AI vs VA vs office manager: what admin really costs a trade business

What tradies admin costs in Australia in 2026

You run the jobs all day and the office at night. There are six ways to buy tradie admin support. Here is what each one costs, when it works and what is left for you.

Prices are 2026 figures in Australian dollars, from SEEK salary data, the Clerks award, the ATO and the published rates of Australian VA, bookkeeping and admin providers. SEEK salaries are advertised averages and some already include super. Award rates are legal minimums. Check each provider for today's price.

To compare them fairly, turn each one into a month. An A$80,000 salary plus super is about A$7,500 a month. A casual admin for 15 hours a week is about A$2,400 to A$2,800 a month before super. An onshore VA for 10 hours a week is about A$1,300 to A$2,800 a month. Managed office admin services cost more per hour. One publishes A$670 a week plus GST for up to 10 hours.

The hidden costs people forget

The wage or the monthly fee is only the start.

• Hiring time. A Robert Half survey of 500 Australian hiring managers, reported in January 2026, found a permanent hire takes five weeks on average. That is five more weeks of admin at night.
• Training. A new admin has to learn your prices, your customers and your job software. So does a VA. Providers and reviewers say to allow two to six weeks before a VA works alone. Until then, you are the trainer.
• Managing. Someone has to hand out the work and check it. In a business with 6 to 15 staff, that is you.
• Super. It is 12% on top of wages. On an A$80,000 salary that is A$9,600 a year. Since 1 July 2026 you pay it each payday, not each quarter.
• Leave and turnover. A full-time employee gets 4 weeks of annual leave and 10 days of paid sick and carer's leave a year. Enquiries still arrive on those days. And when a good admin or VA leaves, you start again.
• After hours. Enquiries come in at 9pm and on Sunday. Under the Clerks award, ordinary hours end at 7pm on weekdays, and work past that is overtime at time and a half or more. A VA works a set shift. So the 9pm enquiry waits until morning, or it comes to you.

What each option is honestly best at

• Office manager. The best choice if you need someone in the building. They answer the phone with a real voice, deal with walk-ins and deliveries, and sort out problems with your crew. No VA or AI does all of that.
• Part-time admin or bookkeeper. Best for the books: bank reconciliation, BAS and payroll. That work comes in batches, so a few hours a week can cover it.
• Onshore VA. Best when customers will deal with them. Same time zone, and the trade-focused ones already know ServiceM8 and Xero.
• Offshore VA. The cheapest way to get a person full time. Good at steady back-office work, like data entry and invoice processing, once trained.
• AI receptionist. The cheapest fix for missed calls. It picks up day or night. Our guide to an AI receptionist for tradies has the prices.
• AI admin assistant. Best at the same chain of jobs, done the same way every time: reply to the enquiry, draft the quote, chase it, book the job, send the invoice, chase that too. It takes no leave, and every open quote gets chased.

Where each one falls short

• Office manager. The dearest option by far, and it is one person. When they are sick or on leave, the admin comes back to you.
• Part-time admin. The gaps. An enquiry that lands on Tuesday night waits for Thursday's shift.
• Onshore VA. The hours add up. 20 hours a week at A$35 an hour is about A$3,000 a month.
• Offshore VA. You train them, and you write down how your business works. Plan to check customer messages closely at the start. The 9pm enquiry still waits until morning.
• AI receptionist. It stops at the message. The quote, the follow-up and the invoice are still yours.
• AI admin assistant. It does not answer the phone with a voice. Buildcrew texts a missed caller back within minutes instead. It will not calm an upset customer, walk out to the yard or run your payroll. And it can get things wrong. That is why a quote only goes out when you say yes.

Where Buildcrew fits

Buildcrew is the AI admin assistant in the table. You talk to it on WhatsApp. It works inside ServiceM8, Simpro, AroFlo, Xero and MYOB, and it is live in 7 days. A real person on the Buildcrew team sets it up and checks its work. It is month to month. If it does not do the job in the first 30 days, you get every dollar back.

One example. Premier Group, a Perth scrap metal yard, had 13% of its leads going unanswered. With new enquiries landing on the office's WhatsApp in about 4 minutes, that fell to 3%. The owner, Ali Abdullah, calls it "work that would otherwise need another staff member or a VA". The case study also lists what went wrong along the way.

How to choose

• You need someone in the building. Walk-ins, deliveries, a crew to look after. Hire an office manager or a local admin.
• The books are the problem. Get a bookkeeper for a few hours a week. Nothing else on this list replaces one.
• You mainly lose jobs to voicemail. Start with an AI receptionist.
• You want a person, and you have time to train one. Hire a virtual assistant. In Australia if customers will deal with them. Offshore if the work is back office and cost matters most.
• The quotes, follow-ups and invoices are what you do at 9pm. That is repeatable admin. An AI admin assistant does it for about half the cost of a full-time VA.
• You can mix them. A bookkeeper for the books, an assistant for the daily admin, and you for the judgement calls.

More guides

• AI receptionist for tradies: what it costs, and what it leaves undone
• ServiceM8 AI: what it does, and what it leaves to you