VAs and Staff: What Your Assistant Can Do For You

You hired a VA to handle scheduling and email triage. Great. But you do not want them owning your appraisals. You ARE the appraiser of record. What you DO want is for them to send carrier emails as if they came from you, book inspections on your calendar, and prep documents without making the carrier think a brand-new person joined the file.

Without a proper delegation model, every VA email goes out from their personal address. The carrier sees "Alyssa from VirtualHelp" replying to a case they thought you were handling, and they get confused or suspicious. Worse, your VA might not have permission to touch your calendar at all, so booking inspections turns into a back-and-forth instead of a one-click action.

This article is for anyone with staff. It covers the three roles, what each can do by default, what requires an explicit permission grant, and how the "acting on behalf of owner" identity model keeps your customer-facing identity consistent. Solo appraisers with no staff can skip this article.

AwardLettr is appraiser-centric. The owner of a workspace IS the appraiser, and every appraisal is owned by them. Staff and VAs are assistants. They can take a huge amount of busywork off the owner's plate (scheduling, messaging, document prep, file uploads) without ever appearing as the appraiser of record on a case. This article walks through what each role can do, what is on by default, and what the owner has to explicitly grant.

The three roles

Owner

The appraiser. Owns all appraisals, all revenue, and all settings. There is exactly one owner per workspace, and they are the customer-facing person on every file.

Admin

Can manage workspace settings, billing, and team but does not own appraisals or revenue. Useful for an office manager or business partner who handles operations.

Staff (VA)

An assistant. Can be granted permissions to schedule, message, upload, and generate documents on the owner's behalf. Never owns work and never appears as the appraiser of record.

What staff can do

Staff capabilities split into two groups: those that are on by default (read-only or low-risk actions any assistant needs) and those gated behind explicit permissions that the owner has to grant in Team settings.

Capability	On by default for staff	Requires explicit grant
View appraisals and directory	Yes	No
Read messages and activity	Yes	No
Upload files to an appraisal	Yes	No
Add and edit stakeholders on an appraisal	Yes	No
Manage the owner's schedule (book, reschedule, cancel)	No	manage_schedule
Send messages on behalf of owner	Yes	No
Generate documents (reports, awards, invoices)	Yes	No
Send for e-signature via owner's SignWell account	No	use_signwell
Edit directory entries (rename carrier, edit appraiser)	No	manage_directory
Edit workflow templates	No	manage_workflow_templates
Manage billing and subscription	No	manage_billing
View revenue dashboards	No	view_revenue
Delete appraisals	No	delete_appraisals

Start narrow, grant as you go

When a new VA joins, start with the defaults. Add permissions like manage_schedule and use_signwell only when the VA actually needs them. It is faster to grant a permission when asked than to revoke one after a mistake.

Acting on Behalf of Owner

When a VA sends a status update or message from your workspace, the recipient sees it as coming from YOU, not the VA. The outbound From address is the owner's outbound email (the one your customers know), not the VA's personal AwardLettr login. This keeps the customer-facing identity consistent. Bob the carrier does not see "Alyssa replied" when really it was Alyssa-acting-as-Colby.

Auth email vs. outbound email

A VA's auth email (the one they sign in with) and the outbound email on a workspace are different things. AwardLettr resolves the workspace owner's outbound email for every customer-facing send, no matter which staff member triggered it. The audit log still records WHO sent it, so you can always see internally that Alyssa was the one who clicked send.

Pick your situation

Solo owner, no staff

You are the only user on the workspace. You can ignore this article entirely. Skip to scheduling or workflow articles for what to set up next.

Firm owner with VAs

Go to Settings, Team. Invite each VA, set their role to staff, and grant the permissions they need. Revisit the grants after their first week as you see what they actually do.

Staff member

Read the table above so you know what you can do without asking. If you hit "you do not have permission" on an action, message your owner with the permission name and they can grant it in seconds.

The directory cascade guard

Directory entries (carriers, adjusters, appraisers, umpires) are linked to every appraisal that uses them. So if you rename a carrier in the directory, the new name applies to every linked file. This is intentional and powerful when you actually want it. It is dangerous when you do not.

Directory renames cascade across linked appraisals

Editing a carrier, appraiser, adjuster, or umpire name in the directory cascades to every appraisal that links to that entry. AwardLettr now prompts you with a count of affected appraisals before applying the change. If you did not expect 12 appraisals to update, click Cancel. This guard was added after a VA accidentally typed over a "placeholder" entry and the wrong name propagated to 12 active files.

How to grant or revoke a permission

Open Team settings

Navigate to /dashboard/company/team. You will see every member with their role and permissions.

Click the staff member

A panel opens with each permission as a toggle. Permissions are grouped by area (scheduling, documents, directory, billing).

Toggle the permission

Changes take effect on the next request the staff member makes. There is no save button; the toggle is the save.

Revoking is graceful

If you revoke a permission while a staff member is mid-action, the action in flight completes. Future attempts are blocked. So revoking manage_schedule while your VA is in the middle of booking a slot will not corrupt that booking. The next booking will be denied.