You didn’t start your business to spend hours reconciling credit card statements or chasing down expense reports. But somehow, financial tasks like these always end up on your to-do list, late at night, between client calls, or over the weekend when you should be recharging.
Whether you're a solo entrepreneur, a startup founder juggling everything yourself, or leading a small team without a dedicated finance department, the admin side of bookkeeping can take up more time (and energy) than it should.
That’s where a bookkeeping virtual assistant comes in. Not a CPA, not a financial strategist, but a reliable, trained admin pro who can take over the routine accounting tasks that slow you down.
In this post, we’ll break down what a bookkeeping VA can do, what they can’t, and how the right support can free up your time and give your team the breathing room to focus on what really matters.
Table of contents
- What Is a Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant?
- What Does a Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant Do?
- What a Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant Can’t Do
- Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant for Bookkeeping
- What Prialto Can Do
What Is a Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant?
Think of a bookkeeping virtual assistant (VA) as the right-hand admin for your finance team. They’re not CFOs or controllers, but they’re the ones making sure the numbers are clean, the invoices tracked, and that nothing slips through the cracks.
Bookkeeping VAs help with the day-to-day record keeping that keeps your financial records in order. That could mean entering expenses, reconciling financial transactions, organizing receipts, or chasing down missing info from vendors or internal teams.
They're especially useful if your team is stretched thin or doesn’t need a full-time in-house hire, whether you're working with a freelance bookkeeper or using part-time help.
What Does a Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant Do?
A bookkeeping VA can wear a lot of hats depending on what your business needs. Whether you're a founder juggling finance tasks on top of everything else, or a lean accounting team drowning in admin, a VA can step in and take on the back-office work that eats up your time.
With a VA managing this work, your team stays focused on higher-level goals without falling behind on the basics.
From data entry and expense tracking to organizing financial reports and accounts receivable follow-ups, they handle the critical tasks that keep your financial records clean and accurate.
Data and Record Management
Let’s be honest, manual data entry is time-consuming, but it’s also the foundation of good bookkeeping.
A bookkeeping VA can:
- Enter expenses
- Update spreadsheets
- Log receipts
- Keep your accounting software tidy and up to date
- Categorize transactions
- Attach documentation
- Double-check for missing data
- Manage validation processes
Having a bookkeeping VA helps make sure your records stay clean and audit-ready. Instead of your team spending hours sorting through expense reports or syncing bank statements, a VA keeps everything organized and consistent from the get-go.
Accounts Payable and Billing
Bookkeeping VAs can take over time-consuming billing tasks like sending invoices, tracking payments, and following up on overdue accounts. They also help with vendor payments, so everything is processed and recorded correctly.
By working directly in your accounting tools like QuickBooks or Xero they help reduce errors and keep things moving. It’s a simple way to boost efficiency without overloading your in-house team.
Expense Management
Expense management is one of the most common tasks business leaders outsource to a bookkeeping VA. VAs can:
- Log receipts
- Categorize expenses
- Reconcile statements
- Flag discrepancies
This keeps your financial transactions accurate and gives your team more time for analysis, forecasting, and strategy.
Bank Reconciliation
Bank reconciliation is key to accurate bookkeeping, but it’s also one of the most time-consuming tasks sitting on your team’s plate. And, once you fall behind on bank reconciliation work, it stacks fast—stealing your team’s attention.
A virtual assistant can help by:
- Using templates and automation tools to speed up the process
- Matching transactions and identifying discrepancies
- Providing regular updates to keep your books accurate
- Flagging and escalating transactions
With a VA managing reconciliation, your team can stay focused on higher-level financial work without falling behind on the basics.
Management of Financial Software
Bookkeeping VAs can work directly inside your small business tech stack, using tools like QuickBooks, Xero, or NetSuite to keep everything up to date.
They help:
- Monitor accounts, expenses, and payroll
- Flag issues or discrepancies for your team
- Keep your systems running smoothly behind the scenes
In many cases, your VA can become the software owner, keeping your bookkeeping software up-to-date and clearing the way for your company’s financial health. With a VA using your tools, you get extra support without extra overhead. They act like an extension of your team, so nothing is missed.
Reporting
Bookkeeping VAs can take the lead on generating templated financial reports—monthly, annual, or ad hoc. They’ll pull the data, generate reports, and share them with the right stakeholders. Are your reports automated? Your VA can take responsibility for reviewing, distributing, and maintaining them to ensure nothing is ever missed!
They can also flag inconsistencies or trends, helping your team catch issues early and keep your balance sheets accurate.
What a Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant Can’t Do
While bookkeeping and accounting virtual assistants are great at handling your day-to-day admin work, they’re not a replacement for a CPA or financial strategist.
They’re not licensed accountants, and they won’t develop your tax strategy, file your returns, or make big-picture financial decisions. Instead, they support your existing finance function, taking care of the details so your team can focus on the strategy.
Think of them as execution pros. They’re here to keep things organized, accurate, and efficient, not to steer the financial ship.
Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant for Bookkeeping
Whether you’re a small business owner, solo founder, or part of a growing finance team, a virtual bookkeeping assistant can make a real impact.
By taking repetitive, time-consuming tasks off your plate, they help your team focus on strategy, growth, and decision-making.
Here are a few key benefits:
- Give your team their time back. Let your in-house staff focus on high-impact work, not data entry.
- Prevent burnout. Offload the routine tasks that often lead to fatigue and missed details.
- Reduce your overhead. Get expert support without the cost of hiring full-time employees.
- Save money. Only pay for the support you need, with no extra benefits or onboarding costs. It’s the smarter choice when weighing outsourcing vs. hiring full time staff.
- Get a second set of eyes. VAs can catch errors, flag inconsistencies, and keep your records clean.
- Get a scalable solution. Need more support during tax season or monthly close? VAs flex with your needs.
Take Underscore VC. The company began with two Prialto virtual assistants helping with meeting coordination and financial data management. As demands increased, they added a third assistant without any disruption:
“There’s also huge value in the flexibility to add resources when workloads grow. What I appreciate most is the ability to scale quickly without retraining or rehiring. We’ve expanded our assistant support as our firm has grown, and it’s been seamless.”
Whether you need full-time support or just a fractional assistant for a few hours a day, a bookkeeping VA gives you the flexibility to scale with your business cycle and unique needs.
What Prialto Can Do
Not all virtual assistant services are equipped to handle financial admin, but Prialto is. Our fully managed model gives you more than just a VA. We deliver a complete system to help you stay on top of your bookkeeping, reduce admin burden, and keep your records accurate.
You get a trained assistant, a dedicated support team, and a system designed to plug into your accounting workflows and scale with your business.
Here’s why business leaders trust Prialto for bookkeeping support:
- Expertise in financial admin and tool usage. Prialto VAs are vetted and trained to handle core bookkeeping tasks like entering expenses, reconciling accounts, sending invoices, and managing payment reminders. We have internal expertise with most popular expenses and accounting tools, and provide internal training to VAs as we learn new tools. We take care of the competency training, all we need is to learn and document your processes.
- Built-in performance management. No need to train or micromanage. Our VAs go through four weeks of onboarding and receive continuous coaching from our engagement manager team, who ensure quality and consistency across all financial workflows.
- Consistent coverage. If your assistant is out, a trained backup steps in. Your bookkeeping tasks don’t skip a beat, and your books stay up to date.
- Scalable support. Our service scales to match your workload, no extra hiring or training needed. You can increase or decrease the hours we cover to match your evolving or seasonal needs.
- Cost-effective and secure. Get high-quality bookkeeping support without the costs of a full-time hire. Plus, our strict SOC-2 Type 1 compliant security protocols help keep your financial data safe.
Whether you need help with cash flow tracking, accounts receivable, or day-to-day record keeping, Prialto provides top-notch support backed by years of experience helping leaders like you.
If you need help beyond bookkeeping, we also support sales, admin, marketing, and HR teams and their unique needs—helping you streamline operations across all departments.
Ready to see how much time you could save with a bookkeeping virtual assistant? Talk to our team today.