How to Bill Clients as a Virtual Assistant

As a VA, your billing lives or dies on the hour. Whether you sell prepaid blocks of time or bill what you actually track, Fee-Lion lets you package the work, send it for a one-click payment, and put your monthly retainers on autopilot — no end-of-month spreadsheet reconciliation required.

Sell prepaid hour-block packages

If you offer “10 hours for $X” packages, the cleanest move is to bill the block up front as a unit line item. Units are simply quantity × rate, which maps perfectly to “hours × your hourly rate.”

1. From the left sidebar, open Estimates and start a new estimate for your client.
2. Add a unit line item — set the quantity to the hours in the block (say, 10) and the rate to your hourly rate.
3. Layer in any discounts (a loyalty rate for a returning client) or surcharges (rush turnaround) so the price tells the whole story.
4. Apply your tax and, if you want payment before you start, set a deposit % — for a prepaid block, 100% is fair game.
5. Send it. Your client approves in the magic-link portal with no login, and you convert the approved estimate straight to an invoice with a Pay button.

When the client pays by card, the money lands in your own Stripe account (minus a small platform fee). Then you just draw down the hours as you work — and sell the next block when they run low.

Tip: Save your standard hour-block as an estimate template under Settings → Preferences → Estimates, and set your default deposit there too. Next package goes out in seconds instead of from scratch.

Bill the time you actually tracked

Prefer to bill real, logged hours instead of fixed blocks? Use built-in time tracking so every minute flows onto an invoice without retyping it.

1. Open Time in the sidebar and log your work — start the timer while you’re heads-down, or add a manual entry after the fact.
2. Note what you did per entry (inbox triage, scheduling, research) so the line items read clearly to your client.
3. When it’s time to bill, create an invoice and bill tracked time to the invoice — your hours arrive as ready-made line items.
4. Review, adjust the rate if needed, and send. The client pays by card right from the invoice.

This is the sweet spot for VAs whose hours swing month to month — the invoice always reflects exactly what you did.

Put monthly retainers on autopilot

Most VA relationships are ongoing, so don’t rebuild the invoice every month. A recurring invoice sends itself on your schedule.

• Set up a recurring monthly invoice for the retainer amount so it goes out automatically — no calendar reminders, no missed months.
• Turn on auto-pay so the client’s saved card is charged each cycle. You wake up paid.
• Confirm your billing rhythm in Settings → Preferences under payment terms, so due dates and tax defaults are consistent across every invoice.

Have a client who buys a fresh hour-block every month? Combine the two: a recurring invoice for the standing block, with extra tracked time billed on top when a heavy month calls for it.

Tip: Living in your inbox already? The ⌘K command palette lets you fire off “create invoice for Acme” or “pay INV-204” without hunting through menus — perfect for the VA who context-switches all day.

What’s next

• Set up a monthly retainer with recurring invoices
• Bill tracked time to an invoice
• Turn on auto-pay
• Connect Stripe to get paid