Use our FAQs page to answer any queries, if you can't find the answer please use our contact form to send us your question. You may also find the answers to your questions in our Glossary
of Services, Terms & Conditions, or in our
Privacy Policy.
A virtual assistant is someone who works from his/her own office doing the tasks of an in-house member of staff without being on site. They never set foot in your office. If required, some virtual assistants will meet with clients if they are located nearby, but with this should not be necessary. At Freelancealot.co.uk you receive the benefit of someone who was trained at a secretarial college in Oxford, went straight into a job with a leading advertising agency (WCRS) in London, and went on to gain invaluable experience and skills working with top-level executives in England, Bermuda, and the Netherlands, and has been running thier own business since 2000.
Small-business owners and private individuals hire the services of a virtual asssistant (VA) as opposed to bringing in a temp or on-site freelancer. There may not be the space to hire a full-time assistant if it's a start-up business being run from a home office, for example. For some, it's because there's not enough work to warrant hiring a full-time or even part-time employee. For others it's support with one-off projects or support when their own assistant is on holiday or off sick.
Medium to large companies may need the services of a VA for occasional projects that require immediate and experienced attention. Students who may want their thesis' proofread, private individuals who may want to publish a club website or produce club flyers, consultants, trainers, entrepeneurs, sole-traders, start-ups, can all make use of the services that Freelancealot.co.uk provides.
When you hire a virtual assistant (or off-site freelancer) you pay only for the time and services you require without having to worry about tax and NI contributions, holiday and sick pay, etc.
As well as cutting out the cost of an agency, you don't have to provide extra desk space, computer hardware, software, or insurance cover as you would for permanent or temporary staff.
Yes, of course. We are flexible when it comes to how our services are utilised.
For example, if you need a website designed, you may require content to be typed, or your own content proofread or copy-edited. Once launched, you may need someone to answer email enquiries or send out a monthly newsletter. Keeping all these tasks under one roof ensures consistency in tone and layout, and means you don't have to deal with Tom, Dick AND Harriet!
We will always do our utmost to get work back to you well within your deadlines. We are able to offer an overnight service on really urgent jobs.
So, for example, if your meeting finishes at 6:30pm and you need your report typed up and ready to go by 8:00am the next morning, email your scanned notes or dictation and we'll do the rest.
You can send harcopy documents to us by post or courier. E-mail should be used only for small documents (under 5mb). Larger documents can be transferred using DropBox or uploaded to our server using our Client Area.
If you have very large audio or video files, please contact us as we can provide information on how to compress the files in order to make transfer easier.
Yes. If you have a scanner, scan the pages and save as a PDF document then send to us. We'll type the manuscript and return it as an editiable Word document. If you don't have a scanner,
please contact us to discuss the alternatives.
Yes. We can convert PDF documents to Word, .txt, or .rft documents. If you need another format, just let us know. We can also convert documents to PDF.
We are commissioned by you, so once you've paid for the work the copyright belongs to you (subject to third party rights, eg if you commission stock images to be used in the work). Where music or audio is supplied this clause may not apply; please contact us to discuss your specific requirements.
Yes. Send us the audio in whatever format it's in and we can remove sounds like coughs, pages turning, chairs scraping, etc. If required we can also 'time-shrink' audio, ie reducing the time taken to listen to a recording of a speech (by removing the silences, and quickening the delivery without creating a squeaky helium cartoon voice).
It's easy. You can pay by electronic transfer from your bank account to our bank account (we will provide our SWIFT and IBAN codes on the invoice). Alternatively, if you have a Paypal account you can use the Send Money function to pay us. If you don't have a Paypal account, you can pay by debit/credit card via a secure form provided via Paypal (you do not need to sign up for an account). Please read our Payment Terms for more information.
Yes, we accept UK debit/credit card payments. You can pay by debit/credit card via a secure form provided via Paypal (you do not need to sign up for an account). Please read our Payment Terms for more information.
We accept Sterling cheques and BACS payments for UK clients. International clients can pay by electronic bank transfer (using our SWIFT and IBAN codes). We also accept payments through Paypal from both UK and international clients. You can use their 'Send Money' function or pay using a debit/credit card (you do not need to have a Paypal account if paying by debit or cred card). All bank transaction fees must be paid at the client end. Please read our Payment Terms for more information.
For new clients, if the work is completed before full payment is received it is our policy to return digital documents with a Freelancealot.co.uk watermark. All digital documents will be
provided in PDF format with the watermark and locked in the 'read only' setting with a password. The actual text (Word, Excel, etc) document will only be provided once full payment is received.
If you are located outside the UK, we will ask for an initial payment of 30% of the quoted price. For both UK and international clients, if the project quote is over £ 300 a 50% deposit will be required before work will commence. Please read our Payment Terms for more information.
If you're a returning or on-going (long-term) client the above processes will be waived.
All website design projects will require a 25% deposit.
