AroFlo Virtual Assistant: a VA for the Office half while your crew runs Field

AroFlo has been running Australian trade businesses out of Melbourne since 2001, an electrician’s back injury turned into software, which makes it older than the phones the Field app runs on. It splits a business cleanly in two: AroFlo Field for the crew on the tools, AroFlo Office for everything that turns their work into money. The Field half mostly happens, because the work is the part everyone cares about. The Office half happens at 9:40pm at the kitchen bench, and it’s you.

Hardly anyone searches “aroflo virtual assistant” yet. We wrote the page anyway, because AroFlo keeps turning up in our client base and the shape is always the same: field side humming, office side running on the owner’s evenings. Quotes going out late, supplier invoices unmatched, timesheets signed off from memory. The software isn’t the problem. The missing person is.

The weekly rhythm a VA runs in your AroFlo

Morning: overnight enquiries become tasks. (AroFlo calls every job a task, so that’s the language here.) The detail that matters is the task type, because the task type carries your Linked Compliance Forms, so the right pre-start SWMS or JSA is attached before anyone reaches site, and if you’ve set those forms to block work recording, a tech can’t even start the clock without completing one. Client right, location right, scheduled against the right crew.

Then purchasing. Yesterday’s supplier invoices go through the AI Bill Scanner, or land in the Bill Imports list on their own if suppliers email them to your AroFlo import address. The scanner reads each invoice and matches the header and line items against the purchase order; your VA checks the match instead of trusting it, fixes the field mapping when a supplier formats something strangely, and flags the line where a price has crept past what was ordered. That’s accounts payable in a trades business: less data entry, more leak detection.

Quotes are the afternoon work. Assembled on your quote templates from supplier catalogue items at your preset Quote Markups, which AroFlo lets you default per business unit, per client or per item, set once. Sent to you for sign-off, then out through Online Quote Acceptance so the client can accept from the email. Midweek, the follow-up pass: everything sent and silent gets a call.

Thursday: the timesheet chase, so Friday’s weekly sign-off isn’t a hostage negotiation. Gaps get queried against the schedule before Tuesday fades from everyone’s memory entirely. Same pass for compliance: unfinished pre-starts chased, and any OHS Checklist item that came back failed gets its Fail Action follow-up form chased until it’s marked Closed, not left hanging.

Friday: the report that makes the whole arrangement pay. Task Work In Progress (WIP) By Date, a standard report, shows costs incurred against invoices raised for the period. Done-but-not-billed is where trade businesses quietly bleed, and a VA who ends every week with that list in front of you usually recovers a multiple of their own invoice.

The honest bit

Two things. First, the money one: every active AroFlo login is a licensed seat and AroFlo quotes pricing on request, so unlike the platforms that hand out free admin seats, your VA’s login costs real dollars on top of their hours. Budget for it. Second, an office VA cannot fix field discipline from a desk in the Philippines. If a tech won’t close tasks or finish a pre-start, the VA chases, escalates and reports, but the form gets completed by the person on site, every time. The chasing helps enormously. It is not a substitute.

(Tossing up AroFlo against Simpro? Same owner these days, the Simpro Group bought AroFlo in late 2021, and from a placement point of view they barely differ: the quote, schedule, do, bill, chase loop is the same loop behind different menus. There’s a whole page on Simpro.)

What stays with you

Pricing decisions and final quote sign-off. Supplier terms. Everything safety-related that isn’t chasing: what goes in your SWMS templates, site sign-offs, the call on whether a failed checklist item becomes a toolbox talk. And if you want to keep the weekly timesheet sign-off and its captured signature personal, keep it; approving a clean timesheet takes two minutes when someone else has done the chasing.

What it costs and where to start

Most of this is admin-tier work at $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST. Quote assembly and custom report work runs specialist at $18-25, and if the VA also works the Xero or MYOB end of the accounting sync, that’s bookkeeping at $25-35. Expect 7-10 business days to place someone, then 5-7 supervised days inside your AroFlo before anything runs solo; the 30-day guarantee means we recalibrate or replace if the fit is wrong, and leaving is 14 days notice, not a contract negotiation.

The trades page covers the industry side and the VA cost guide breaks the tiers down properly. Otherwise book a discovery call with Jenn. She has made 48+ VA placements into Australian businesses since 2024, and if your AroFlo isn’t ready for one yet, she’ll say so before you’ve spent a dollar. Bring your open task list and the pile of supplier invoices nobody has matched. The hours are in there.