work during Australian non-working holidays and work during regular PH holidays.
Please refer to FAQs under Staff Entitlements > Overtime for details on overtime pay and working during AU holidays.
You may also let your staff start earlier than the standard 6 – 3 shift. Please refer to FAQs under Pricing & Payments > VA Cost for more on this topic.
Staff Entitlements
- Overtime
- Benefits & Bonuses
All full-time staff are only required to complete 8hrs of work each day (inclusive of 7.5 productive hours + 30 mins paid break) following the PH labor requirement. Any excess hours are subject to an overtime pay which needs client’s approval.
If approved for the overtime pay, staff gets paid their regular hourly rate plus 25% premium on regular workdays, otherwise, premium is at 30% if overtime is rendered during PH legal holidays or during staff’s scheduled rest day.
Sample computation for staff at regular salary of PH₱25,000/month or AUD$657.89 at exchange rate of PH₱38 per AUD$1.
Daily Rate = (Base Salary x 12 months) / 261 work days in a year
$30.25 = ($657.89 x 12) / 261
Regular work days for 2 hours overtime:
Overtime Pay = [(Daily Rate / 8hrs) x Overtime Hours] + 25% Premium
$8.81 = [($30.25 / 8) x 2] + 25%
Legal PH holidays/rest day overtime for 2 hours:
Overtime Pay = [(Daily Rate / 7.5hrs) x Overtime Hours] + 30% Premium
$9.83 = [($30.25 / 8) x 2] + 30%
There is no additional cost for staff to work during regular PH holidays as we’ve incorporated that in your monthly cost. However, if you require your staff to work during AU holidays, staff will be paid a 100% premium of their daily rate.
Daily Rate = (Base Salary x 12 months) / 261 work days in a year
$30.25 = ($657.89 x 12) / 261
Using this sample computation, you will be paying an additional $30.25 which will be reflected as a separate line item on the invoice.
Please take note that the above computation is based on the regular staff salary of PH₱25,000/month or AUD$657.89 at an exchange rate of PH₱38 per AUD$1.
Absolutely. We don’t mark up on gifts or any bonuses to staff. These will be charged at cost based on the exchange rate upon invoice generation date and will reflect as a separate line item on the invoice.
VAP can arrange to purchase the gift/s on your behalf or we may credit a cash bonus to be credited to staff’s payroll directly. Any additional charges will be added to your next invoice accordingly.
Standard benefits include:
• Dayshift with weekends off
• Health insurance on day 1 + 3 dependents
• 2-week paid Christmas break
• Paid annual leaves (no expiry for accrued VLs, subject to eligibility)
• Full-time with government benefits
Visit our VA careers page for more on staff perks.
Pricing & Payments
- Billing
- Payment Methods
- Contract
Our invoice cycle falls due towards the end of the month to pay for the following month’s service cost in advance. We set our invoice cycles like this because we need to pay for staff wages, office rent, overheads, etc. in advance by the start of the following month.
Note:
The invoices are not fully one month in advance because 35% of the expenses need to be paid by us one month in advance such as rent, computers, private health insurance, food, etc.
We require our clients to pay on time for the following reasons:
- To ensure VAs are still duly compensated in case a client decides to abruptly end their partnership with us.
- To ensure the exchange rate doesn’t fluctuate too far from when we invoice clients. This could work for or against us, but we prefer the risk is removed by clients paying on time.
Invoices are sent on the 15th of each month and are due by the 25th. The first invoice is usually sent a week from when the VA starts.
Yes,you will receive automated reminders from Xero on the following days:
- 2 days before the invoice due date
- On the 2nd day the invoice is overdue
If your invoice is still unpaid on the
- 5th overdue day – You will be advised that your service may be ceased.
- 1st working day of the following month – If the invoice remains to be unpaid, you will receive a
- Cessation of Services Notice and your staff member/s may be on forced leave starting the next
business day until the payment is received. - The 2nd – 3rd working day of the following month – You will receive a notification that your
staff will no longer work for you.
The main reason is business efficiency.
We batch both the creation of invoices and then the checking of invoice payments shortly after. We teach our team that some business processes must remain flexible, whilst others need to be fixed to avoid confusion and uncertainty, as well as keep all operations staff focused on serving our client-facing staff and clients. Billing is an item that can be controlled and made hyper-efficient if we keep all clients on the same billing cycle. This way the finance team can divert their energy to servicing the staff at all other times.
In the past, we did allow a few clients to move their due date as a trial, and those clients promised to pay by their new due date (which was the 7th of the next month), but for various reasons such as forgetting, bookkeepers, accountants, etc., meant that those invoices were further delayed. This caused cash flow issues and more importantly, time and energy by the finance team which adds to the overall cost of the business and a distraction away from serving the staff.
When we allowed the trial to occur with a few clients, more clients found out and then started asking why they can’t have their billing dates delayed which goes against our item #1 and #2 above.
A good portion of our own invoices is due shortly after the fixed due date of 25th such as office supplies like coffee and water, cooked breakfasts via our 4 staff, office rent, etc. We are happy to accommodate one-off late payments for clients that have cash flow issues in a given month for a few months as needed.
No. We batch process all invoices automatically so that it is the most efficient use of our time and the lowest cost for clients. The more efficient we are, the lower the cost to you.
If you aren’t able to budget for the invoices to be paid by the 25th and if your cashflow only allows for the payment to be made by the 28th, then you’ll need to be aware that our system will auto-generate a reminder on the 27th.
We do not charge for late payments. If an invoice remains unpaid until the 1st working day of the following month, you will receive a Cessation of Services Notice to inform you that your staff will cease working and will be available for hire by new or existing clients.
This means you will need to start again with a new and untrained VA/team unless we hear back from you within 24 hours. This is to ensure that your VA/s are treated as though they are valued team members in your physical office whom you wouldn’t think to not pay on time.
We encourage you to speak to us about your circumstances so we can work on a solution together.
To assist in streamlining the payment of your monthly invoice, we have a Direct Debit facility available. This will help save you more time with one less job to do each month.
Setting up this facility is easy:
- To set up direct debit from a bank account, please fill in the form via this link to submit your bank details.
- To set up direct debit from your debit/credit card, please respond to this email and let us know that this is your preference, so we can activate the direct debit enrolment button on your next invoice.
Note:
Our Credit Card option also includes Amex for those interested.
A Credit Card fee of 1.79% is charged on top of the invoiced amount.
No, we do not believe in locking you into a contract. Think of working with VA Platinum as an ongoing, evolving partnership. Our mission is to become an integral component of your growth plans. We simply have a one-month notice period to terminate our services – just as you would for any staff hires.
- If you have 5+ staff, we would require a six-week notice
Client Data
- Data Security & Privacy
Yes. Client data protection is a priority for us and we have developed a privacy policy built around that commitment. Read the full policy here.
While data security threats are something every company should be on the lookout for, the reason why many Australian businesses use our services is that our data security measures are far more robust than any Australian business would implement. Check out the table below.
Security Measures Comparison
* For a typical Australian business
We have dedicated and proven security measures to safeguard client data. This includes the use of a password protection tool, staff monitoring software, office security, privacy and data breach policies, and more.
See how our office security works in this video:
In the exceptional circumstance that staff must work from home or in our backup office, learn about our enhanced security procedures.
We have a strict policy that staff and management follow in the event of an actual or suspected data breach. Read the full policy here.