Time tracking
Virtual assistants
The client wants to know the hours were real. The assistant wants to be trusted. The arrangement fails when the first need is met by watching rather than by evidence. For another implementation reference, see this Monitask guide.
Two people who have never met, billing by the hourThe actual problem
The client cannot see the work happening and wants to know the hours were real. The assistant knows they were and resents being asked. That tension is the whole of this arrangement, and most of this market answers it in a way that makes it worse.
Why surveillance is the wrong answer here
Screenshots and activity scores appear to settle it and do not. They establish that a keyboard moved, which is not the question, and they change the relationship into one where the assistant is being watched rather than trusted. For broader background, see GitLab.
The practical consequence is retention. Good assistants have options and leave arrangements that feel like supervision, which means the client who most wanted certainty ends up rehiring most often and getting the least experienced people.
Screen capture, activity scoring and idle detection are not offered here for the same reason they are not offered anywhere else on this site.
What actually settles it
Evidence the assistant produces and can see.
- Time recorded against named tasks, entered as the work happens.
- A short weekly note written by the assistant: what was done, what is outstanding, what they need.
- Outputs visible to the client in the place the work lives.
This is more convincing than a screenshot because it is specific, and it is better for the assistant because it is a record of contribution rather than of presence.
The question worth asking before any of thisWorth asking
Whether hourly is the right basis at all.
For recurring defined work, a monthly fee for an agreed scope removes the entire problem: nobody counts hours, nobody watches, and both sides know what they are getting. It suits a mature arrangement and it suits a new one badly, because neither party yet knows what the scope is.
Hourly for the first few months, then a conversation about moving to a fee, is the sequence that works most often. A supplier of time tracking software saying so is against interest and it is the honest answer.
Classification, and a caution
How much control an engager exercises over the manner of work can bear on whether somebody is a contractor or an employee, and requirements about how and when time is recorded are a form of control.
This matters more in cross-border arrangements, where the assistant is in one country and the client in another, and where two sets of rules may have views. It is a question for advisers in both places and nothing here is legal advice.
What the assistant gets from this
Protection, mostly. A record of what was done answers a question about an invoice, evidences a scope discussion, and is the thing to point at when a client believes something took less time than it did.
Which is why the arrangement works better when it is presented as the assistant's record rather than the client's monitoring. Same data, different ownership, entirely different effect on how long somebody stays.
Time zones
Agree an overlap window and record against it rather than expecting availability across a day. An assistant expected to answer at any hour is being asked for something nobody costed, and it is the commonest reason these arrangements sour.
Where to start
Agree the task categories together, in one conversation, before anything is recorded. An assistant who helped define them enters accurately; one handed a list guesses.
Multiple clients, one assistant
Most assistants work for several clients, and each client would like to believe they have priority. A record showing which hours went where settles the question factually rather than by assertion.
It also protects the assistant against the client who assumes exclusivity that was never agreed, which is a common source of friction and is entirely a scoping problem.
Handover, and why it matters here
Assistants move on, and an arrangement that lives entirely in one person's head takes months to rebuild. A record of what was done, in categories, is most of a handover document already.
Which is another respect in which the record serves the client without anybody being watched.
What a client should not ask for
Four requests that damage the arrangement
Screenshots. Covered above and worth repeating because it is the most common request in this market.
Availability outside the agreed window. An assistant answering at any hour is providing something nobody priced.
Access to their other clients' arrangements. Occasionally asked and never appropriate.
A minute-by-minute account. If the output is acceptable and the hours are plausible, the remaining question is about trust and is not answerable with data.
What an assistant should insist on
An agreed scope, an agreed window, agreed categories, and a record they can see and correct. Those four settle almost every dispute that arises in these arrangements, and asking for them at the start reads as professionalism rather than as suspicion.
Agencies in the middle
Many arrangements go through an agency rather than direct, which adds a third party with its own interest in the record. Establish early who the assistant's employer is, who sets how the work is done, and who sees the time data, because those three can sit with three different parties.
Where the agency provides the tracking, ask whether the assistant can see their own record. Frequently they cannot, which is the arrangement this page argues against and is worth discovering before signing rather than after.
A last note on trust
Every arrangement described here works because both people can see the same record. That is a small technical fact with a large effect: a shared record is evidence, and a record only one party can see is supervision.
If you are the assistant reading this
Propose the arrangement yourself. A contractor who arrives with a scope, categories and a shared record answers the client's unspoken worry before it is voiced, and does it on terms that protect them rather than on terms imposed later.
It also distinguishes you from the majority of applicants, which is worth more than the administrative cost of doing it.