AfterDesk
EN
Apply

Free · No paid tier · No certificate fee

Learn the work.Keep the certificate.

Real courses, real exams, and a certificate that stays yours, free and open before you are approved.

29
courses
223
lessons
348
exam questions
Create a free account

You can start the first course tonight.

How it works

Read, sit the exam, keep the certificate.

  1. 01

    Read

    Short lessons per course, written for the work rather than for a syllabus.

  2. 02

    Sit the exam

    Twelve scenario questions. Pass at ten. Three attempts a day. The bar is the point.

  3. 03

    Keep it

    The certificate is permanent, on your profile, and visible when we review your application.

The catch

There isn't one. Here's why.

Work that passes review the first time costs us less and pays you faster. Teaching that properly is cheaper for us than fixing it afterwards, so the training is free because it is in our own interest, not as a favour.

No paid tier. No certificate fee. No upsell. Not now, not later.

The curriculum

Everything, and what is in it.

Foundations

Take these first: they apply to every kind of task.

4

Working on AfterDesk

This is the course every worker should take first. It walks the full path of a task, from the moment a client posts it to the moment your payout is released, and explains the rules that hold the platform together: fixed payouts, first-come claiming, the wall between you and the client, and what QC and your record mean for the work you see. Finish it and you will know exactly what a claim commits you to.

  1. How AfterDesk Works
  2. The Claim Is a Commitment
  3. Reading a Brief Properly
  4. You Never Meet the Client
  5. Delivery and the Note
  6. QC, Rejection, and Your Record
  7. Working the Overnight Rhythm

7 lessons · ~31 min · exam + certificate

Business English for deliverables

Writing is part of every deliverable you send, and clear writing gets approved faster. This course teaches plain professional English for written work and delivery notes: short sentences, a neutral confident tone, the four-part delivery note, the grammar slips North American readers notice first, and proofreading passes that catch real errors. You finish able to write deliverables that pass QC without a second read.

  1. Writing that gets approved
  2. Tone: neutral, confident, never sorry
  3. The delivery note formula
  4. Articles, tense, and agreement
  5. Comma splices and over-formal habits
  6. Facts, proofreading, and the final pass

6 lessons · ~33 min · exam + certificate

Spreadsheet essentials

Most overnight tasks pass through a spreadsheet at some point: a list to clean, two exports to reconcile, a CSV that arrives broken. This course teaches the tool as we actually use it, in Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc, both free. You finish able to protect the original file, find problems you cannot see, match data across sheets, survive the CSV traps, and deliver work an operator can approve on the first pass.

  1. Never touch the only version
  2. Sort and filter are investigation tools
  3. The dirt you cannot see
  4. Flag duplicates before you delete them
  5. Reconcile two sheets with lookups
  6. The CSV minefield
  7. Deliver without undoing your work

7 lessons · ~34 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Professional habits & security

Skill gets you your first task. Habits get you the next hundred. This course covers the six practices that keep a worker trusted and durable here: honest deadlines, clean files, strict confidentiality, a secure account, sustainable night work, and a record that compounds. Finish it and you will know exactly what builds trust on this platform, and what quietly destroys it.

  1. Deadline honesty
  2. File hygiene
  3. Confidentiality is a hard rule
  4. Account security
  5. Working nights without burning out
  6. The long game

6 lessons · ~20 min · exam + certificate

The toolkit

The jobs a virtual assistant is hired to do, anywhere, not only here.

12

Email and inbox management

Running someone else's inbox is the most common virtual assistant job and the one clients trust least easily. This course gives you a triage system that survives three hundred messages a day, the free Gmail setup that does the sorting for you, clear rules on what to send and what to escalate, and a handover note that shows exactly what happened while your client slept.

  1. What running an inbox really means
  2. Triage that survives 300 messages
  3. Labels, filters and search that work
  4. What you send, draft, or escalate
  5. Writing in someone else's voice
  6. Templates that do not sound robotic
  7. Handling angry and difficult email
  8. The follow-up loop
  9. Daily routine and the handover note

9 lessons · ~69 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Calendar and scheduling

This course teaches you to own someone's calendar across time zones: converting and writing times that cannot be misread, catching daylight saving before it moves a meeting, configuring free booking pages, protecting the day with buffers and focus blocks, auditing recurring meetings that stopped earning their hour, and rescheduling without damage. You finish able to run a confirmation habit that keeps a schedule correct while your client sleeps.

  1. Owning a calendar you never see
  2. Time zones, written correctly
  3. Daylight saving, the classic trap
  4. Booking links and their limits
  5. Buffers, focus blocks, travel time
  6. Recurring meetings and how they rot
  7. Scheduling across three calendars
  8. Rescheduling and cancelling cleanly
  9. Agendas, prep and confirmation

9 lessons · ~68 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Customer support and help desk

Front-line support is judgement under time pressure: sorting a queue by real impact, writing a first reply that tells the truth about what you know, and staying calm without giving away things the business never agreed to. This course takes you from a cold queue to a clean escalation, a published help article, and numbers about your own work that mean what they say.

  1. The front line, honestly
  2. Triage and priority
  3. The first reply
  4. Tone under fire
  5. Macros that still sound human
  6. Promises, refunds and limits
  7. Escalating cleanly
  8. From ticket to help article
  9. Measuring yourself honestly

9 lessons · ~64 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

CRM and Pipeline Hygiene

A CRM is only worth what its worst record is worth. This course teaches you to model contacts, companies, deals and activities correctly, move a deal only on evidence, merge duplicates without losing history, and log work so the pipeline reflects reality. You finish able to build a weekly pipeline report, run a clean-up sweep on a stale database, and hold the standard that keeps it clean.

  1. What a CRM Actually Models
  2. Stages, and the Evidence Rule
  3. Duplicates and How to Merge
  4. Fields, and Why Blank Wins
  5. Logging Activity So It Is True
  6. The Weekly Pipeline Report
  7. Stale Pipeline and the Sweep
  8. Keeping It Clean

8 lessons · ~58 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

E-commerce store operations

Online stores run on unglamorous back-office work: listings that stay consistent, stock counts that match reality, orders that hit exceptions, returns, refunds and reviews. This course teaches those shapes on any platform, so you can open an unfamiliar store admin and know what to check first. You finish able to run a week of store operations and prove in writing what you did.

  1. The Back Office of a Store
  2. Listings That Hold Up
  3. Product Copy Without Invented Claims
  4. Inventory and the Reorder Point
  5. Orders and the Exceptions
  6. Shipping and Where Is My Order
  7. Returns and Refunds
  8. Reviews and the Bad One
  9. The Weekly Store Health Check

9 lessons · ~59 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Social media management

This course covers the operational half of social media: the content calendar, batching, adapting one idea across platforms, captions and hooks, hashtags and tagging, free scheduling, the inbox, and the monthly report. You finish able to run a client's accounts week after week without drama, defuse a public complaint, and hand anything sensitive to the client before you speak for the brand.

  1. What this work actually is
  2. The calendar and the batch
  3. One idea, several platforms
  4. Captions and hooks
  5. Hashtags, tags and mentions
  6. Scheduling without paying for tools
  7. The inbox and the difficult reply
  8. Escalation, approval and access
  9. Numbers and the monthly report

9 lessons · ~66 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Project and task coordination

Coordination is the work of keeping other people's work moving: turning a goal into owned tasks with real dates, running a board that reflects reality, and telling a busy person the truth in ten seconds. This course covers dependencies, chasing, meeting notes, decision logs, risk, escalation, and the weekly rhythm that keeps a project honest.

  1. What coordination actually is
  2. Breaking a goal into tasks
  3. Due dates and commitments
  4. Dependencies and the critical path
  5. Running a board that tells the truth
  6. The status update people actually read
  7. Chasing without nagging
  8. Meeting notes and decision logs
  9. Risks, escalation, and weekly rhythm

9 lessons · ~53 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Presentations and slide decks

You will learn to build a presentation from someone else's raw material: finding the argument first, writing headlines that state the point, turning paragraphs into diagrams, choosing charts that do not mislead, and holding forty slides to one consistent system. We cover image licensing, speaker notes, exporting for screen and print, and the pre-send check. Free tools throughout, including Google Slides, Canva free and LibreOffice Impress.

  1. Decide the argument before the deck
  2. Working from someone else's raw material
  3. One idea per slide, stated plainly
  4. Turning a paragraph into a diagram
  5. Charts that tell the truth
  6. Making forty slides look like one
  7. Images, icons and licences
  8. Speaker notes and the reading version
  9. Exporting and the pre-send check

9 lessons · ~71 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Visual basics for non-designers

You will learn the small set of decisions that separate clean work from work that looks broken: hierarchy, alignment, contrast, spacing, type, colour, images and exports. You will learn to work inside someone else's brand without changing it, to license images properly, and to build a fast, free Canva workflow. By the end you can produce a layout, name the reason behind every choice, and hand it over cleanly.

  1. Design decisions, not design taste
  2. Hierarchy: what gets seen first
  3. Alignment, spacing and grouping
  4. Contrast and readability
  5. Type: pairing and safe defaults
  6. Colour and the brand kit
  7. Images, resolution and aspect ratios
  8. File formats and clean exports
  9. Canva, templates and licensing

9 lessons · ~60 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

SEO and content operations

This course covers the work clients actually hire you for: finding what people search for, building pages that answer it, formatting and publishing them cleanly, and checking the result. You will run keyword research and on-page checks with free tools only, ship through a CMS without breaking anything, and read Search Console without overclaiming. It also draws the line you never cross to make a page rank.

  1. Where Content Operations Sits
  2. Keyword Research With Free Tools
  3. Reading Search Intent
  4. The On-Page Checklist
  5. Formatting an Article for the Web
  6. Images That Earn Their Place
  7. Publishing and the Pre-Publish Pass
  8. Content Calendars and Repurposing
  9. Search Console, and the Line

9 lessons · ~60 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

AI tools, used responsibly

AI can genuinely speed up drafting, summarising, reformatting and first-pass formulas, and it can also invent facts, leak client data and cost you a client in a single delivery. This course teaches where the line sits, how to verify what a model produces, what never goes into a third-party tool, and how to prompt, check and disclose like a professional. Everything you deliver stays yours.

  1. Where AI helps and where it fails
  2. Hallucination and the verification habit
  3. The confidentiality line
  4. Prompting that actually works
  5. Using AI to check your work
  6. Formulas, code and spreadsheets
  7. Disclosing AI use honestly
  8. The output is yours

8 lessons · ~58 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Bookkeeping and invoicing basics

You will learn the bookkeeping work you are actually asked to do: capturing receipts, categorising expenses consistently, building and sending invoices, chasing payment politely, matching money received to open invoices, and reconciling a month against the bank statement. You will also learn the line you do not cross, because a qualified accountant advises and files while you prepare and organise. Nothing here is accounting or tax advice.

  1. What the job actually is
  2. The words on the page
  3. Categorising expenses consistently
  4. Receipts, capture and filing
  5. Building an invoice
  6. Chasing payment without burning bridges
  7. Matching payments to invoices
  8. The monthly reconciliation
  9. Flag, do not fix

9 lessons · ~65 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

The career

Getting hired, getting paid, and lasting in this work.

5

Getting hired as a virtual assistant

This course teaches you how to find and win virtual assistant work outside AfterDesk. You will choose a focus, write a profile and application that get read, set a rate you can defend, handle interviews and test tasks, and follow up without becoming a nuisance. Every method here is plain and repeatable. There are no hacks.

  1. Choose a focus, not a list
  2. A profile that leads with outcomes
  3. The application that gets read
  4. Thinking clearly about your rate
  5. The interview and the right questions
  6. Test tasks and what fair looks like
  7. Red flags in a job post
  8. Follow-up and the long game

8 lessons · ~63 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Building a portfolio that proves it

Most of your best work belongs to someone else and can never be shown. This course teaches you to prove your skill anyway: synthetic samples that demonstrate the same ability, case studies written without names, a one-page portfolio, certificates and testimonials used honestly, and a work log that becomes your evidence later. You finish with proof you can send tomorrow.

  1. The proof problem
  2. What you may never show
  3. Samples you build yourself
  4. Sanitising real work safely
  5. The case study without names
  6. The one-page portfolio
  7. Certificates and testimonials
  8. The work log becomes your evidence
  9. Sending proof without dumping links

9 lessons · ~61 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Money and records for freelancers

The money side of freelancing is a second job nobody trains you for: payments that arrive smaller than agreed, records nobody asks for until they matter, and rates that quietly lose you money. This course teaches the concepts and the questions, not the rules of your country, so you can compare payment methods honestly, keep records from day one, set aside on irregular income, and price your time above your own floor.

  1. The Money Side Of Freelancing
  2. Getting Paid Across Borders
  3. The Rate You See Is Not Yours
  4. Records From Day One
  5. Separating Business And Personal Money
  6. Irregular Income, Steady Life
  7. Registering And Asking The Right People
  8. Invoices, Numbering And Retention
  9. Pricing Your Time

9 lessons · ~55 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Spotting fake jobs and scams

Job scams are not random. They come in a handful of shapes that repeat, and every one of them can be spotted before you lose money, time or your identity. This course teaches those shapes, the tells they share, the five-minute check that catches most of them, and exactly what to do in the hour after you realize you were caught.

  1. How job scams actually work
  2. Money moving the wrong way
  3. Cheques, refunds and money muling
  4. Test tasks and free work
  5. Your documents and your logins
  6. Unsolicited offers and fake brands
  7. The tells and the five-minute check
  8. After a scam: what to do

8 lessons · ~45 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Working nights sustainably

Working the client's night is an occupational skill, and it can be done well or badly. This course covers the practical craft of it: anchoring sleep, using light and caffeine deliberately, eating and moving on an inverted clock, building a workstation that does not injure you, protecting your family time, and recognising burnout early enough to act. It is not medical advice, and we say plainly where a doctor belongs.

  1. Nights are a skill, not a sacrifice
  2. Anchor your sleep and defend it
  3. Light, darkness and the bedroom
  4. Caffeine as a tool with a half-life
  5. Eating on an inverted clock
  6. Movement in a small space
  7. The workstation that does not hurt you
  8. Family time on an inverted week
  9. Burnout, and when to see a doctor

9 lessons · ~63 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

One per kind of work

Each teaches the exact standard that kind of delivery is judged against.

8

Data cleanup

Data cleanup tasks are judged on one standard: every source row accounted for and the delivered file matching the requested shape. This course teaches the decisions above the mechanics: when differing rows are the same person, which record survives a merge, when to state an assumption instead of guessing, and how two overlapping exports become one defensible file. You finish able to deliver work an operator can verify in minutes.

  1. The accounting mindset
  2. What counts as a duplicate
  3. Choosing the survivor
  4. Normalization without guessing
  5. Reconciling two overlapping exports
  6. The two-minute change log

6 lessons · ~29 min · exam + certificate

Data entry & transcription

Data entry and transcription pay for one skill above all: moving information without changing it. This course teaches the judgement layer above the method: what normal accuracy means on messy sources, when to flag instead of guess, how to read a brief for verbatim versus clean-read, and how to check your own work before QC does. You finish able to deliver work the operator can defend and your record can build on.

  1. Source Is Truth, Template Is Contract
  2. What Normal Accuracy Actually Means
  3. Flag, Never Guess
  4. Verbatim, Clean-Read, Timestamps, and Speakers
  5. Check Your Work Before QC Does
  6. Fixed Payouts and the Speed Trap

6 lessons · ~26 min · exam + certificate

List building

List building tasks are judged on one standard: every record matches the stated criteria, and every field is either filled or honestly marked unavailable after a real search. This course teaches the judgement behind that standard. You learn to read criteria as hard filters, search past page one, decide whether a listing is stale or a company is dead, keep duplicates out of your list, and pace a 200-record task so it lands on time.

  1. The Standard Your List Is Judged Against
  2. Criteria Are Filters, Not Preferences
  3. Searching Past Page One
  4. When Unavailable Is the Right Answer
  5. Stale Listing or Dead Company
  6. Duplicates, Client Data, and the Clock

6 lessons · ~32 min · exam + certificate

Research

Research tasks are judged against one standard: every field populated or honestly marked unavailable, and every figure traceable when the brief asks for sourcing. This course teaches the judgement behind that standard: choosing sources, corroborating facts that matter, reading whether data is current, running discovery and verification with the right method for each, and holding the line between honest unavailability and invented findings.

  1. What Verification-Grade Means
  2. Primary and Secondary Sources
  3. The Two-Source Rule
  4. Current, or Published Once
  5. Discovery Versus Verification
  6. Unavailable, Honestly

6 lessons · ~28 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Analysis

Analysis deliveries are judged on one standard: figures reconcile to the source data and the stated method was followed. This course teaches the judgement that meets it, from control totals and documented choices to categorization rules, sanity checks, and the line between reporting and opinion. You finish able to build summaries an operator can re-derive and defend.

  1. The Standard You Are Judged Against
  2. Numbers That Tie Back
  3. Follow the Method, Log the Gaps
  4. Categorizing Without Drift
  5. Pivot Craft and Sanity Checks
  6. Deliver Arithmetic, Not Opinion

6 lessons · ~29 min · exam + certificate

Writing

This course teaches the judgement behind paid writing tasks: treating length, tone, and format as hard constraints, and never stating a fact the brief did not supply. You learn to match a client's voice from their examples, keep templates and batches consistent, and rewrite dense text without changing its meaning. By the end, you can self-edit against the same standard the operator uses at QC.

  1. The Spec Is the Job
  2. Facts You Can Point To
  3. Matching a Voice That Is Not Yours
  4. Template and Merge-Field Discipline
  5. Plain Language, Full Meaning
  6. Batches, Drift, and the Final Pass

6 lessons · ~31 min · exam + certificateRead the course →

Document production

Document production means moving content into a new shape without changing the content itself. This course teaches the judgement behind that line: what you may touch, what you must flag, and how to keep a 90-page rebuild consistent from first page to last. You will finish able to convert, assemble, and verify documents to the exact standard the operator judges your deliveries against.

  1. Formatting Is the Job, Content Is Untouchable
  2. Styles, Not Hand Formatting
  3. Map Before You Move
  4. Catching Drift Before the Operator Does
  5. Assembly: Many Sources, One Document
  6. Prove Nothing Was Lost

6 lessons · ~28 min · exam + certificate

Admin & coordination

Admin and coordination tasks are judged on exact execution and proof, not creativity. This course teaches the judgement layer: following explicit steps without unrequested improvements, keeping an action log worth auditing, tracking dozens of items so nothing silently stalls, scheduling across timezones without daylight saving mistakes, running scripted outreach and its replies, and knowing when to handle, note, or stop. You finish able to meet the standard the operator reviews against, word for word.

  1. The Standard You Are Judged Against
  2. The Action Log
  3. Tracking Thirty Things at Once
  4. Scheduling Across Time Zones
  5. Scripted Outreach and Reply Handling
  6. Handle, Note, or Stop

6 lessons · ~30 min · exam + certificate

The courses are free. The work is real.

Create an account and start tonight. Applying to the pool is a separate step. The Academy does not wait for it.

Create a free account

Already have one? Sign in and open the Academy.