How Much to Charge for Virtual Assistant Services: Hourly Rate, Packages and Per-Task Prices

How much should I charge for virtual assistant services? The formula

Charge the revenue you need divided by the hours you can bill. Hourly rate = (take-home goal / (1 - tax reserve) + yearly business expenses) / (billable hours a week x working weeks).

$48,000 / 0.75 = $64,000 before tax, plus $8,000 of expenses is $72,000.00. Twenty-five billable hours a week for 48 weeks is 1,200 hours, so the rate is $60.00 an hour.

The employee-wage trap. The "naive rate" line divides the same $48,000 by 2,080 salaried hours: $23.08. An office wage is not a freelance rate. Bill $23.08 for all 1,200 hours and revenue is $27,696. Take off $8,000 of expenses and the 25% reserve and $14,772 is left, $33,228 short of the goal. The freelance hourly rate calculator guide covers that shortfall in depth.

I build pricing maths and I am not a virtual assistant. Every input here is a placeholder for your own, and no market rate appears on this page.

Virtual assistant rates per hour: calculator for your own numbers

Type your take-home goal, yearly expenses, tax reserve and billable hours. "Hourly rate to charge" is the number every package and task price below multiplies.

Billable hours are hours a client pays for. Finding clients, invoicing and learning a new client's tools are not, which is why the example uses 25 hours a week and not 40.

The 25% tax reserve is an assumption, not a recommendation. The IRS states: "The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%." That is 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare (IRS: Self-employment tax); income tax comes on top. It also says individuals generally have to make estimated tax payments if they expect to owe $1,000 or more, across four payment periods a year (IRS: Estimated taxes). Confirm your own percentage with a tax professional.

To keep the rate in a file, the freelance rate and quote calculator runs the same sum in Excel or Google Sheets.

Virtual assistant pricing packages: 10, 20 and 40 hours a month

Package price = package hours x hourly rate. At $60.00 an hour, 10 hours is $600 a month, 20 hours is $1,200 and 40 hours is $2,400.

Then check capacity. Monthly billable hours = billable hours a week x working weeks / 12. In the example, 25 x 48 / 12 = 100, and any mix that adds up to it fills the month:

Every mix bills $6,000, one twelfth of the $72,000.00 the year needs. What changes is exposure and overhead: in mix B, one client leaving removes 40% of revenue. In mix C it removes 10%, but ten clients at an assumed 1 unbilled hour each for invoices and check-ins is 10 hours a month on top. An eleventh 10-hour client means 110 hours in a 100-hour month.

Unused hours. Decide before the first invoice whether unused package hours expire at month end or roll over for one month, and write it into the agreement. The consulting fee guide works through use-it-or-lose-it against rollover.

Should a bigger virtual assistant package get a discount? What 5% and 10% off cost

A package discount lowers the hourly rate by the same percentage, so price it before offering it. Whether to discount is your policy; I found no primary source for a standard discount.

At 10% off, the 40-hour package pays $54.00 an hour; a whole year at that rate leaves $42,600, $5,400 under the goal. In practice only some hours are discounted. In mix A, one 40-hour client at 10% off costs $240 a month, $2,880 a year. To offer it and still reach the goal, raise the list rate: $6,000 / (40 x 0.90 + 60) = $62.50 an hour. The discounted 40-hour package is then $2,250 and the 10-hour package $625.

Virtual assistant price list: per-task prices from your own minutes

Task price = minutes the task takes / 60 x hourly rate. At $60.00 an hour each minute is $1.00, so the price list below is the minutes column in dollars.

Every per-task price needs a scope line. For travel booking: one traveller, one round trip, flights and one hotel, one change after booking. A second change is a second task. Without it, a trip that takes 180 minutes and not 120 turns the $120 price into $40.00 an hour.

A daily task is a package in disguise. Inbox triage at 30 minutes each weekday is 30 x 5 x 52 / 12 = 10.83 hours a month, $650: more than the 10-hour package. If you also sell social posting, the social media management pricing guide builds a per-post price the same way.

Billing increments: 6-minute vs 15-minute blocks on one day of small tasks

Minutes billed = each time entry rounded up to the block size.

Rounding each task up to 15 minutes bills 150 minutes for 78 minutes of work. Rounding the day's total bills 90.

Inside a package the effect runs the other way. With 15-minute blocks per task and a day like this one, a 10-hour package is used up after 312 minutes of work, 5.2 hours. The increment is a policy: the agreement should state the block size and whether rounding applies to each task or to the day.

Onboarding fee and minimum monthly commitment

Onboarding fee = onboarding hours x hourly rate, billed in the first month. With an assumed 5 hours (1 for a kick-off call, 1.5 for access, logins and shared folders, 2.5 for writing down the client's procedures), the fee is $300. The first month of a 20-hour package is then $1,500.

Leave onboarding unbilled and it comes out of the rate. A client who stays 3 months on the 10-hour package pays $1,800 for 35 hours: $51.43 an hour.

A minimum works the same way, because each client carries the assumed 1 unbilled admin hour a month. A client who buys 4 hours pays $240 for 5 hours of your time, $48.00 an hour. The 10-hour package pays $54.55 per hour spent and the 40-hour package $58.54. Where to set the minimum is your call; state it as a number.

General admin vs specialised work: two ways to set a higher rate

Either rebuild the rate from a higher income goal, or add a percentage premium to the specialised hours. No market figure for bookkeeping support or tech set-up is given here.

• A different income goal. Change the take-home goal from $48,000 to $60,000 in the calculator and the rate becomes $73.33.
• A percentage premium. An assumed 25% on $60.00 is $75.00. Billed for all 1,200 hours, that rate would leave $61,500 of take-home.

A 20-hour package with 8 specialised hours is 12 x $60.00 + 8 x $75.00 = $1,320, a blended $66.00 an hour.

Subcontracting hours to another VA: the margin you keep

Margin on a subcontracted hour = (your price - what you pay) / your price. Assume you pass 20 hours a month to another VA at $35 an hour (an example cost, not a market rate) and bill them at $60.00.

Revenue is $1,200, the subcontractor is paid $700 and $500 stays with you: $25 an hour, a 41.67% margin. The same $25 measured against cost is a 71.43% markup; the markup vs margin calculator guide explains why the two percentages differ.

Checking the work at an assumed 2 of your own hours a month uses $120 of billable capacity, which leaves $380, a 31.67% margin.

Status matters whoever does the hours. The IRS general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the person paying "has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done" (IRS: Independent contractor defined). Ask a tax professional how your arrangements, with clients and with subcontractors, are classified.

How much to charge as a beginner virtual assistant: 10 billable hours a week

Use the same formula with smaller inputs. With a $13,500 goal, $1,200 of expenses, a 25% reserve and 10 billable hours a week for 48 weeks, the rate is $40.00:

That is 40 billable hours a month. One 20-hour package at $800 and two 10-hour packages at $400 fill it and bill $1,600.

Is it worth it as a side business? If 10 billable hours need an assumed 3 unbilled hours of finding clients and invoicing, the week is 13 hours and the year 624. The $13,500 goal is then $21.63 for each hour you give it, and only if every billable hour sells in all 48 weeks. It is a sum, not an income forecast.

The IRS lists being in business for yourself in a "part-time business" as self-employment and says you have to file an income tax return if your net earnings from self-employment were $400 or more (IRS: Self-employed individuals tax center). Check your own position with a tax professional.

Virtual assistant rate formulas for Excel and Google Sheets, and what goes in your price sheet

Five formulas reproduce the rate, a package, a task price, a billing increment and the subcontracting margin. Inputs go in column B, with percentages typed as percentages.

Common mistakes: charging an office wage as a rate; selling more package hours than the month holds; discounting with no change to the list rate; task prices with no scope line; no stated billing increment; free onboarding.

What to put in your price sheet: the five rate inputs; monthly billable hours; each package's hours, price and discount; each task's minutes and scope line; the billing increment; onboarding hours; the minimum commitment; the unused-hours choice; subcontractor cost.

Time-tracking software logs hours for a subscription; a spreadsheet keeps the assumptions behind the rate in a file you own. The freelance pricing template is $14.99 one-time for Excel and Google Sheets. Step 1 returns the break-even hourly rate from your take-home goal, billable hours, working weeks, expenses and tax set-aside, then a recommended rate on a profit margin you set. Step 2 quotes a project from estimated hours x that rate, plus a materials or software cost and a rush or complexity markup. It has no retainer or package table, no per-task list and no time log: a package is its hourly rate x the package hours, and a task goes in as project hours. It is a pricing sheet, not a branded quote document.

Step-by-step: How Much to Charge for Virtual Assistant Services: Hourly Rate, Packages and Per-Task Prices

1. Work out the hourly rate. Divide your take-home goal by (1 - tax reserve), add yearly expenses, and divide by billable hours a year. The example gives $60.00.
2. Find your monthly billable hours. Billable hours a week x working weeks / 12. In the example, 25 x 48 / 12 = 100 hours a month.
3. Price the packages. Package hours x rate: 10, 20 and 40 hours are $600, $1,200 and $2,400. Packages sold must fit in 100 hours.
4. Price any discount. Discounted price / package hours is the real rate. 10% off 40 hours is $2,160, or $54.00 an hour.
5. Build the per-task list. Time each recurring task, then minutes / 60 x rate. A 120-minute travel booking is $120. Add a scope line to every task.
6. Write the terms as numbers. State the billing increment, the onboarding fee (5 hours is $300), the minimum monthly commitment and what happens to unused hours.

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