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Virtual assistant invoice template for Government

this week is about contracts this week is about contracts you need a virtual assistant contract singing really took a toll on my voice having a contract in place is essential to ensure that you are aligned with your client and that you are both protected if anything goes wrong a contract sounds scary and they can feel complicated I want to first and foremost tell you that I use a product called Indie we are Indie is a freelance platform that fortunately for us has contract templates already pre-written from their legal team now the reason I like this is because if you and I tried to copy and paste like maybe you just Googled virtual assistant contract and then you copied and you pasted a bunch of different verbiage altogether it probably wouldn't hold up in any sort of legal scenario and that's because we don't really I'm not a lawyer I'm pretty sure you're not a lawyer and if you are I'm sorry that I just diminished your law degree but safe to say we don't understand the legalese and the legal language that we are copying and pasting from so it is in our best interest to actually use a a template that is already designed for our industry so that is my little pitch on Indie Indie gives you two free contracts to use once you've sent out two free contracts I think it's like 6.75 cents a month it's a very inexpensive and a very good product now how does a virtual assistant contract work essentially virtual assistant contracts are legal documents that detail the working relationship between you and your client the essentials that are included in a contract or should be included in your contract are your services your service section actually details what actions you're going to perform for your client another way I talk about Services often if you've watched my other videos is scope of work it is so important to be able to talk about and put in writing about the types of services that you will be providing as well as the services that you won't be providing it's important that you actually keep this scope of work specific because if it's too vague that can be left open to Too Much interpretation and in turn can leave your clients very unhappy I'll give you an example if you put in your services section or your scope of work that you are let's just say you put accounting that's a very broad term in its own sense accounting is like its own job if you're in your mind you thought accounting men I'm just going to do their expenses like I'm just gonna take their receipts and turn it into an expense report that's very different than for example your client might think accounting means you're going to actually balance and then pay their taxes like you see what I mean there's this huge disconnect between paying a client's taxes or just doing their receipts so you need to be very specific about what types of tasks you're going to be doing and then in kind you want to include what you won't be doing in your scope of work the next thing you'll want to include is your term length term length is the amount of time that your agreement is in effect there's really three main ways I can think of how you'd use this term length number one maybe a client's just hired you for one specific project so I got hired once in my career just to do video editing for a client and that was it so our contract stated my scope of work what kind of stuff I'd be editing and what I was responsible for and then for the term length I only put project length and basically said this contract terminates as soon as I give you the video and you give me my payment we're done and he was very happy with that you can also do things like a fixed term so let's say you have a client who wants to hire you for three months or six months that gives you a fixed term of time or my favorite kind of contract and my preferred kind is indefinite what an indefinite contract means is that it will be in effect until one of you either you as the VA or your client decides to end the agreement within this indefinite Clause you should include general terms about how many days in advance you'll need to warn each other before that cancellation period so I like to put in my contracts I have a 30 day heads up so if I intend to drop a client I have to give them 30 days notice and if a client intends to drop me they have to give me 30 days notice so I find that this is just a nicety to make sure that everyone is covered no one is left scrambling or no one is fired overnight the next thing you'll want to include in your contract is a payment Clause so payments are kind of evidence of Sunbrella term for your rates uh how much you're going to get paid how often you're going to get paid how soon you will be paid after in each invoice you send and the methods in which you receive payment all these are going to go under your payment clause and they're here really to protect you because um it's very hard for a client to pay you if they're a little uncertain about how exactly they pay you or when you expect to get paid so first and foremost in this section you're going to include your rates so um hopefully you've had a conversation with your client about if you're an hourly rate if you're a monthly flat fee rate but either way you're going to include how much money you're owed for your services in this clause and then you're going to include how often you get paid this since you the VA are a business owner is totally up to you you can get paid twice a month if you want like on a bi-weekly I mean buy a monthly schedule um personally I am paid once a month that's just my preferred method so that's how I charge my clients last thing I'll say about payments you should have something in your contract about um what to do if late fees are incurred or uh there's a delayed um delayed payment or maybe your your clients um check or credit card I Don't Know Jack feels so old school nowadays maybe their payments bounce so there should be something in your contract as well about what to do if your client is late in paying you um this is typically like if it's you know five days late they incur a 75 dollar surcharge or maybe a hundred dollar surcharge now there are other things that Indy includes in this contract that I've not touched upon it's totally in-depth and the nice thing about Indy is that there are sections that they highlight so you can type in your specifics as you go through the contract it could not be easier to make a contract that is specific to you and your business using Indie so major props to them but a few other things that they include that I want to just point out to you is equipment or expenses so there's a clause in there that lays out who's responsible for paying fees for anything that you need to do to finish the job I'll leave you with this if you're still on the fence about using a contract I want you just to think about your business you're a professional VA you're a business owner and you need to protect yourself and part of that protection means laying out your scope of work what you will and you what you won't do and it means protecting your business your interests and also your clients interest too if you happen to run into a potential client who puts their foot down and refuses to sign a contract or tells you that one is not needed that is a major red flag having someone he refused to sign means that I'm probably working with somebody who doesn't respect my boundaries or respect me as a business owner and so I find that contracts are also a good way for weeding out bad fits ill-fitting clients or maybe clients who don't have your best interest in heart so hopefully this whole video gives you a little peace of mind about contracts because they are extremely helpful they give Clarity to you they give Clarity to your client and and you'll look professional doing it the whole time hopefully you guys found this video helpful contracts aren't my jam so if you guys have any questions about how you can best utilize contracts for your business don't hesitate to reach out I am always here to help thank you guys for watching this week's video and I will catch you on the next one [Music] thank you [Music] [Music]