Simpro Virtual Assistant: a VA who knows a cost centre from a cost blowout

Nobody ends up on Simpro by accident. You bought it because the whiteboard broke, or ServiceM8 ran out of road somewhere around the eighth tech, and you needed real job costing, purchase orders that tie back to jobs, and a schedule that survives a Monday. It does all of that. The part nobody prices in is that Simpro is office-shaped software, and someone has to sit in the office. In most 5-50 staff trade businesses, that someone is the owner, at 9pm, receipting POs.

If you searched “simpro virtual assistant”, you already know a generic admin will not cut it. You do not have a spare fortnight to explain what a cost centre is, or why a job sitting in Pending with nothing scheduled against it is a quiet little fire. You want someone who can open Materials > Purchase Orders and start working.

The rhythm a VA runs inside Simpro

A typical day for a DotVA placement in a Simpro Premium build:

8am. Schedule first, in week view. Yesterday’s incomplete jobs followed up, today reshuffled if a tech called in sick, and anything unassigned given a slot before the phones start.

Mid-morning. Overnight emails become jobs, set up properly: right customer and site, right cost centre, right status. POs raised against those jobs and sent to the supplier from inside Simpro, so the materials trail starts clean.

Afternoon. Stock receipted as it lands. Supplier invoices imported and matched to the PO, and anything the Price Discrepancies Report catches gets queried with the supplier rather than absorbed. Quote skeletons assembled in the Parts & Labour tab from your pre-builds, at your rates, queued for your margin call.

End of week. A Job WIP export with the jobs that need your attention flagged on top, timesheet gaps from Simpro Mobile chased in Schedules > Timesheets before payroll, and completed forms (test sheets, SWMS, compliance certificates) attached to the jobs they belong to.

None of this is exotic. It is the loop you are running now, done by someone whose entire shift is the loop.

Two honest things

First, the licence. Simpro charges per seat, and your VA needs their own User licence assigned in their employee card file. That is a real line on top of the hourly rate, and you should budget for it rather than be surprised by it. Do not share a login to dodge the fee: the Staff Log report only tells you who did what if everyone in the build is actually themselves.

Second, Simpro does not forgive a messy build. If cost centres were never set up properly, or half your materials are freetext items instead of catalogue entries, a VA cannot report their way around that. What they can do is the archaeology: the first weeks of a placement into a messy build are often data hygiene work, and the WIP report only becomes trustworthy after it. We will tell you on the discovery call if that is your situation, because pretending otherwise wastes your money.

What stays with you

Sell prices and margins. Final quote sign-off before anything reaches a customer. Progress claim decisions on project work. Payroll. The accounting sync to Xero or MYOB stays scoped to whoever runs your books. The VA preps, you approve, and a security group built for the VA (under System > Setup > System Setup > Security Groups) enforces that split instead of relying on good intentions. You can even cap the dollar value of purchase orders their login can raise.

How the placement works

We match for field-service software experience where we can, then run 5-7 days supervised in your build before the VA works solo, because your pre-builds and your cost centres are not anyone else’s. Credentials live in 1Password, confidentiality is signed day one, and week one includes AI training (Claude, ChatGPT) so your SOPs get written down as the VA learns them. Most of the work above sits at the $12-17 admin tier; heavier estimating support is $18-25. Placement takes 7-10 business days, the refundable $500 deposit credits against your first month, and the 30-day guarantee means we recalibrate or replace if the fit is wrong. No lock-in, 14 days notice.

The wider picture is on the trades industry page, and the quote preparation and accounts payable pages cover those workflows in depth. For the full cost breakdown, see what a VA costs in Australia in 2026.

Or just book a discovery call with Jenn, the founder. Thirty minutes, no card. Bring your WIP report and a rough count of the hours you spent in the office last week, and she will tell you straight which of those hours a VA can take.