Officeskills.org has compiled a list of virtual assistant resources that includes links to virtual assistant associations, virtual assistant training and education resources, VA books and Ebooks, where to get VA certification, where to find commonly used virtual assistant tools such as free office software and free online file sharing.

Virtual Assistant Associations

  • International Virtual Assistant Association – IVAA is a US based non-profit organization dedicated to the professional education and development of members of the Virtual Assistance profession, and to educating the public on the role and function of the Virtual Assistant.
  • International Virtual Assistant Association – IAVA is a UK based International Association of Virtual Assistants supporting UK Virtual Assistants.
  • Canadian Association of Virtual Assistants – CAVA provides a venue for VAs to network, share knowledge and skills, plan events and obtain valuable support from other VAs in various stages of business development.

Virtual Assistant Training and Education

Check with your local community college for courses in the Virtual Office Professional major or Virtual Office Assistant major. While most of these certificate and AS Degree programs are currently not offered online, the colleges leading the wave are:

Virtual Assistant Books and Ebooks

  1. FabJob Guide to Become a Virtual Assistant (FabJob Guides)– A great resource that provides information on what a virtual assistant does, how to get hired and how to start your own virtual assistant business.
  2. Virtual Assistant Professional Magazine – Offers an abundance of interesting articles and tutorials that are useful for the virtual assistant.

Virtual Assistant Blogs

Office Skills Blog – Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant Networking and Online Communities

VA Networking: VA Networking is a business social networking place on the web for virtual assistants to network online.

Virtual Assistant Forums – Online virtual assistant network where you’ll get instant access to resources, information and support.

Virtual Assistant Companies

The following companies offer online virtual assistant services and hire virtual assistants for a variety of tasks. Hourly pay for virtual assistant jobs varies depending on skills, experience and seniority.

Desktop Office Software

There are a variety of options for both paid and free office software available in the marketplace. Microsoft Office 2016 is the flagship product that many medium to large businesses purchase. Google Docs, LibreOffice and OpenOffice are also popular with small businesses, entrepreneurs and non profits so having knowledge of more than one office suite is advantageous. Read a more detailed review of some of the most popular free office suites here.

Microsoft Office 2016 and Office 365 – Microsoft offers a variety of monthly subscription plans and purchase plans for both home and business. The benefit of a subscription plans is that you can get all the upgrades for free as long as your subscription is active.

LibreOffice 5.0 -This new version of LibreOffice is a beautiful office suite that comes complete with new icons, major improvements to the menus, sidebar and intuitive style management. Extremely easy to download and use.

Apache OpenOffice – Apache OpenOffice is an easy to learn open-source office software suite used for word processing (Writer), spreadsheets (Calc), presentations (Impress), graphics and databases.

Kingsoft WPS Office 10 for Windows –  WPS offers both a free and premium version of their office suite and if you’re familiar with the Ribbon interface in Microsoft 2013, you’ll be right at home using WPS. 

Cloud Based Office Software

Google Docs – Google Docs is becoming more and more popular and comes with a variety of smart editing and styling tools to help you easily format text and paragraphs.You will need a Google login ID to access Google Docs and you can sign up here at Google https://docs.google.com

Office Online – Office Online is Microsoft’s free offering of their professional office suite. It is a slightly scaled down version of the complete office suite but perfect if you just need to create simple business documents, presentations and spreadsheets and of course, you don’t mind working in the cloud. You will need to establish a Microsoft Account to get started then you can simply logon to office.com.

File Sharing

  • DropBox – Free Basic accounts start with 2 GB.
  • OneDrive – OneDrive gives you 15 GB of free online storage that you can access from any of your devices allowing you to collaborate and share with your clients.
  • Google Drive – You get 15 GB of free storage.
  • Box.net – Offers 10 GB of free storage and you can upgrade to 100 GB for $10.00 a month.

Other Virtual Assistant Online Resources

The Virtual Office Assistant – Find out what it takes to become a virtual office assistant including what you’ll learn in schools, services provided by virtual assistants, specific skills required and tools and technology.

101 Ways to use a Virtual Assistant: Discover all the many tasks you can do as a virtual assistant provided by the International Virtual Assistants Association.

How to Become a Virtual Assistant – How to use your office skills as a virtual assistant

The Benefits of using a Virtual Assistant – There are many ways your organization can save money by hiring a virtual assistant.

12 Tasks to Oursource to a Virtual Assistant (infographic). Not sure what to delegate to your Virtual Assistant or where to start? This infographic suggests 12 important tasks.

The Benefits of Learning How to Type Properly: Improving your typing speed and accuracy will enable you to get your work done more faster and efficiently.  Also, you will become more proficient using many of the popular software applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Virtual Office – The Ultimate Guide – Discover the advantages and disadvantages of a virtual office as well as set up tips, tax benefits and insight into the future of the virtual office.

Get our Latest Blog Posts, New Class Notifications,
Industry Trends

We don’t spam! Read our [link]privacy policy[/link] for more info.