Applicant tracking systems have become essential infrastructure for HR and recruiting teams at organizations of every size. As the ATS market has matured and competition has intensified, vendors are under pressure to deliver faster implementations, cleaner billing experiences, and more responsive account support — all without dramatically expanding their cost bases. In 2026, virtual assistants are emerging as a practical solution for the administrative layer that sits between ATS vendors and their recruiter and HR clients.
Billing Administration for Diverse Client Portfolios
ATS platforms serve a wide range of clients, from small recruiting agencies to large enterprise HR departments, each with different subscription structures, user seat counts, and add-on configurations. Managing billing across that portfolio — tracking contract terms, preparing renewal summaries, handling mid-cycle upgrades or downgrades, and resolving billing disputes — is time-intensive work that rarely requires a senior team member but consistently requires attention.
According to Gartner's 2025 HR Technology Vendor Operations Report, ATS companies report an average of 17 billing-related touchpoints per enterprise client per year. Multiplied across hundreds of accounts, that represents a significant operational burden that diverts account management capacity away from growth activities.
Virtual assistants take ownership of this workflow: monitoring subscription renewal calendars, preparing invoice documentation, following up on outstanding balances, and coordinating with finance teams on contract amendments. The result is a billing function that runs consistently without consuming account manager time.
HR and Recruiting Client Account Administration
ATS account administration extends well beyond billing. New client onboarding involves configuring job posting templates, setting up user permissions, connecting integrations with HRIS and background screening systems, and training HR and recruiting staff on platform features. Ongoing administration includes managing user access, updating job board integrations, and coordinating system configuration changes requested by HR administrators.
SHRM research from 2024 found that HR technology onboarding processes that lack dedicated coordination support take an average of 47% longer to complete and have a 31% higher early churn rate than those with structured coordination. Virtual assistants serve as the coordination backbone for ATS onboarding: managing the checklist of required steps, communicating with client HR teams to collect configuration data, scheduling training sessions, and tracking completion milestones.
For recruiting agency clients in particular, VAs also manage ongoing account maintenance requests — updating job templates, adding new user seats, and fielding routine questions about platform features — freeing the ATS vendor's customer success team to focus on strategic relationship management.
Integration and Onboarding Coordination
Modern ATS platforms are expected to integrate with a wide range of adjacent systems: HRIS platforms, payroll software, background screening vendors, video interviewing tools, and job boards. Coordinating those integrations during onboarding is one of the most complex and time-consuming aspects of ATS implementation.
A 2024 Bersin analysis of HR technology implementations found that integration delays were the leading cause of ATS implementation overruns, cited in 51% of projects that exceeded their planned timelines. Virtual assistants manage the coordination layer: tracking integration readiness across all connected systems, gathering API credentials and configuration data from client IT teams, communicating status updates to all stakeholders, and escalating blockers to the appropriate technical resources.
This coordination work is systematic and documentation-heavy — precisely the type of work that experienced VAs handle efficiently, and that does not benefit from being done by a senior implementation engineer.
The Margin Case for Virtual Assistant Staffing
McKinsey's 2025 SaaS Benchmarking Study found that ATS companies in the top quartile for operational efficiency had per-client administrative costs 38% lower than the median, and that the use of virtual and remote administrative staff was the most common differentiator among high-efficiency vendors.
ATS companies looking to build out scalable billing and account administration capacity can explore virtual assistant solutions at Stealth Agents.
Positioning for Competitive Advantage
As the ATS market continues to consolidate and buyers become more sophisticated, vendors that can demonstrate operational reliability — clean billing, responsive administration, and smooth implementations — will have a measurable advantage in both retention and referrals. Virtual assistants are the operational infrastructure that makes that reliability achievable at scale.
Sources
- Gartner, HR Technology Vendor Operations Report, 2025
- SHRM, HR Technology Onboarding Benchmarks, 2024
- Bersin by Deloitte, HR Technology Implementation Analysis, 2024