Martyn Butler, founder · Updated 5 October 2026 · 6 minute read
Why monthly, and why written
Day-to-day direction happens in the daily update and a short weekly catch-up. They deal with this task and that message. The monthly review is different: it steps back and asks whether the work as a whole is going the way you want.
Write it down. A review that only happens in conversation is remembered differently by each of you, and by month three nobody can say whether things are getting better. A page of notes, kept in one place, gives you both a record and gives your VA something to work from.
It is also fairer. A VA who gets a clear written review every month knows where they stand. One who gets silence, then a sudden complaint, does not.
Agree the measures first
You cannot review work against a standard nobody wrote down. Before the first review, agree three to five measures with your VA. Start from what good looks like in the role, and make each one something you can check.
- Speed: enquiries answered within an hour during their shift.
- Completion: recurring tasks done by the day they are due.
- Accuracy: mistakes that reached a customer or cost money, and how many.
- Process: procedures followed, and questions asked when one did not fit.
- Communication: a daily update sent before they finish, every working day.
Measure the work, not the hours
Hours worked are worth knowing, because you are paying for them. They are not a measure of how well the job is done. A VA who clears the inbox in four hours has done better than one who takes six, so review the output first and the hours second.
Keep the measures stable. If you change them every month, you lose the one thing a monthly review gives you: a line you can follow from one month to the next.
The template
Use the same headings every month, in the same order. Five are enough:
| Heading | What goes in it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| The measures | Each agreed measure, and where it landed this month | Enquiries: answered within the hour on all but three days |
| What went well | Two or three specific things, with an example of each | Caught a double booking before the guest arrived |
| What slipped | One to three specific things, with the date and what happened | Two supplier invoices filed without being checked against the order |
| One change | The single thing to do differently next month, and how you will both know it happened | Every invoice checked against its order before filing, noted in the update |
| What they need from you | Access, answers, decisions or a procedure that is missing | A written rule on which suppliers can be paid without asking |
Before the meeting
- Keep a running note through the month: a line when something goes well and a line when something slips. Memory favours the last week.
- Ask your VA to fill in the template first, on their own. What they notice, and what they miss, tells you a lot.
- Pull the measures from wherever the work is recorded, so the numbers are facts and not impressions.
- Read their version before you meet, and mark where you agree and where you do not.
Running the 30 minutes
- Five minutes on the measures. Where they are good, say so. Where they are not, note it and move on: the detail comes next.
- Ten minutes on what went well and what slipped, starting with what went well.
- Ten minutes agreeing the one change, and how you will both check it next month.
- Five minutes on what they need from you. Write your own actions down too.
- Afterwards, send the finished page to your VA the same day, so you both have the same record.
How to talk about what slipped
Talk about the work, not the person. "Two invoices on the 12th were filed without checking the order" is something you can both look at and fix. "You are not careful enough" is not.
Then ask what got in the way before you decide what went wrong. Most slips have one of three causes: there was no written procedure, the procedure was unclear, or the VA knew what to do and did not do it. The first two are yours to fix. Only the third is about the person.
Ask them what would have stopped it. They are closer to the work than you are, and a fix they suggest is one they will keep.
Only one change
It is tempting to list everything. Resist it. Several changes at once means none of them sticks, and the next review becomes a list of the same things again.
Pick the change that would make the biggest difference, make it specific enough to check, and look at it first next month. When it is done, it becomes part of the procedure and you pick the next one.
The first month is different
In the first month, review weekly rather than monthly, using the same template. Your VA is still learning the work, you are still finding the gaps in your procedures, and a month is too long to leave a misunderstanding alone.
Expect the measures to be rough at first. Some will turn out to be impossible to check, and some will measure the wrong thing. Adjust them at the end of the first month, then leave them alone.
Keep every review in one place
Keep the reviews in a single document or folder that you both can see, newest first. Reading three months side by side shows you what one review never can: whether the same slip keeps coming back, whether the one change stuck, and whether the work is getting better.
It also matters if things go wrong later. A dated record of what was agreed, and what happened next, is far more use than your memory of a conversation.
When the review shows a real problem
One bad month is information. The same slip two months running, after the procedure has been written, signed and explained, is a pattern, and it needs a more formal conversation: what has to change, by when, and what happens if it does not.
Keep that conversation in writing too. How you end an arrangement, if it comes to that, depends on the contract and on whether they are an employee or a contractor, so take advice before you act.
What our workspace gives you
In the Mango & Co. workspace, the measures do not have to be pulled together by hand. You get a weekly report written from the work that was actually logged, and a scorecard with the measures you agree, seen by you, your VA and us.
When you plan the role with us, you tell us what good looks like, and we turn that into the measures on your VA's weekly report. The monthly review then starts from four weeks of records rather than from memory.
If you are still deciding whether a VA would work for your business, our free plan at /fit takes about three minutes and tells you which jobs to hand over first.