- Executive assistant, social media manager, bookkeeper, customer service VA, lead-gen specialist + 11 more
- Hand-picked Filipino VAs, AEST hours, dedicated to you
- Matched to your software: Shopify, Xero, GoHighLevel, Cliniko, ServiceM8 + 130 more
- Trained on Claude + ChatGPT in week one (this is what most agencies don't do)
- Replacement at no extra cost if the fit isn't right
Founder-led VA agency · Melbourne, for all of Australia
Virtual assistants,
hired from the top 1%.
I'm Jenn. When I advertise a VA role, 300-400 people apply, and I hire one. That's who I match with Australian small business owners: hand-picked, fully managed, AU hours, from $12/hr AUD. Founder-led since 2024.
30 min, free, no card. I read every enquiry myself and reply inside one business day.
- 300 → 1 applicants per role, one hired
- 87+ AU placements managed since 2024
- 9/10 Placements make it past day 30 without needing a replacement
- 30-day Replacement guarantee, no lock-in contract
What we do
We do one thing: hand-picked VAs, placed and managed properly.
We recruit, vet, place and manage Filipino VAs for Australian small businesses. You get the person, the onboarding, the ongoing management and the replacement guarantee. We handle everything behind it.
We also build AI and automation systems as a separate, project-priced service, the same stack we train every VA on. See AI services.
Built for these industries
Wherever your week actually leaks.
Each industry has a different VA pattern. Tap yours for the roles, task examples and case studies we see most.
Allied health NDIS-aware VAs for OT, physio, psych, speech: intake forms, plan-manager comms, Medicare claiming. See the playbook Real estate REA + Domain enquiry triage, OFI follow-up, vendor reports, CRM hygiene, buyer-pipeline cadence. See the playbook E-commerce Shopify + Gorgias support, IG DM triage, returns workflows, review responses, win-back campaigns. See the playbook Professional services Proposal drafts, client intake, document review, monthly client reporting, CRM hygiene. See the playbook Hospitality Booking inbox, private-event quotes, review response, roster admin, supplier follow-up. See the playbook Trades Quote drafts from site notes, variation chasing, insurance paperwork, annual-service recall. See the playbook
All 66 industries and professions
- accounting firms
- acupuncture chinese medicine
- air conditioning hvac
- audiologists
- auto mechanics
- beauty wellness
- bookkeeping firms
- buyers agents
- childcare early learning
- chiropractors
- commercial asset finance brokers
- commercial cleaning
- community pharmacy
- conveyancers
- counsellors psychotherapists
- creative
- dental practices
- dental prosthetists
- diabetes educators
- dietitians
- education
- electricians
- exercise physiologists
- financial advisers
- fitness studios
- funeral directors
- insurance brokers
- it msps
- landscapers
- law firms
- medical practices
- medical specialists
- migration agents
- mortgage brokers
- naturopaths nutritionists
- ndis
- ndis plan managers
- occupational therapy
- optometrists
- orthodontists
- osteopaths
- painters
- pest control
- photographers
- physiotherapy
- plumbers
- podiatrists
- property management
- property staging
- psychology
- recruitment agencies
- remedial massage therapists
- removalists
- residential builders
- short stay managers
- speech pathology
- strata managers
- veterinary clinics
- wedding event planners
- All 66 industries and professions, with task examples + pricing
We speak your software, too. VAs placed by the platform your business runs on:
Missing calls while on the tools? A virtual receptionist answers on your number, from $12/hr, or $89/mo for the AI option. Or start with the full guide to hiring a VA in Australia. Just need admin support, full stop? Start here.
A note from me
I run DotVA the way I'd want it run for me.
I started DotVA in 2024 because I'd watched too many Australian founders drown in admin they should have offloaded three years earlier. They'd tried offshore agencies that either disappeared, swapped the VA every quarter, or charged like a senior consultant for what was a junior task. One friend was on her third agency by the time we spoke. She was tired enough to be quietly selling the business.
Before DotVA, I spent years in corporate finance, the kind where the details aren't optional: auditing major companies at a global professional-services firm, running in-house finance at a household-name global sportswear brand, then leading financial planning and analysis for businesses turning over millions. That's the standard I was held to, and it's the one I now hold every VA we place to.
So I built the agency I wanted to exist. Filipino, hand-picked, not pooled. Trained on Claude and ChatGPT in week one, because in 2026 a VA who can't use AI is a VA who's structurally underpriced for the work you actually need done.
The AI implementation line came later. Clients kept asking us to set up the same Claude, GPT and CRM workflows internally that we'd put in front of every VA. So we built it as a sister service. Same craft. Fixed scope. Fixed price. No retainers without a defined deliverable. Every engagement leaves the room with a working system, not a roadmap PDF.
If you book a discovery call, you talk to me. Not a sales rep, not an AE, not a chatbot. I read every application personally, and I'll tell you on the call if I don't think we're the right fit.
Jenn
Director, DotVA · 87+ AU placements managed
What the enquiries actually say
The four jobs owners hire us for.
Before writing this section we read back every enquiry that has come through this site. No personas, no guesswork: four jobs kept repeating, almost word for word. If your week is leaking into one of these, you're exactly who we built the agency for.
01
Your software, run by someone who already knows it
A VA who can drive it from day one.
Your Shopify store kept tidy. Xero invoices drafted before you've thought about them. GoHighLevel funnels maintained instead of quietly decaying. Cliniko or ServiceM8 run by someone who has worked inside them before. Owners tell us what their business runs on, and we match the VA to the platform, not just the job title, with placement playbooks for 130+ systems. If it runs your business, there's a page for it.
About half the owners who contact us name their software before anything else
Shopify, Xero, GoHighLevel, Cliniko, ServiceM8, MYOB, QuickBooks and 130 more
02
The inbox, the phone and the diary, covered
The most common first handover.
Answering the phone while you're with a patient or on the tools. The shared inbox worked morning and evening, not whenever you surface. Appointments booked, rescheduled and confirmed. Jobs scheduled onto the dispatch board each day, urgent ones slotted in as they land. It's the ask we hear most, from clinic owners, tradies and consultants alike, and it's usually what a new VA takes over in week one.
Phones answered, inbox cleared and diary kept true, every business day
Typically 10-15 hrs/wk on the $12-17/hr admin tier
03
The books kept current
Invoices out, payments chased, numbers you can trust.
Your invoices go out on time, every time. Anyone who owes you money gets followed up, politely and persistently, until it lands. Bills, receipts and supplier invoices get entered and filed where your accountant can find them. And your Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks stays up to date, so when you look at the numbers, they're the real ones. None of it is glamorous, but it is the difference between knowing where the money is and guessing.
Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks are the platforms owners name most on the books side
Bookkeeping tier $25-35/hr, admin-level data entry from $12/hr
04
Content that ships every week
Posts, newsletters and podcasts, out on schedule.
Three to five branded Canva posts a week for a product business. A month of social scheduled from one recording session. The newsletter actually sent. Podcast episodes edited, clipped and published. Owners don't ask us for a content strategy; they ask for the shipping to stop depending on their own Sunday night. That's a specialist VA with a content calendar, your brand assets, and your voice kept authentic because the source material is yours.
One real brief: "3-5 carousel posts and graphics per week"
Specialist tier $18-25/hr
The AI in all this sits underneath, where it belongs. Every VA trains on Claude and ChatGPT in week one, so drafts arrive at 80% done and the work above fits into fewer paid hours. Hardly anyone rings us asking for AI; the calls are about the phone answered and the invoices out. When you do want the systems themselves built, that's the AI services line. And if one of the four jobs above is your week, tell Jenn about it.
Three real placements
What 6 months actually looks like.
Composite case studies, anonymised. Numbers are real, drawn from ten placements across e-commerce, allied health, and real estate. Why composites: most clients won't go on the record. Why we publish them anyway: the patterns repeat.
E-commerce Brisbane Shopify brand
< 4 hr Response time
+18 NPS improvement
20 Hours reclaimed weekly
A solo Shopify founder doing $2.4M revenue was personally handling every support ticket, DM, and live-chat enquiry.
Read the full story Allied health Melbourne OT clinic
15 Hours reclaimed weekly
$55k Annual saving vs local hire
+22% Caseload growth (6 mo)
A two-therapist clinic owner was spending 20+ hours a week on patient triage, NDIS paperwork, and Medicare/health-fund claiming follow-up.
Read the full story Real estate Sydney sales agent
+4 Extra listings per year
+$89k GCI growth (9 mo)
5 min Enquiry response time
A solo sales agent in inner-west Sydney was missing realestate.com.au + Domain enquiries because he was on tour or in appointments.
Read the full storyOne client who did go on the record:
Watching how hard Jenn vets people is half the reason I trust them. She's built a rigorous funnel that takes 400 applicants and gets it down to 1, so by the time she picks one person they're genuinely amazing.
Hey Bud Skincare sells through more than 2,000 stores across Australia and New Zealand, and we've got 12 VAs on it now doing video editing, graphic design, our Meta ads, influencer and email marketing, growth, plus ops and customer service. They run most of the business day to day, and honestly I couldn't do it without them. It saves us hundreds of thousands a year versus building the same team here in Australia.
Local AU part-time admin, all in
$78,400/yr
includes super, leave, payroll tax, equipment, recruiting
Equivalent DotVA placement
$23,400/yr
20 hrs/wk specialist VA · AU-managed · no on-costs
You save $55,000 a year. 70% of the cost, 85-90% of the output on equivalent admin work.
That saving is roughly 1,040 hours of senior VA capacity. A part-time hire you don't have to recruit, manage, or replace.
Why us
You're not hiring one VA. You're hiring the machine that found them.
Since 2024 we've built the hiring infrastructure you'd never build to fill one role: a Philippines-based recruitment team that shows up at industry and networking events in person, a live database of active candidates, and a funnel that rejects almost everyone.
- 25,000+ active candidates in our recruitment database
- 10,000+ applications through our own hiring portal
- <1% of applicants are ever placed with a client
- 100% aptitude-tested, video-interviewed, and worked live 1-on-1 with us
Every candidate sits aptitude tests, records a video interview, and works a live one-on-one session with us before they're ever shortlisted, so an AI-polished resume or an AI-faked assessment task doesn't survive contact. And because we negotiate rates in-market, you're not paying marketplace prices where an unvetted freelancer sets their own rate sight unseen: the VA gets a fair local wage, you pay what the work is worth, and both sides know it. The 5-stage process is public. Audit it before you book.
And why not them
You could do all of that yourself, and some owners should. The honest reads on the three options most AU founders also evaluate; pricing claims are cited to public sources on each page.
vs Upwork
Marketplace · $5-50/hr · you vet, hire, manage, replace
Upwork is cheaper on paper. We're cheaper once you count your own time vetting, training and replacing the VAs Upwork doesn't manage for you.
Full breakdownvs Virtual Coworker
Managed agency · per-role card from $8/hr · dedicated 20-40 hrs a week
We respect them: 14+ years in market, and their per-role rates start lower than ours. But their model is a dedicated 20-40 hour week (their published pricing guide, checked July 2026). We start part-time, from 5 hours a week, with no minimum term.
Full breakdownvs Airtasker
Gig marketplace · task-based · onshore AU contractors
Airtasker is for "fix my fence on Sunday." We're for the person who runs your customer support every day for the next two years. Different problems entirely.
Full breakdownWhere we're not the right fit
If you need a one-off task done for under $200, hire on Airtasker. If you want the cheapest possible hour and you'll do all the management yourself, Upwork. If your work needs a full-time onshore employee on payroll, you don't need a VA agency at all. I'll tell you that on the call if it's the honest read.
We also have honest comparisons on managed agency vs freelance, AU vs Philippines VAs, and VA vs full employee.
Worth reading first
Start with these three.
If you have 20 minutes before our call, these three pieces cover how we hire, how we train VAs on AI, and which tasks to delegate first. Reading them gives you a 30-minute head start on the discovery call.
Guide
How to hire your first virtual assistant in Australia (a 2026 playbook)
A practical, AU-specific guide to hiring your first VA. Cost, scope, timezone, vetting, onboarding, the legal bits. Calibrated against real DotVA placements.
Read → AI + VAs
How we run our VA team on Claude Code (a working playbook)
Claude Code is pitched as a developer tool. We use it as a VA productivity layer instead. The five daily workflows, the failure modes, and what we would change.
Read → Essay
The three tasks every Australian founder should delegate first
After 87+ placements, the three tasks that consistently produce the fastest payback. None of them are the tasks founders usually want to delegate first.
Read →Pricing on the page
$12 to $35/hr AUD for VA placements. On the page, no quote-by-email.
Admin VA from $12/hr Specialist from $18/hr Bookkeeping from $25/hr Virtual receptionist from $12/hr AI stack audit $497 fixed AI implementation from $5k
Common questions
The five questions every founder asks me.
What actually happens on the discovery call?
It's 30 minutes with me, video or phone, no card. I learn about your business and what's eating your week. I tell you whether a VA, an AI build, or both makes sense for your situation. If we're not the right fit, I'll say so and usually suggest who is. You walk away with a written recap inside 48 hours.
I've been burned by offshore hiring before. Why is DotVA different?
Most "offshore VA" experiences are with marketplaces (Upwork, OnlineJobs) where you carry all the recruiting, vetting, management, and replacement risk yourself. DotVA is the opposite. We source, vet, onboard, and manage the placement. If a VA isn't working out inside 30 days, we replace at no cost. Beyond 30 days, you only ever pay for the new VA. We also train every VA on Claude + ChatGPT in week one, which directly addresses the "they couldn't figure things out" failure mode. You can audit the 5-stage vetting process before you book.
What if I'm not sure whether I need a VA or AI?
Most founders aren't, when they first call. That's what the discovery call is for. The honest split: VAs are right when the work needs judgement, repetition with context, or relationship continuity (inbox, customer support, bookkeeping). AI is right when the work is structured, high-volume, and you mostly need it to be fast and consistent (lead routing, document generation, knowledge base lookup). About a third of placements use both.
How fast can I actually start?
VA placements run 7-10 days from discovery call to your VA's first hour worked. We present 3-5 vetted candidates inside the first week. AI service projects are scoped within a week of the discovery call, with most builds shipping in 2-6 weeks. The $497 stack audit takes 90 minutes plus a 5-day turnaround on the written report.
Can you find a VA who already knows my software?
Usually, yes, and it's the most common way owners ask for help: about half the enquiries through this site name the exact platform in the first message. We recruit from a database of 25,000+ active candidates, so for the platforms Australian businesses actually run on (Shopify, Xero, GoHighLevel, Cliniko, ServiceM8, MYOB, QuickBooks and the like) we can often match genuine hands-on experience. Where we can't, your VA spends 5-7 supervised days inside your account before any solo work, and we keep placement playbooks for 130+ platforms.
You'll talk to me
Tell me what's eating your week.
Fill in the form. I'll get back to you inside one business day to lock in a 30-minute call. No card, no obligation, no sales rep.
"I'll tell you straight on the call if DotVA isn't the right fit. I'd rather you go to the right agency than the convenient one."
Jenn Director, DotVA · jenn@dotva.com.au
- 30 minutes, video or phone, your choice
- I'll tell you whether a VA, an AI build, or both fits
- Written recap inside 48 hours, even if you say no
- If DotVA isn't right, I'll suggest who is
The call itself is free, no card to book. A $500 refundable deposit applies only if you decide to start a VA placement, credited against your first invoice.
Thanks, now pick your time
We've got your details. Lock in your call right now using the calendar link below, or if you'd rather wait, Jenn will email you within one business day. Either way, within 48 hours of the call you will have a written recap with the tasks we would delegate first, an indicative cost and a timeline.
Pick a time with Jenn now →Looking for a VA job?
This form books a call with our client team.
It won't reach our hiring team, so it can't book you an interview. DotVA hires virtual assistants from the top 1% through a separate application system. If you think that's you, apply there with your resume, a short video and (if you have one) a little portfolio.
Apply at apply.dotva.com.au →Actually a business looking to hire a VA? Call (03) 9961 6076 or email hello@dotva.com.au and we will sort it out.
Not ready for a call? Get an instant cost estimate (2 minutes, no email needed) or check if you are ready in 90 seconds.