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First-week onboarding checklist for a virtual assistant.

Thirty items, broken into the five days of week one. This is the exact checklist we use internally for every DotVA placement. Steal it. Adapt it. Ship a working VA by Friday.

Built from 87+ real placements. Last updated 19/05/2026.

Monday Set them up to win the week

  • Send the welcome email (template below) – Sunday night or first thing Monday.
  • 30-minute video kickoff call. Camera on. Just you and them, no team yet.
  • Walk them through your business in plain English. What you sell, who you sell to, what's growing, what hurts.
  • Define week one as exclusively shadow + observe. No customer-facing work yet.
  • Share access to the team password manager (we use 1Password – every DotVA placement gets a seat included).
  • Add them to your team chat (Slack / WhatsApp / whatever you use). Pin the channels that matter.
  • Share the read-only access list: shared drive, CRM, calendar.
  • End-of-day: ask them to send a 3-line written summary of what they observed. Sets the async-comms tone for the relationship.

Tuesday One real task, fully done

  • Assign one bounded, well-defined task – first-pass inbox triage or a single SOP they'll write from a Loom you record.
  • Record a 5-minute Loom showing exactly how you currently do it.
  • Set a clear definition-of-done: what does "good" look like? What's the deadline?
  • Mid-day check-in (15 minutes). Don't wait until end-of-day to find drift.
  • Review their work end-of-day. Be specific about what to change.

Wednesday Introduce Claude or ChatGPT

  • Give them a Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus seat. Why this matters →
  • Walk them through three prompts they'll use daily – email drafting, meeting summary, research synthesis.
  • Set the rule: AI is for first drafts, not for things that touch a customer without your review.
  • Have them rewrite Tuesday's task using AI assistance. Compare quality and time.
  • Mid-week 1:1 (20 minutes). "What's confusing? What's working?"

Thursday First SOP, written by them

  • Have the VA write their first SOP for one of the workflows they're shadowing.
  • Tell them to draft it in Claude or ChatGPT first, then edit by hand.
  • You review by end of day. Two passes max – they should ship something good enough to use.
  • Save the SOP somewhere central. Tag it with the workflow name.
  • Talk through the next week's tasks. They should know what's coming Monday.

Friday Hand over one workflow end-to-end

  • Pick one routine workflow (inbox triage / first-line customer support / calendar booking). Hand it over.
  • The VA owns it from Monday next week. You review the output, not the inputs.
  • Friday wrap call (30 minutes). What was hard? What was easy? What do they need from you?
  • Ask the question that matters: "What didn't I tell you that you wish I had?"
  • Send a written week-one recap to them. Three things they did well, one thing to keep improving.
  • Set the recurring 1:1. Weekly is right for the first month, then drift to fortnightly.
  • Quiet wins for the founder: the inbox is lighter, the calendar makes sense, you stopped checking it on weekends.

The welcome email – steal this template

Subject: Welcome to [Company] – here's everything you need for week one

Hi [VA's first name],

Welcome aboard. I'm excited you're joining us.

This email has the four things you need to start tomorrow:

1) Calendar invite – kickoff video call, Monday 10am AEST. 30 min. Camera on.

2) Access – the team password manager invite is in your inbox separately
   (check spam). Accept it before the call so you can see the shared logins.

3) Read before Monday – these three short pieces will give you context:
   - [link to your About / Manifesto page]
   - [link to a recent client win / case study]
   - [link to the SOP folder or the team handbook]

4) Tools – we run on [Slack / Notion / HubSpot / etc.]. You'll get added
   to the team channels after our kickoff call.

Week one is observe + shadow. You're not on the hook for any customer-
facing work yet. By Friday you'll own one recurring workflow. By the
end of month one you'll own three.

Anything you need from me before Monday – just reply to this email.

[Your name]

The access provisioning list

Send these before Monday so they're not waiting on you during the call. Missing access on day one is the single biggest reason new placements stall in the first week.

  • Email account on your domain – even if they won't send outbound for a fortnight, they need the inbox to shadow
  • Password manager seat (1Password Teams or similar – DotVA includes one)
  • Team chat – Slack / WhatsApp / Teams. Pin the channels they need; mute the ones they don't
  • Shared drive / Notion / wiki – read access first, write access by Friday
  • CRM read-only access (HubSpot, Pipedrive, GoHighLevel, etc.)
  • Calendar viewing – at least your calendar, plus any team calendars they'll manage
  • Project tool – Asana / ClickUp / Trello / Linear, whatever the team runs on
  • Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus seat – provision Wednesday at the latest
  • Loom or Screen Studio – so they can record walkthroughs back to you
  • Time tracker if you use one – Toggl, Harvest, or built into your invoicing system

Want the printable PDF?

Drop your email below. We'll send you a single-page printable PDF version of this checklist plus the welcome email template – and an email when we update the playbook.