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Virtual Latinos Agency: Client’s Quick Reference Guide

Virtual Latinos Agency: Client’s Intro & Quick Reference Guide

When you, our client, choose to hire a VA through the Virtual Latinos Agency, our expert recruitment team is in charge of the entire hiring process, including searching, finding, and selecting the best candidates, doing preliminary interviews, and more.

Once you decide to hire one of our VAs, legally speaking, you’ll be actually hiring our company’s services. You will not be hiring our VAs directly, as that legal relationship is managed by our company.  Our legal company is called Bloominari, LLC which is based in California, USA. The brand Virtual Latinos is used to market and offer our virtual assistant services.

Index


Initial Onboarding Session

After you sign the hiring agreement, you’ll be asked to schedule a 3-way live virtual onboarding meeting on Zoom between you (Client), the VA, and your assigned customer and VA success agent. During this short 45 minute session, we’ll provide you with very important tips on how to start, build and maintain a successful work relationship with your new VA. We’ll cover some basic housekeeping info including work hours, schedules, goals, tasks, responsibilities, and rules as well as explain the tools and resources we recommend all of our clients to use.

We believe that building trust, having great communication, and acting professionally are three important keys to a successful, long-term Client-VA relationship.  Our success team will always be here to continuously provide you and the VA support and tools to achieve this.


Contacting Our Team

To make sure you reach the right person from our team, here’s a quick list of who you should get in touch with depending on what you need.

  • Customer Support: For most items related to your VA’s work performance (except related to payment/billing), contact your assigned Success Account Manager (SAM). If unsure of who your SAM is, reach out to us at success@virtuallatinos.com
  • VA’s Work Hours & Billing: Anything related to billing (extra hours, bonuses, etc.)
    • First, please fill out our Changes & Approvals form at our Virtual Latinos Portal (VLP). Here, you’ll e able to request any changes or approve any request from your VA concerning their work hours.
    • If any further assistance is needed, contact our accounting team at payments@virtuallatinos.com with CC to your SAM.
  • Hiring Additional VAs for your team: Contact your personalized Success Account Manager (SAM). If unsure of who your CSA is, contact our Success Team at success@virtuallatinos.com
  • Need anything else? Please email our admin assistant at admin@virtuallatinos.com

Ongoing Work

After the one-time onboarding session with a member of our Success Team, all day-to-day communication will be directly between you and your VA. This includes training your VA, assigning them tasks, meeting with them, reviewing their work, setting goals, etc.

If you have any type of trouble, our dedicated Success Team is always ready to help you out. You can contact your assigned Success Account Manager (SAM) or you can also reach out to our Success Team at success@virtuallatinos.com.

  • Communication:
    • Quick communication: Most clients communicate with our VAs through Telegram, Slack, or WhatsApp. Others use other similar tools, the choice is yours.
    • Phone calls with your team: Usually via WhatsApp Calls or Telegram Calls
    • Phone calls with your clients (if needed): Our clients recommend and use RingCentral, 8×8, Nextiva, Phone.com, or Vonage
    • Meetings: We suggest you use Zoom, Google Hangouts, or Skype
  • Project Management: During our onboarding call with you and the VA, we’ll encourage you to use a project management (PM) system to keep track of all the tasks you’ll assign to your VA
    • Not all clients have an existing system, so we recommend them to use Infinity, Teamwork, Asana, or Trello
    • If you already use a PM system, you may invite your VA to join your existing platform. If you’ve never used one, your VA may be able to help you make a list of all the tasks, to-dos, deadlines, etc that you’d like to assign to them. Your VA can even learn and teach you and your team how to use a PM system.
    • In some cases, a PM system is only used by the VA and not the Client and that’s fine too. Remember, the goal is to take tasks off your to-do list.
  • Time Tracking: Our agency requires that all VAs track their work hours for at least the first 3 months using one of the tools we recommend. If needed, you can also request that your VA tracks time for as long as you’d like them to
    • Time tracking tools we recommend: Clockify | Toggl | TimeDoctor | HubStaffWorkPuls (Most of our VAs use Clockify or Toggl’s free version)
    • Already have your own time-tracking tool? No problem, your VA can also use it instead of the ones we recommend. We just need to make sure your VA can export their time-tracking reports, so they can submit them to us in order to get paid.
    • If you don’t tell your VA which system you prefer, they’ll use whichever one they prefer.

Changes to Work Hours

If you’d like to request any changes to your VA’s work hours, you can do so practically any time, as long as you always meet your agreement’s terms and our minimums in order to keep working with your VA.

      • Minimum Hiring Period: Our standard agreement requires every client to commit to paying at least 80 hours of VA services. This can be done 40 hours in two weeks or 20 hours in 4 weeks.
      • Minimum Hours Per Week: Once you start working with your VA, you’re allowed to change the number of hours your VA works, as long as it’s always a minimum of 20 hours/week per VA.
      • Types of Changes You May Request: The following changes may be requested anytime after the first week of work is completed, except if it’s not permitted by your agreement’s initial hiring requirements.
        • Request additional (extra) work hours:  We’ve created the “Bank of Hours” (BOH) packages to support our clients who need their VAs to work additional hours outside their weekly “base hours.” Clients are able to purchase pre-approved combos (10, 20, or 40 hours packages) for VA to use upfront.
          • The prepaid 10, 20, or 40 hours combos can be used for up to 6 months from the date they’re approved. 
          • The 10 hours BOH is only available for VAs who work full time (31+ hours/week)
          • You must first complete the Changes & Approvals form at our Virtual Latinos Portal (VLP) to purchase the BOH package of 10, 20, or 40 hours for each of the VAs that works with you.
          • For further details: Billing, additional hours and bonuses
        • Request change to base (regular) hours/week worked: This refers to increasing or decreasing the base “regular” hours your VA works/week.
          • Example: Increasing your VA’s work hours from 20/week to 30/week. You will then be billed for these new base (regular) every week thereafter.
        • Request change to VA’s work schedule: This is normally determined directly between you and the VA, and our team simply needs to be informed by email. Your billing will not be affected in any way.
        • Limits to how often Clients can request changes to base hours: Please visit this article for more details
    • ACTION Item: Want to make a change?Simply fill out this form, and we’ll take care of the rest: Changes & Approvals form

Payments & Billing

When hiring through the Agency, you pay us for the VA’s services, and we pay our  VAs.

  • Payment for Services: As per our service agreement all of our clients are billed every 2 weeks for the base hours per week they requested to hire their VA. This full amount is due and payable every 2 weeks, even if a VA does not complete weekly base hours.
    • Base Hours & Hours Not Worked: If the VA does not complete all the weekly base hours, they’ll be responsible of recovering them, after discussing a recovery plan with you. If this happens, you or your VA will have to submit a request for the option Paid Time Off – Replace Hours through the Changes & Approvals Form section in the Virtual Latinos Portal to notify that there are hours that were not worked that they must make up and work at another time.
    • Special Exceptions: When the VA has missed work hours or days in rare cases where the VA did not let their client know in advance of their need to miss work hours/days, then a Non-Paid Time Off request should be submitted through the Changes & Approvals Form section in the Virtual Latinos Portal so our team can edit your invoice to represent the actual hours worked instead of the base hours agreed to in your contracts. This is not very common, and may only occur in very specific cases.
  • Payment Method: We only accept digital payments.
    • Most clients pay with their US-based checking bank accounts, as an online ACH payment through our payments system (no fees).
    • We also accept Credit cards (Incurs a fee of 3.5% + $0.75/transaction).
    • For International clients, only credit card payments are accepted.
    • We do not accept physical checks or money orders.
  • Payment Type: Most payments are post-paid, at the end of each week once the VA services have been rendered. Yet, in some cases, we do require pre-payments
  • Billing & Payments Schedule:
    • Post-Payments: This is the most common, and part of our standard agreement. You will be charged two weeks or 40 hours in advanced, whatever is greater, then, billing is due every two weeks on Fridays by 6:00 pm PST.
    • Pre-Payments: If you prefer to pay every 4 weeks, we can offer this as long as you pay this in advance before VA services are rendered.
  • Automatic Payments:
    • We set up automatic payments, charged according to your payment schedule, using a client’s checking account (no fees) or credit cards (fees apply). This must be set up by our staff on our systems to start working with your VA.
  • Payment Terms and hourly rates: Should be discussed ONLY with Virtual Latinos and NEVER directly with your VA.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  You should never discuss payment terms, payment rates, or any other payment-related issues directly with our VAs. You must always contact us first. Contact your assigned Success Account Manager. If you do not remember your SAM, contact the customer success team at success@virtuallatinos.com.


Raises

At Virtual Latinos, there is always room for growth. Raises are optional and never required or expected by our VA, but if you want to give them a raise you are always welcome to do so.

  • Our company does not take any commissions or percentages of the raise you’d like to provide to your VA. 100% of it will be added directly to your VA’s hourly rate.
  • Raises can only occur starting on a new working week, on a Monday, and/or at the end of the next billing cycle if VA services are prepaid.
  • The hourly increase must be a minimum of $0.50 USD/hr with $0.25 increases.

Want to give your VA a raise? Fill out the Changes & Approvals Form in our VL Portal and we’ll take care of the rest.


Bonuses & Commissions

Depending on the type of job your VA is doing, you can offer bonuses or commissions. Bonuses and commissions are always optional and never required or expected by your VA. Our company, Virtual Latinos, will not keep any part of that bonus or commission, 100% of it will be passed directly to your VA. In some very rare cases, in which the client is made aware in advance, our company may take a small percentage of a bonus or commission (but this is VERY rare).

  • VL Schedule to process bonuses/commissions from Clients to VAs: Bonuses & commissions will be processed approximately once per month, up to 13 times per year, every 4 weeks. The deadline for all bonuses will always be on a Wednesday, 4 calendar days prior to the end of the VAs pay period (Sunday). Clients will be requested to complete the Changes & Approvals Form in our VL Portal.
  • Bonus or Commission Amount: This is almost always determined by the Client, and is generally determined by a VA’s work performance, success, or goals reached.
    • Note: We can only process bonuses of $50 USD or more without any additional processing and transaction fees. If you want to offer less than $50, we charge a $10 processing fee. You can also simply wait until the bonuses you’d like to offer add up to $50 or more to avoid any fees.
  • Payments Schedule: You can choose to offer and pay bonuses or commissions to your VA once per month, according to our bonus payment schedule. You can find more details here.
  • Payments Processing & Delivery to the VA: Our company must always process all bonuses and payments by charging our clients directly. Then, will pay that bonus or commission to the VA. Currently, our company does not charge any additional processing fees, as long as they are sent on time, and are part of our regular scheduled payments. Additional processing fees may be charged if you want to process bonuses/commissions outside of our regular schedule. 

ACTION Item: Want to offer a bonus/commission to your VA? Great, it’s very easy to do so. Simply fill out this form, and we’ll take care of the rest: Changes & Approvals form


VAs Sick Days, Time Off, or Vacations

Any type of your VA’s time-off – including sick days, holidays, time-off or vacations – is NON-PAID by default.

If you want to offer your VA paid time off, you are welcome to do so. This is not expected, but we do have several clients that offer either some paid holidays, paid sick days, and/or vacation. A healthy, happy workforce is a more productive workforce.

Your VA is required to always discuss any potential plans for vacations and time-off with you beforehand. You, the client, must then approve these requests in writing before our company can give the official and final approval in order for the VA to take time off.

Important Definitions

  • Sick Leave (Unplanned)
    • Unexpected Sick Days: This is defined by a real day a VA may get sick and is unable to work, usually up to 4 business days. If this occurs, naturally the VA won’t be able to perform his/her work, and our company is not able to find any short-term VA to replace or fill-in while your VA is out sick.
    • Extended Sick Leave: 5 days or more of being sick, with an unknown date for returning to work. If this occurs, you can decide after 2 weeks whether to cancel your services or wait for the VA to get healthy and get back to working with you.
  • Time-Off (Planned)
    • Short time-off: Local US or Latin American holidays, personal time off, etc (1-4 business days off)
    • Vacations: 1 to 3 consecutive weeks off (5-15 business days off)
  • How Your Billing Is Affected
    • Short time-off: When the VA misses 1 to 4 days of work, in most cases the VA will “make-up” the missed work hours either before or after they took time-off, in order to avoid getting paid a partial payment. In this case, there will be no changes to your regular billing or the VA’s regular payments.
    • Extended time-off: If the VA misses 5 days (1 business week) of work or more, our company will generally pause the VA’s payments for 1 or more weeks, and will also pause billing you accordingly on a week-per-week basis.
  • ACTION Item: Need to approve time-off or offer a paid vacation to your VA? To do so, please follow these simple steps
    1. Talk with your VA: Discuss with your VA the specifics of the time-off they’re requesting, or the paid time-off you’d like to provide them
    2. Decide what you’d like to approve: Let your VA know verbally or in writing what you’re willing to offer and/or approve
    3. Ask your VA to complete the official form to request time off: The Changes & Approvals Form can be found here Virtual Latinos Portal (VLP)
    4. Approve your VA’s official request through our VLP: Once your VA fills out the form, you’ll get an email from our company asking you to confirm and approve the details of the request via our Virtual Latinos Portal.
    5. The VA can take time off: Once you approve, we’ll send the VA the official approval to take time off.