Virtual assistant SOP template

What an SOP is in a virtual assistant setup

An SOP (standard operating procedure) is the written version of how you do a task yourself, detailed enough that your assistant can do it without you in the room. Each one covers a single task, from the trigger that starts it to the check that proves it's finished.

The value is in the judgment calls. "Handle the inbox" means nothing to someone new. "Reply to leads with the saved reply, forward billing to the bookkeeper, flag complaints right away" is something they can do on day 2, and something you can correct the moment a rule turns out wrong.

It also keeps work moving when people change. Sick days, vacations and a new hire stop being a crisis once the way a task gets done lives in a document instead of in one person's head.

When to write an SOP, and when a checklist is enough

Write an SOP when a task repeats at least weekly, involves decisions, or costs you money or a client when it goes wrong. Invoicing, inbox triage, onboarding a new client and publishing a blog post all qualify.

A checklist is enough when the steps never change and nobody has to make a judgment call. If you can write the task as 5 to 10 tick boxes without a single "it depends," skip the SOP.

• Repeats weekly or more and has decisions in it: write an SOP
• Rare but expensive to get wrong, like a refund above [amount] or a data export for a client: write an SOP
• Same steps every time, no decisions, like a weekly backup check or a pre-call setup: a checklist
• Happens once: a short message or a quick recording, no document

How to write an SOP in 5 steps

Don't start with a blank page. Start with a recording of the real task, then write it up while the details are fresh.

1. Record yourself doing the task once, start to finish, with a screen recorder running. Talk through every click and every decision out loud. Use a real day with real data, not a demo.
2. Write it up from the recording, one SOP per task. If "Inbox triage" starts turning into "Inbox triage and calendar booking," split it, so each SOP has one trigger and one finish line.
3. Add a screenshot wherever someone could click the wrong thing. Crop it to the button or field that matters and mark it with an arrow or a box.
4. Turn every judgment call into an "if X, then Y" rule: "If a client asks for a refund, then tag it Refund and forward it to [owner] within 2 hours." Your VA can't read your mind, but they can follow a rule.
5. Store it where the work happens: one shared folder or wiki, one page per SOP, linked from the task tracker. Name every file the same way, like "SOP - Inbox triage," so search finds it.

How to fill in each field

The blank template below has 12 fields. A few of them do most of the work, and they're easy to get wrong.

• Title: name the task, not the tool. "Weekly invoice follow-up" beats "Billing software stuff."
• Purpose: one or two sentences on why the task matters. It's what your VA falls back on when something happens that no step covers.
• Trigger: a time or an event. If you can't name the trigger, the task gets done whenever someone remembers it.
• Steps: start each one with a verb, one action per step, one or two lines each.
• Decision rules: finish with a default line for anything the rules don't cover, usually "leave it untouched and flag it in [channel]."
• Quality check and done: something a reviewer can verify in a minute, like "zero unread" or "every invoice has a PDF attached."
• Change log: one line per edit with date, name and reason. It's how you tell a living SOP from an abandoned one.

Common SOP mistakes

• Writing it from memory. You'll skip the steps you do on autopilot, and those are exactly the ones a new person misses.
• One giant manual for the whole role. A 20-page "VA handbook" gets read once. Ten short SOPs get opened every day.
• Writing for yourself. "Do the usual with the Q3 file" makes sense to you and to nobody else. Write for someone smart who started this week.
• Describing the tool instead of the task. "Click the third icon" breaks the day the tool redesigns its menu. "Turn off auto-forwarding in Settings" survives it.
• Never testing it. Until someone other than the author follows the SOP on a real task, you don't know what's missing.
• No owner and no date. When nobody knows whether a page is current, people stop trusting it and go back to asking you.