Admin tasksyou can delegate to a virtual assistant, in the order to hand them over

Delegate, in this order: inbox triage, diary management, data entry and record keeping, expenses and receipts, document preparation, travel, supplier coordination, research and list building, follow-ups and chasing, and the reporting that summarises all of it. Keep the decisions that need your authority, your relationships or your signature. Hand each task over with a rule, access through a password manager, one worked example and a check-in rhythm, and it stays delegated. A dedicated VA from Ant Assist does this from £5 per hour on the entry rate.

An administrative task is delegable when three things are true. It repeats, so a rule can describe it. It has a clear finished state, so someone else can tell when it is done. And it does not need your authority to complete: nobody is waiting for you personally to say yes. Almost everything that reaches your inbox and your calendar passes that test. What fails it is smaller than most owners think: pricing decisions, hiring and firing, anything a client expects from you by name, and anything that needs your signature or your money.

The test also explains why delegation fails when it fails. A task handed over without a rule comes back as questions; a task with no finished state comes back half done; a task that secretly needed your authority comes back as a mess. The order below puts the tasks with the clearest rules first.

1. Inbox triage. The first task, because it is daily, rule-based and where most of your time goes. Your VA sorts every message by what it needs, drafts replies for your review, archives the noise and surfaces what needs your attention. Within a few weeks the routine replies go without you. The inbox management virtual assistant page describes the full role.
2. Diary management. Booking, rescheduling, protecting your focus time and sending the prep before each meeting, across time zones. Hand this over with a one-page set of calendar rules and the scheduling emails stop arriving.
3. Data entry and record keeping. CRM updates after every call, the spreadsheets the business runs on, membership and supplier lists. Low risk, high volume, and the task most often left undone because nobody owns it.
4. Expenses and receipts. Your VA processes receipts, categorises spending, prepares the monthly expense report and syncs it with your accounting tool. The finished state is a clean summary for your accountant.
5. Document and note preparation. Formatting documents, preparing meeting notes, drafting standard correspondence and keeping the filing system in an order someone else could use.
6. Travel booking. Flights, hotels, transfers and accommodation, then an itinerary with confirmations, addresses and contact details ready before you leave. Hand it over with your preferences written down once.
7. Supplier and vendor coordination. Liaising with suppliers, scheduling service visits, managing quotes and handling the routine vendor emails you should not be reading. The rule at the edge: anything that costs money comes to you.
8. Research and list building. Comparing suppliers, building prospect lists, gathering the information behind a decision you will make. Give the question and the format you want the answer in.
9. Follow-ups and chasing. A list of everything waiting on someone else, chased at the interval you set, escalated to you when a chase fails. This task only works once the inbox is already delegated, which is why it sits here.
10. Reporting. The weekly summary of all of the above: what was done, what is pending, what needs you. It is the last task because it depends on the others, and the first thing you will miss if it stops.

Most businesses hand over the first four within the first month and the rest as trust builds. The virtual personal assistant UK page describes the role that carries all ten for one person.

Delegation goes wrong when the wrong things leave your desk, so name them. Keep anything that needs your authority: prices, discounts, contracts, hiring, firing, spending above a limit you set. Keep relationships that expect you: your largest clients, your investors, your bank. Keep decisions where the cost of a wrong answer is high and the rule cannot yet be written; hand those over later, once you have seen your VA handle the easier version. And keep the weekly review slot. The point of delegating admin is to spend the time on the work only you can do, and the review is what keeps the standard.

The same four moves work for every task on the list.

Write the rule. One paragraph: what the task is, when it is done, what your VA may decide alone and what comes to you. If you cannot write the rule, the task is not ready to delegate yet.

Set up access properly. Through a password manager, never by sharing credentials in a message. Every Ant Assist VA signs an NDA and a data-processing agreement, and you can revoke access at any time.

Give one worked example. Do the task once with your VA watching, or hand over one you did last week with the reasoning. An example teaches what a paragraph cannot.

Agree the check-in. An end-of-day note or a Friday summary, and a rule for exceptions: flag it with the context written up, and do not act until told. Then read the note. A check-in nobody reads stops being written.

A managed admin VA from Ant Assist starts at £5 per hour on the entry rate: the first 6 months on the Entry tier, 3 months on Mid, 1 month on Expert. After the promotion, the admin rate card applies: £6.30 per hour full time on the Entry tier (160 hours a month, £1,008) or £6.50 per hour part time (80 hours a month, £520), with Mid at £7.25 and Expert at £7.88 per hour full time for assistants with longer experience. The rate includes the assistant's time, our office facilities in Cairo, and the supervision and management that keep quality up; there are no platform fees on top.

Hours and tier set the price, not the number of tasks. The first four tasks on the list fit a part-time VA for most owner-managers; all ten, with travel and suppliers included, is usually a full-time role. For the comparison against a UK employee, line by line, read how much a virtual assistant costs in the UK or put your own hours into the calculator.

What the £5/hour entry rate includes

• Dedicated VA, never shared
• UK-hour aligned support
• Management and supervision included
• Recruitment and onboarding included
• Office infrastructure included
• VA replacement available
• No NI, pension, or holiday costs
• No long-term contract, rolling monthly

You can delegate this list to an in-house administrator, to a freelancer or to a managed virtual assistant. The in-house route gives you presence in the office at the cost of a UK salary, employer National Insurance, pension, holiday, a desk and the recruitment when they leave. The freelance route gives you a lower hourly rate on paper and leaves the recruiting, briefing, covering and replacing with you.

A managed, dedicated VA gives you one named person who takes the list in the order above, on your hours, for an hourly rate, with the recruiting, supervising and replacing handled by the provider. At Ant Assist a UK team supervises quality alongside you, and if the fit is wrong we replace the VA and carry the handover, with no re-recruitment and no restart from zero. Most clients have their VA active within 5 to 7 working days of signing up. If you want the hiring process itself, step by step, read how to hire a virtual assistant for admin.