FAQs

We have virtual offices located all around the country. You can get a virtual office Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide or in any capital city

Different centres have different features. If being able to meet at the centre is important to you then you should make sure that you pick a centre that includes meeting rooms.

A virtual office is a service at a real physical location, usually at an office building. Virtual offices can range from business addresses on main streets in city suburbs to high floor addresses on prestigious office towers in city CBD’s. The main thing you are subscribing to is an address, an address for your business. Your mail and packages will be delivered to your virtual business address and held for you by the service team at the virtual office. So your business can have an address at a fabulous office building that creates a great image for your brand, without the huge cost of a traditional office lease.

Most Virtual Office providers also have other business facilities at the exactly the same address, this will include meeting rooms, co-working spaces, a boardroom, kitchen facilities to make tea and coffee, etc and quite often bookable private offices. So you can have most of the meeting facilities you’d expect from a conventionally leased office space – at a fraction of the price and usually with a much better fit-out and great high floor views of the city.

Subscribing to a Virtual Office is really easy, the main thing is to find the right business address where your customers expect you to be. Price is usually not such an important aspect as most virtual offices are really economical. It’s best to list the attributes you want from your Virtual Office and make sure you’ve ticked off the list before you subscribe.

Choose a great location - Is it a locale that’s well respected? Is the location well positioned for lots of transport options? Does the virtual office have all the facilities you want – like chic meeting rooms and great co-working areas? Is your virtual office in an area and at a building that your clients and remote working employees would love to visit?

Choose a reputable provider - Go with a business that has a good industry reputation. Find a provider with at least ten years’ experience satisfying Australian businesses. Do your homework. Choose us.

Choose a package that suits – It’s always best to think about your business in the future, not just the day you subscribe. If you are a one person operation but you have dreams of expanding and employing staff, then pick a location that offers amenities like co-working spaces, mail notification and forwarding, and even virtual receptionists. You won’t have to pay for the services until you decide to use them, but at least you’ve subscribed to a virtual office that has options you can consider in the future.

Complete your ID verification – This is a simple procedure, an identity check. This process protects the integrity of the virtual office service and will bring you piece of mind knowing that your business address is managed ethically and responsibly. You’ll be in good company.

The price of a virtual office can differ according to the location, the package of services you choose and the period of your subscription. Longer terms such as a two year subscription are cheaper than short term 3 month or 6 month options. We have prestigious high floor virtual office addresses like Angel Place in Sydney CBD priced at $600 for six months or $1440 for a 2 year subscription.

Managing a virtual office is not the same as a conventional business office lease because you’ve left all the responsibilities to the Virtual Office provider. That’s one of the main advantages of a Virtual Office – less stress.

Mail Handling: You can customise your mail handling service any way you like. Some customers like to visit their virtual office address and pick up their mail themselves. Other customers may be travelling and find it’s much more convenient just to tell the service team to open and scan the correspondence, then email it, and shred the originals. How’s that for service!

Telephone Call Answering: Virtual Receptionists are also part of the suite of Virtual Business Services, and unlike call centres, our virtual receptionist services are staffed by highly trained local Australian receptionists. Instead of trying to answer the phone yourself and being constantly interrupted when calls come in, the wise option is just to utilise the virtual receptionist call answering service at your virtual office. We offer a free one week trial. It’s a very professional service, easy to understand and set up. You’ll wonder why you didn’t hand over this task before.

Meeting Rooms and Work Space: Whenever you need great surrounding to catch up with clients or WFH staff, or you just want a comfortable space to answer some emails, use the meeting rooms and co-working spaces at your virtual office address. Simply book and pay for what you use when you use it. With virtual office facilities, someone else manages all the stress and accountability – you’ve left the administration of running physical office spaces and answering phone calls to the experts. Now you can focus on your business. Doesn’t a virtual office make great sense?

Virtual office space simply refers to a virtual office. Its having an address and access to facilities and services that mirror ( and beat) the traditional office lease. That’s why it’s called Virtual Office Space.

Virtual offices offers lots of obvious advantages and quite a few other benefits that you’ll probably only realise for yourself once you’ve experienced the convenience. Here are seven key advantages:

Cost Savings: You get a great highly respected business address without the cost of a traditional office lease. The valuable image of a business address in a locale of business professionals can be priceless.

Flexibility: You can work from anywhere and know that your virtual office address is presenting a professional image to your customers 24/7. Now there is no need to commute to an office every day. You can run your business from anywhere, virtually.

Credibility: You’ve subscribed to instant respect, especially if you’ve subscribed to one of our prestigious high floor virtual offices like Level 23 Collins Square Tower 5 in Melbourne or Level 144 167 Eagle Street Brisbane in the heart of the CBD or Level 25 on 108 St Georges Terrace at the renowned iconic South32 office tower.

Scale up – FAST: Another great advantage of Virtual Offices is that you can scale up your business and build a national network of offices across Australia, same day. Think of the time you’d spend looking for office space in a capital the old way, and compare it to a same day Virtual Office footprint.

Support Services: A Virtual Office equipped with all the usual facilities and amenities is really just a business environment on call, a comfortable fit for purpose space for producing your best output. With meeting rooms, co-working spaces, virtual receptionist call answering, on-site parking, end of trip facilities, bookable private suites, scanning, printing and labelling services, mail and package handling and an experienced admin team to meet your business needs. – what more do you need?

Work-Life Balance: Another benefit of a Virtual Office is that you are not spending your precious time commuting back and forth each day just to sit in a physical office. If you wanted a great highly respected business address, well you’ve got one now, virtually. And if your children need to be picked up from school in the afternoon – you are there for them. There is no reason why your key staff should have to commute to the same office space each day and there is no reason you should too. And because you are not wasting precious time commuting you have more time to devote to your business and more time to devote to your family. Isn’t that we call a win, win?

Setting up a virtual office business is easy, it’s the same as setting up any other business, except you don’t have your own physical leased office space. Virtual workplaces are just like normal workplaces, everyone collaborates together for the objective of making the business a success, the only difference is that the staff work remotely.

Just like the conventional static business model, you have to define your product or services, determine your marketing strategy and build your brand. When you need to register a business address for ASIC, simply use your Virtual Office address.

A virtual office address is the business address of your virtual office. It is located at a real physical address, usually in an office building. All your clients will think it is where your physical offices are located and that’s the image you want them to have – a respected business address that presents the right profile. But you’ve gone virtual, so the great address doesn’t eat up all your business budget with rent and you can spend those precious funds directly on the business, instead of on cleaners and furniture and utilities and the monthly $$$ rent.

When you subscribe to a virtual office, the actual business address is your virtual office address. You can’t have a virtual office without a virtual office address. You’ve probably also read or heard about the term ‘Virtual Address’. A virtual address is simply an address at a real office building that you can use virtually – because you don’t need to pay for an office lease. Some providers of virtual addresses only offer an address and they even might expect you to come and pick up your mail and packages yourself.

A virtual address with all the extra amenities and functions that we’ve mentioned like meeting rooms and co-working spaces and business support is called a Virtual Office. The key to understanding all the terms is simply to check what services are offered.

A virtual assistant is someone performing a task for you, remotely. It could be some research, or contacting customers or compiling data or reviewing data. This person is not an employee, it’s just someone who works remotely and they have the skillset that you need.

Virtual assistants are very popular because you only pay funds to this person when you have a task or project for them to complete – they aren’t employees, but they can perform in the same way – without the cost overheads. Utilising remote virtual assistants who work from different time-zones means that you can schedule work to be completed while you are resting, allowing for a 24/7 work flow.

With our receptionist service you simply allocate yourself a local phone number (e.g. 02 for Sydney, 03 for Melbourne) during the FREE Trial sign up process and that is the number that we know your business by. Whether clients call that number directly, or you divert any other number (02, 07 / 1300 / 1800 / your mobile etc) to that number, we will answer and handle your calls instantly.

The FREE Trial is totally FREE and there is NO Obligation to continue with the service after the Free Trial. Whether you have 1 or 81 staff, all staff can be set up in the Free Trial to receive calls and messages and it is ALL totally FREE.

No. Most of our 2,500+ live answering service clients are existing businesses with an existing phone number that they have been using for years on their business cards and web site etc. When you set up the Free Trial with us you issue yourself a local phone number (e.g. 02, 03, 08 etc). This is the number we know your business by. You simply call forward / divert your existing telephone number to that phone number and instantly we are answering and handling your calls exactly as your own in-house receptionist would.

Yes it is true. There are NO security deposits and NO set up fees during or after the Free Trial.

We offer a month to month agreement, there are no long term contracts. You can change plans at any time for FREE to suit your call volumes and you can CEASE the service at any time by giving us just three working days notice. There are NO Cancellation Fees. We believe this puts the onus on us to perform. We aim to answer and handle every phone call exactly how you require. If we don't meet your expectations it is FREE to cancel the service instantly! You simply ask us to cancel the service and that's it. No questions asked.

With the Virtual Receptionist service a live receptionist answers and routs your calls exactly as you require such that callers will think our receptionist is sitting in your office. So a typical greeting might be: "Good morning/afternoon [your company name], Jenny speaking, how may I help you?"

Calls can be introduced and transferred to the relevant staff member or a message taken which is instantly sent via email and / or SMS to the relevant staff member.

The receptionists are also able to provide callers with information about your company such as your address, web site address, what your business does, your fax number etc.

The Message Express Message Service still has a live receptionist answering the phone in your business name but the greeting must be:

"Good morning/afternoon [your company name]. May I have your message please?"

This gives callers the impression we are an answering service. The receptionist cannot answer any questions but merely takes a message which can be emailed and / or SMS'd to you. Calls cannot be introduced and transferred to you or staff with the Message Express Service.

You can upgrade to the Virtual Receptionist service at any time from the Message Express Message Service and vice versa.

Instantly. It takes two or three minutes to set up the Free Trial. So literally we can be answering and handling your phone calls in a few minutes from now.

You are able to start using the service immediately after it has been set up which usually takes just a few minutes. As soon as it is set up we immediately start answering and handling your telephone calls.

Yes we do allocate an exclusive phone number to each client. That is the number that we know your business by. Hence we know how to answer the phone and handle your calls exactly as you require. This telephone number can be your main business number that you use on your business cards, letterhead, web site, advertising promotions etc. If you have an existing phone number, like most of our 2,500+ Virtual Receptionist clients, you simply call forward this on busy, no answer or permanently to the number we allocate you whereupon our receptionists will be answering your calls.

Yes. You are able to upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time to suit your call volumes which can vary from month to month. It is FREE to change plans.

With our Answering Service you are able to login to your account at any time and view your Usage Report which details by month EVERY phone call that we have ever answered. This allows you to see exactly how many calls you are receiving, who called, what we did with the call, messages sent etc. That way you can decide what plan is optimal for you at the time based on your actual call volumes. It is FREE to change plans, up or down, as your call volumes vary.

Our billing system is fully automated. We accept credit card payment only including AMEX, Mastercard and Visa. All invoices are available to be viewed online and printed / reprinted at any time by you via the web. Invoices are also emailed to you each month to save paper.

We do have account customers if you don't have a credit card but because this process is not automated we require at least 3 months of subscriptions in advance EFT'd to our bank account for account customers.

Yes. Our clients range from those with 2, 3 and 5 staff to those with 40, 50 and more staff. Just like your own in-house receptionist would, calls can be introduced to the relevant staff member and transferred to that staff member if they wish to take the call. Whether staff are at their desk in the office, at home, overseas or on the mobile, our receptionists can transfer calls to them. If staff are unavailable or do not wish to take the call, our receptionists will take a message which can be emailed and / or sent instantly by SMS to the relevant staff member/s. Via our online portal you are able to update staff details, availability and message settings at any time via the web.

Yes. This is referred to as "call overflow". A lot of companies require their phone calls to be answered only when they are unable to take the call themselves. This could be if you step out of the office for an hour, you are busy on another call, go to lunch or simply because you have multiple calls coming in at the one time. Simply divert your existing phone number (to the unique local phone number we allocate your business during the Free Trial setup process) on busy, no answer (e.g. after say 5 rings) or permanently. That way you are always in control and can relax knowing you will never miss another call.

Yes. A lot of our 2,500+ clients use the service as an overflow for when they are unable to take calls or when their own in-house receptionist is at lunch, sick or on annual leave. Our Live Answering Service is like an "on tap" receptionist that you can use for an hour, a day, a week or whenever you need to. You only pay for what you use so it is also very economical.

Any business that requires a professional receptionist to answer and route their telephone calls. Our 2,500+ clients include accountants, lawyers, printers, franchisors, franchisees, recruitment firms, mortgage brokers, insurance brokers, IT software, IT consultants, IT hardware engineers, cleaners, marketing agencies, public relations agencies, home businesses, commercial property, real estate agents, web based businesses, business consultants, training companies, shuttle (car / bus) services, restaurants as well as medium size companies with hundreds of staff.

Yes. Our receptionists can answer calls and explain that you are in a meeting or with a client. She will take a message and forward this message to you or the relevant staff member/s by email and / or SMS instantly.

Yes, our receptionists are able to answer basic questions that callers would expect your receptionist to know (e.g. directions to your premises, your street address, your postal address, fax number, web site, what your business does, the title of a particular staff member and such general questions). Even if you are overseas or on leave, as long as you let the receptionists know by updating your Operator Notes within your account, they will be able to tell the caller the answer i.e. when you will be back etc. Remember, callers will think your Virtual Receptionist is actually sitting in your office. So it is critical our receptionists know these basic answers. You are able to update information on your company or your personal status instantly at any time via the web which ensures the receptionists always have the information necessary to answer basic questions.

Yes. Whether you have 1, 2 or 102 staff, each staff member has their own settings in the Virtual Receptionist system. Staff can be "Available for Call Transfer" or "Do Not Disturb". This status can be changed by staff members at any time via the web. If a staff member is "Available for Call Transfer" the receptionist will attempt to call them on one of 3 "Find Me Numbers" (i.e. their mobile, desk extension, home office etc) and introduce the call. If you wish, the call can be transferred to you. If you do not want to take the call, are unavailable (i.e. say your mobile is turned off) the receptionist will take a message which will be sent instantly to the staff member as per their settings (i.e. by email and / or SMS). If your status is set to "Do Not Disturb" the receptionist will not even attempt to call you to introduce the call, they will simply take a message and forward it to you as per your settings (i.e. by SMS and / or Email).

Yes messages taken can be sent to multiple email addresses and / or multiple mobile numbers. You are able to amend the email address/s and mobile number/s receiving messages instantly at any time via the web.

Yes. Each of our Virtual Office services are independent of each other in the sense you can have just the Virtual Receptionist service and nothing else or you can add say a Prestigious Mail Address for a total Virtual Office solution.

We have been established for over 10 years with our Head Office in North Sydney. Our telecommunications network extends nationally to 66 telephone exchanges throughout Australian giving us the largest range of local numbers of any competitor.

All calls are answered 24/7 and 365 days of the year by our Australian based receptionists.

Yes. When you set up the receptionist service (e.g. the Free Trial) you allocate yourself a local telephone number. This is the phone number that we know your business by, so we can answer and handle your calls exactly as you require. Whether callers ring the unique phone number we allocate your business (e.g. if you are a start up business and don't have an existing phone number you may advertise that number as your number), or you divert any other number to it (e.g. your existing business number 02, 03, 1300, 1800, your mobile etc.), we will be answering your calls. The phone number we allocate your business is included as part of the subscription price.

Yes. We are able to add additional local phone numbers nationally including all major capital cities (e.g. 02, 03, 07, 08 etc) giving clients the impression that you're operating locally in a particular city. Of course with multiple numbers around Australia it appears you are operating nationally. Additional telephone numbers are only $5 a month per number.

We are able to assist you in obtaining a toll free 1300 and 1800 number if you prefer that over a local phone number (e.g. 02 for Sydney, 03 for Melbourne etc). Once your 1300 or 1800 number is set up (which generally takes around 4 hours with our providers) you simply ask your provider to "point" that number to the unique local phone number we allocate your business during the Free Trial setup process and instantly we are answering and handling your telephone calls. It's very straight forward.

We are able to add additional staff instantly so new staff can be receiving calls and messages. Whether you have 1, 2 or 202 staff our Live Answering Service is able to cater for your Live Answering needs.

If you require the 24x7 service it is FREE to have the service activated. All calls answered, irrespective of the time of day, are counted as part of your Virtual Receptionist monthly plan allowance.

After Hours Calls: Calls answered outside of 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday in the Customer's local time will incur a surcharge of $1.00 per call or $0.60 per call for Message Express.