The under $1,000 figure usually counts a website and a job posting and stops there. A fuller list for one seat looks roughly like this.
Recruiting: job board ads run from nothing to a few hundred dollars per role depending on the market. Expect to screen dozens of applicants for one hire, and expect paid trial work, maybe 10 hours, which you eat whether or not the person makes it.
Training: unbilled hours where you're paying the VA and no client is. Two weeks of onboarding at 40 hours is 80 hours of payroll against zero revenue, plus your own time building the scripts and checklists.
Tools: a dialer seat commonly runs somewhere around $100 to $150 a month, plus CRM access, call recording storage, and a password manager. Some clients supply their own stack, which changes this a lot.
Payments: sending money across borders costs a percentage, often a couple of points, plus whatever your provider charges per transfer.
Then the gap you already suspect. Workers usually expect pay every two weeks. Clients pay monthly, sometimes late. That's a month or more of payroll you're floating per seat, and it grows every time you add one, so growth consumes cash rather than producing it.
One thing that isn't a spreadsheet item: whether your VAs are contractors or employees, in their country and in yours, is a legal question with real penalties attached and the answer varies by jurisdiction. Get it in front of an attorney before you sign a client, not after.
