How Your VA Can Effectively Manage Your Diary

Do you sometimes look at your diary and wonder how on earth you will get through the day? Do you struggle to get organised and to schedule meetings accordingly?

My friend and entrepreneur Donna faced the same problem. As the owner of a fast food business, she wanted to take control of all the operations, including her diary. She soon found herself stressed, exhausted and operating like a zombie. She would frequently dream of missed appointments, inaccurate scheduling and unhappy clients.

Although Donna had the right intentions, she was doing her business more harm than good. A growing business needs adequate help to keep growing. When I advised her to get a Virtual Assistant (VA), her question was,

“How can a VA manage my diary remotely?”

If you resonate with Donna, you no longer need to struggle. A VA can manage your diary remotely and do so quite effortlessly.

You’re going to have to start with using a great calendar.

What makes a great calendar tool?

Here are the elements of a great calendar tool:

1. Easy to use
2. Appealing interface
3. Easy to share
4. Available on multiple devices
5. Packed with multiple features

These are the elements you want to look for when choosing which platform to use with your VA.

Which calendar tool should you use?

This is an important step because the platform you use will decide whether your VA can manage your schedule remotely or not. There are many free services available for sharing calendars:

In my view, Google Calendar is the best calendar in the market. It allows you to create multiple calendars, share your calendars and manage notifications. You can also merge it across multiple devices.

The entire suite of Google products is free to use if you have a Gmail account. You probably already have a Gmail account, but if you don’t, you can set up one easily. Remember to setup a separate account for your VA and then control the password via LastPass. This will make it easier for you to separate your own work and your VA’s work. If you’ve got one mailbox of jumbled tasks, you may be tempted to handle things your VA is supposed to handle.

What’s more? Google updates in real-time, allowing you to see live updates as well as the time and author of each update.

Beyond Google Calendar is VueMinder Pro. This tool is praised for its superior customisation and features:

1. View your calendar on your desktop
2. Receive reminders via sms, desktop and text-to-speech
3. Create automatic backups

Its superior feature, however, is its sharing capabilities. In addition to syncing with the major calendar services such as Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and Exchange, you can also sync your calendar with your local network. This means that you can share events with other computers automatically – a change made on one computer will automatically reflect on the other.

The benefits of having a VA manage your diary

The most obvious benefit of having a VA manage your diary is extra time for you to spend worrying about other things. Other benefits include:

• Your VA confirms every appointment the day before so that you never miss an appointment nor have a wasted trip.
• The VA handles all replies to your meeting, venue changes and other small details which alleviates your stress.
• Cancellations and reschedules are handled by your VA and automatically fed back to you and updated on your calendar.
• Your VA can take minutes of each meeting and remind you of important follow-ups after each meeting.
• He/she can also send any welcome packs, agendas and important information to each attendee without you having to do it yourself.

Having a VA manage your schedule is so much more about saving you time. It streamlines your business and improves professionalism. If your story resonates with Donna’s above, you will benefit from having a VA manage your diary more effectively with one of these calendar services.