in this video I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about data entry I am going to teach you the skills you need to have and I'm also going to show you and teach you how to perform some of the most common data entry tasks so that by the end of this video you will be ready to start performing data entry work hi there my name is sadik Omar I'm ail time virtual assistant living in Nigeria and this video is going to be based on my personal experience of mastering data entry as a virtual assistant okay let's start with what exactly is data entry data entry is simply the process of inputting some data updating or managing some data in a computer system or database typically using a software like Microsoft Excel Microsoft Word or Google sheet it usually involve entering information from various sources such as from a PDF document or from one Excel file or from an image you extract some data from various sources and you input the data in another source such as in a go gole sheet or in Microsoft Excel and you sort the data you make it easy to read and easy to understand now data entry is something that I will say 99% of businesses have to do data entry work regularly and so instead of the business owner to do the work himself data entry work it will be a lot easier to just hire a data entry virtual assistant to take care of the job okay the next question is what skills do you need in order to start data entry we now know that many businesses most businesses have to hire a data entry virtual assistant or a data entry employer at some point and so we know it's a skill that is in constant demand the next thing is how to learn what skills exactly do you need to learn the very first skill that you need to have in order to succeed in data entry is typing speed and accuracy because working as a data entry virtual assistant or even if you are working full-time data entry full-time employee for a company you have to be good you have to be very accurate and you have to have typing speed in order to succeed because it involve typing data from one sources to another and this is easy to learn really if you don't have typing speed then it just mean you haven't been typing a lot of things the more you type the better you become at typing the more you type the faster you become at typing and even if you are not good at typing there is an online tool that is going to help you learn how to Tye fast and accurate and the tool is completely free let me share my screen now and show you the website that you can use in order to improve your typing skill to be very good at typing from the beginning as a complete beginner okay the first thing we need to do is we go to typing.com and this website is going to teach you how to type and how to type accurately and it is entirely completely free when you are on this website typing.com you just click start typing today okay this is a short course that is going to teach you step by step how to get started in typing how to be good at typing when you are right here you just click resume I'm I'm sure if you haven't visit this website at all you will see start instead of resume so you just click Start and then the next thing you need to do is simply follow the instructions you just follow the instructions they show you right here and you will be good to go it's very easy to follow along and this website is going to help you learn how to type fast and accurate okay after learning typing the next thing that you need to know is have a basic knowledge of computer have a basic knowledge of computer operation if you have been using a computer for a few month even just a few month then you probably have a good knowledge of how to use a computer and even if you haven't been using a computer you don't have even a basic knowledge of using a computer if you have a smartphone and you know how to use a smartphone it will be very easy for you to start using a computer and the more you use a computer the better you will become at normal average basic computer operations and the next basic skill you need is simply know how to browse the internet know how to download and upload files from the internet and also know how to use email those are the basic skills that you need in order to succeed in data entry you need typing speed and accuracy and you need a basic computer operation knowledge and you also need to know how to browse internet download and upload files and also how to use an email if you have these skills then you are good to go okay now I'm going to teach you how to perform some of the most common data entry work if you started working as a virtual assistant or even if you get hired to do data entry work for a company I'm going to teach you some of the most common work that you are going to encounter also let me show you another example a client might send you a link to a Google P or some other p and there are many submissions in the p and your job will will be to go through the to download all the information of the people who submit the form and you sort their names and all the information you submitted let me show you also another example let me go to Google poms okay this is a p that I created recently and hide a video editor when I open the form and when I come to the responses tab we can see there are 17 submissions 177 people submit the form and what I'm going to do is I'm going to download all their information these are their email addresses instead of going through each one I can just download all the information of the people who submit the form okay the file have been downloaded in a z format so we can come to our folder right here and this is the pile when you extract the files from the zip file they are going to be in a folder like this when you open the folder this is the file that contain all the information of the people who submit the form and we are going to open the form and you can see this data doesn't really look that good it's not easy to read so what we are going to do is we are going to highlight all the columns double click to make the columns bigger so that we can read the text easily the time stamp is the time and the date is you submit the form which really don't need this this column but it also depend on your client instruction your client is going to give you a specific column they are interested in they are going to say probably they need their email addresses their first name and link to portfolio and the other columns also if they need the other columns you include it if the client doesn't need the other column you simply go ahead and delete it so right now we have the most important columns right here and what we can do is first we add a header so that it is easy to read we change the text into white we make it bold so you see even by doing just this the information is a lot easier to it and you can go ahead and check if the client maybe I specify that I am willing to pay $50 per video so you can see how how much people say they are going to charge this one say they are going going to charge $50 per video so they are relevant we keep them we can go ahead and find anyone who specify that they are going to charge higher than the client budget if this one for example they said they are going to charge $80 to $100 and the client budget is is $50 per video then you can simply delete them so you can go through the data and make sure everyone submitted with their email address and a link to their portfolio and also the budget they added did not exceed the client budget so if you finish sorting all the data the number of people who remain in this spreadsheet you just save it and send it to your client so this is basic data entry work and this is obviously going to depend on the type of client you are working with if you are working with a client who post another job a different job they have specific requirement and when you export all the information they will give you the type of information they want and anyone who me the criteria you leave them on the submissions and anyone who did not meet the criteria you go ahead and delete them when you finish you just save the file and send it to your client so these are the most common data entry work that you are going to come across and as you can see all you really need in order to succeed is you just need accuracy and typ in speed and you just need to know how to use Microsoft Excel and how to browse the internet in some cases you might need to use Microsoft Word or Google doc for example I recently work with someone who when she is having meeting with her client she take note with a pen and paper and when she finish taking note when she finish with her client she just snap the paper with her phone and she sent me the image and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take a look at her handwritten note and type it in Google doc or Microsoft Word document and for this also all un is just accuracy typing speed and for accuracy there is also a tool that you can use in order to ensure accuracy in your typing and the tool is grammarly it's very easy to use grammarly grammarly is also pretty to use they have premium version but the pre plan is really all you need I never use a Premium plan let me show you how grammarly works if you don't have an account in grammar it will take you like 2 minutes to create an account and it's free when you finish creating your account you just go to new and when you are on this page you can just start typing something and grammar is going to proof read and make sure there are no typing mistakes and if you already write something in Google doc or Microsoft Word document all you need to do is copy and paste let me show you an example here if I copy this text I come back to grammarly and contrl B to paste it and you can see these are all the mistake all the grammatical errors that I can fck to make the text better so this is what you can do also increase your accuracy and efficiency you can just go ahead and click accept you go to the next one click accept go to the next one click accept all the ones in red are the ones that need some improvement and you can simply click accept in order to accept the changes so this is how to use grammarly and as you can see it's going to be very easy to increase your accuracy with grammar and the best part it is pretty to use and you can even install grammar extension in your browser so that you don't have to go to another tab every time when you are typing in any tab grammar is automatically going to Pro your text one thing you should keep in mind is everything gets better by time so the more you practice the better you will become so if you want to be an expert the key point is practice keep practicing keep practicing and keep improving your skills something like typing the more you type the faster you become at typing and also the more you use the internet the better you will become at inter at using the internet and same thing with Microsoft Excel or Google sheet the more you use it the better you will become at it and also Google sheet using Google sheet and Microsoft Excel is the only thing that I think is going to take you a little more time to master because there are quite a few things in Microsoft Excel that if you didn't know how to use it if you haven't used it any time before it might take you a little time to be very good at it but the more you use it the the better you will become at it so if you want to be an expert in data entry the key point is keep practicing and keep improving your skills next you can watch this next video where I give an entire virtual assistant course so that if you are interested in being a data entry virtual assistant by the end of this next video you will be ready to start finding client if you find the video helpful please give it a like and don't forget to subscribe I will see you in the next one