Contract guide · 2026
Virtual assistant contract template: retainer hours, scope, and credentials
A VA contract has to fence the retainer — what hours, what scope, what happens when the work overflows — and govern the account credentials a client hands over. Here's what it covers.
Virtual-assistant work is a retainer that quietly expands: more hours, more tasks, more logins. The clauses that protect you are the monthly-hours boundary with overflow billing, the scope definition, and the credential/confidentiality terms.
Here's what a defensible VA agreement covers in 2026, each mapped to a clause BookNox generates automatically.
The clause checklist
What a virtual assistant contract must cover
- Contracted monthly hours — a defined hours-per-month block billed monthly in advance, with unused hours not rolling over.
- Response-time SLA — acknowledgment of new requests within a stated number of business hours during your stated business hours — and you're not on-call outside them.
- Overflow billing — hours beyond the block billed at your overflow rate, prorated in 15-minute increments, with the client's prior written approval before any overflow is logged.
- Scope of work + amendments — covered task categories listed in the package; anything outside requires a written scope amendment before work begins.
- Credentials handling — you use a password manager, never share credentials, and return or destroy all access within 7 days of termination.
- Mutual confidentiality (survives termination) — both sides keep business information shared during the engagement confidential, and the obligation continues after the contract ends.
Every BookNox contract also carries the clauses that protect any service booking: a non-refundable deposit tied to reserving the date, a cancellation policy written as liquidated damages (with a rebooking credit so it survives a court's reasonableness test), a force-majeure clause, a liability cap with the legally-required carve-out for death and personal injury, binding arbitration (AAA/JAMS) with a small-claims carve-out, general provisions (severability, entire-agreement, no-waiver), and an ESIGN/UETA-compliant electronic signature block with a SHA-256 tamper-evidence hash.
Generic templates vs your craft
Why a generic template gets virtual assistants in trouble
Generic freelance templates don't fence a retainer — so the agreed 20 hours becomes 30, scope creeps from inbox triage to full project management, and there's no written overflow rate to bill against. They also ignore the credential reality of VA work: you're handed logins to email, calendars, and payment processors, and a generic template says nothing about how those are secured or returned.
BookNox's VA contract pins monthly hours with prior-approval overflow billing, requires a written scope amendment for new task types, and governs credentials explicitly — the clauses retainer work actually needs.
How BookNox generates this contract
From the booking, not a blank document.
You don’t fill in a template. Your client builds the booking on your quote page — package, date, options — and BookNox generates the finished virtual assistant contract with the right clauses already in it, freezes the wording at send time, and collects an ESIGN/UETA-compliant signature and the deposit through one link. The signed PDF carries a SHA-256 tamper-evidence hash and a full audit trail (IP, user agent, timestamps).
Educational summary, not legal advice. Have a licensed attorney in your state review any contract before you rely on it.
Common questions
virtual assistant contract FAQ
- What happens when the work goes over the contracted hours? Overflow hours are billable at your stated overflow rate, prorated in 15-minute increments, but only with the client's prior written approval before any overflow is logged. Unused hours within a month don't roll over.
- How is scope creep handled? The package lists covered task categories; any task outside that list requires a written scope amendment before work begins. That keeps "can you also..." from silently expanding the engagement.
- What about the client's passwords and accounts? The credentials clause requires you to use a password manager, never share credentials with third parties, and return or destroy all access within 7 days of termination, with mutual confidentiality that survives the contract.
- Is this a downloadable VA template? BookNox generates the finished VA contract from the booking and collects the e-signature and first payment in one link, $29/month flat.
What it costs you
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