I'm in the process of creating my policies and procedures and this thread has been a tremendous help. You all shared so much information that I never even crossed my mind. Thanks again!

Just read this whole thread. It's the only one I've read from beginning to present. It's fantastic.

I listened to the archived teleseminar that Tess mentioned in the first post: Establishing Your Most Important Business Policies. I learned an awful lot there. I think the most important lesson was "having business policies" makes you appear professional and prepared. Also, is it's in the business policy, it's less likely to be argued with.

Write your Policies, people!

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Carrie Hawk

Guess I should have added this.

Here's the link to Establishing Your Most Important Business Policies
http://www.solo-e.com/classes/record...cies-362.shtml

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Carrie Hawk

I just finished creating my contract last weekend and my first client signed it today and returned it with a 50% deposit on the project work! She told me "I was going to hire an office assistant, but decided just to use your services and save what I normally would spend on benefits etc." !!! Hurray!
So my policies are: 1) have a signed contract & deposit 2) provide excellent customer service and 3) late payments result in ceased work until payments resume in full.

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Carol Aldridge
www.ProgressiveBusinessSolutions.net

Being a newbie and having none of this set up as yet, I find this post to have lots of value. It will save me a lot of research and better yet, it will save me a lot of mistakes!
Phyllis, what a great story and inspiration. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you to all.
Mary

Thank you all for sharing your advice. I like the idea of corresponding only with email/chat that way I have a record to go back to.

Great information! I better get a notebook to jot all this down. :-)

What a marvelous thread! Thank you, Tess, for kick-starting it.

As a newbie, I am still fleshing out policies and procedures and as such don`t have much to share. As I read through this thread, I copied and pasted shared ideas into a raw Policies document that I will organize and fine tune into a pro forma policy document that I'd be happy to share when it's complete. It can be my `contribution` to the thread.

Many of these ideas hadn't crossed my mind and will surely save me some grief and frustration down the road. Thank you all for being so willing to allow me to benefit from the wealth and wisdom of your experience.

It is encouraging to me that there is such kindred strength among VAs. The industry will only be strengthened by the willingness to build and grow together. Thank you so much for paving the way to recognized, credible industry status. It is professionals like you who help to make success possible for start-ups like me.

Sincerely,

As a newbie I am finding this very useful

The original post in this thread has been updated to include the following:

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11/2010 ADMIN UPDATE:

Big thanks to VAF member AssetVirtual - Daniela was generous enough to compile, organize and edit this list into a PDF for download for use by other members. Thank you Daniela! Grab the document here, print it out and use it to help you develop your own business policies.

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