A virtual assistant client onboarding questionnaire gets a new client's priorities, tools and boundaries in writing before your first day. Below is the full question list, ready to paste into a Google Form, plus an AI step that turns the answers into a follow-up email and a first-week plan.
Onboarding just means the setup period at the start of a new client relationship. Get it right, and the first week feels calm instead of chaotic.
Why Ask Before You Start
Most VA roles are now part-time and mixed. In VA Masters' study of 323 VA roles from its own database, opened from February to August 2026, 72% were part-time, and 46% were opened at exactly 80 hours a month, roughly 20 hours a week. Only 26% of roles were single-task.
That's one recruitment agency's data, but the lesson is useful. If you only have 20 hours a week across two or three kinds of work, you can't spend the first five figuring out what the client wants.
A questionnaire gets the basics in writing. It also makes you look organized from day one, which is half of what a new client is judging.
The Virtual Assistant Client Onboarding Questionnaire
Copy these questions into a Google Form or a doc. Delete what doesn't fit your services.
[MAYE: paste your Google Form "make a copy" link here]
Section 1: About you and your business
- Your name, business name and website.
- In one or two sentences, what does your business do, and who are your customers?
- What made you decide to hire a VA now?
- What would make the first 30 days a success for you?
Section 2: Scope and priorities
- List the tasks you want me to take over, starting with the most important.
- Which of these is urgent this week?
- Is there anything you never want me to handle or touch?
- Roughly how many hours a week or month have we agreed on?
- If I run out of hours, what should I do first: pause, ask, or finish the top priority?
Section 3: Communication
- How do you prefer to communicate (email, Slack, WhatsApp, other)?
- How fast do you expect a reply during my working hours?
- Do you want a regular update? If yes, how often and in what format?
- Do you prefer a weekly call, or messages only?
- Who else on your team will I work with, and what do they do?
Section 4: Tools and access
- Which tools do you use (email, calendar, task board, CRM, cloud storage, social media)?
- Which accounts will I need access to?
- How will you share access? (Please don't type any passwords into this form. A password manager or separate user accounts are safest.)
- Are there any files, SOPs or past examples I should read first?
Section 5: Schedule and availability
- What time zone are you in?
- What are your usual working hours?
- When do you need me online, if at all?
- Any holidays or busy seasons coming up?
Section 6: Voice and preferences
- How should I sound when I write on your behalf: formal, friendly, short?
- Share one or two emails or posts that sound like you.
- Any words, phrases or topics I should avoid?
- How do you like to give feedback on my work?
Section 7: AI and tools
- Are you OK with me using AI tools (like ChatGPT or Claude) to draft or research? For which tasks?
- Is there any client or business information that must never go into an AI tool?
- Do you have AI tools you'd like me to use, or that your company already pays for?
- How should I mark work that AI helped draft, if at all?
Section 8: Admin and billing
- Who should invoices go to, and how often?
- How will you track my hours or tasks?
- Is there a contract or NDA (non-disclosure agreement) to sign before I start?
Section 9: Anything else
- Anything about how you work that a new VA usually gets wrong?
- Anything else you'd like me to know?
How to Build It as a Google Form
Open Google Forms, start a blank form, and add each question. Use "Paragraph" for open answers and "Multiple choice" for things like preferred channel or reply speed. Section breaks keep it from feeling like a wall of questions.
Google's Forms help page explains how to store responses in a linked Google Sheet, so each client's answers land in one place.
Prefer Notion? Paste the list into a Notion page and send the client a copy, or use it as your own call script.
Send it a few days before your kickoff call, and tell the client it's fine to skip anything that doesn't apply. Then the call can be about the gaps, not the basics.
The AI Follow-Up Step
When the answers come in, don't just file them. Paste them into ChatGPT or Claude (minus anything sensitive) with this prompt:
"Here are a new client's onboarding answers. 1) Summarize their top three priorities in plain words. 2) List any answers that are vague, missing or contradict each other. 3) Draft a short, friendly follow-up email that thanks them and asks only about those gaps. 4) Suggest a first-week plan that fits [X] hours. Don't invent details that aren't in the answers. Answers: [paste]."
Then read everything before it goes anywhere. Check that the priorities match what the client actually wrote, and that the email sounds like you.
The gap list is the real win. Say the client named social media as a top priority but listed no social accounts under tools. That goes on the list. It catches the "we'll figure it out later" answers before they turn into a messy week three.
What This Means for VAs
A questionnaire is quiet proof that you run things like a business. Clients notice when they don't have to explain the same thing twice.
Section 7 matters more than it looks. It opens the AI conversation early, before a client assumes AI makes everything instant. My post on setting AI expectations with clients has scripts for that talk.
And once you know the tasks, write them down as SOPs with my free VA SOP template.
Make your own copy of the questionnaire and send it to your next new client before your kickoff call. You'll walk in already knowing what matters to them.
