How to Series - Work Schedule

Another article in my 'How to Series'.

I keep a work schedule of every item of work that I get in. I list the date/time, name, description of work, urgent/non urgent, who does the work, (myself or contractor) proofing (I sometimes send work out to a proofreader), time/date complete and comments, time worked, price of job. I keep all this information in an excel spreadsheet and have it set up monthly.
I work for a lot of clients on a weekly basis, so keeping good records of the work helps me to stay organised and know what is going on, it assists with time management, priorising the work and keeping track when I send work out to a contractor. It also gives me the stats at the end of the month to see how many jobs I do on a monthly basis and how much I make on each job that I do. These stats are important to have as you are running a business.
As a client send me in work, i then enter that work on my spreadsheet, giving as much details as is involved, then when the work is complete I finish the entry on the spreadsheet.
I hate doing admin at month end but this is such a help when it comes to doing my invoicing which I do at month end as my clients pay monthly.
If you have any comments on this procedure please share with me, I would love to hear what you do and how you run your VA business.

OIVAC Launches Speaker Interview Series

OIVAC Launches Speaker Interview Series

During the next 30 days, Ms. Lyn Prowse-Bishop of Executive Stress Office Support interviews 20 speakers scheduled to appear at the upcoming Online International Virtual Assistants Convention 2011 (OIVAC - http://oivac.com), Thursday, May 19 thru Saturday, May 19,
2011.

During this 6th annual event, virtual assistants will rev up their businesses and shift them from 1st gear to hyper drive, as they learn innovative marketing, networking, and business management strategies to assist with their business growth and development and
topics that will positively impact client relations and services, and their pocketbooks.

This week's interviewees and topics located at the OIVAC YouTube
Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/theoivac#p/a) include:
* Kathie Thomas - The Importance of Networking.
* Annemarie Cross - Five Powerful Steps to Follow When the Product You are Promoting is You
* Ivana Taylor - How to Get Your Ideal Customer to Choose You
* Dawn Jensen - Social Media Toolkit: Managing Your Clients and Your Business
* Christine Giri - Unleash the Power of Focus
* Cindy Greenway - The Essential Secret Ingredient Clients Want From Their Virtual Assistants

Visit our convention channel today to view these informative videos, and register as a subscriber. Stop by the convention website for complete speaker profiles and seminar details (
http://oivac.com/.

Take advantage of our early bird specials and register for the convention today!

To your success,
Sharon Williams
OIVAC Steering Committee
Alliance for Virtual Businesses

Answer to comment

Awesome post. Do you mind if I ask what your source is for this information?

Hi I would like to answer this question above, all the information you see on the blog is my own, it is my experiences over the 10 years that I have been AMF Typing Services. I have many clients and have many experiences with those clients. I like to share my experiences to assist others especially new Virtual Assistants.My 'How to Series' are what I do, what I go through, to show you how its can be done.
New VAs need to know how things are done, if my experiences help at least one VA every now and again then its worth my letting everyone know.
I welcome all comments on my blog positive or negative, please if you enjoy the blog leave your comment. regards Ali

How to Series

Quoting on clients work.
You need to know roughly how many pages can you type of plain copy typing in 1 hour, you need to know roughly how much transcription you can roughly do in 1 hour.
Clients will say to you, I have a 250 page document for typing, how long will it take you and what will you charge, to quote on this you need to give an estimate, so knowing roughly what you can produce in 1 hour of work will assist you in gaging what you can do.
I know I can type anything from 15 pages to 30 pages per day, but it depends on what the content is, whether there is graphics, flow diagrams, graphs, drawings in that content, these will take longer to produce. I know I can do these quickly but not everyone can, each typist is different but you need to know what you can and cannot do. If it will take you a few hours to do a flow diagram that must factor in your quote and whether you can meet the deadline set.
With transcription there are factors involved that will determine how long you take with transcribing, there could be multiple speakers, background noise, language difficulties if its court transcription, a focus group meeting can take twice as long to transcribe as often a lot of people will talk at once. You should roughly be able to say a 1 hour transcription will take plus/minus 4 to 6 hours to transcribe.
Data entry, you need to see what they require, see how many entries you can do in an hour, know what you can do at all times.
Look at the job you have, work out can you do it in the deadline stipulated. Can you produce a quality job, also remember you will have to spell check/grammar, proof your work and check your layout, all these things are part of the job you need to do. If you need assistance with a quote give me a shout. My advice would be for you to ask for a sample of the work that is required before you quote, this will assist you in quoting and always ask as many questions as you can think of about the task.

Africa VAs

Tavasa - Transcriptionists and Virtual Assistants of South Africa
Website: http://www.tavasa.co.za
Tavasa blog: http://tavasa.blogspot.com/
Entrepreneur Buddy ~ http://www.entrepreneurbuddy.net
African Virtual Assistants Network(Afrivan) ~ http://www.afrivan.org/
Business Without Boundaries ~ http://www.businesswithoutboundaries.net
Be Virtual Wise - http://www.be-virtual-assistant-wise.com/