With business needs and technology evolving year after year, working remotely is becoming a necessity for most individuals and businesses.

However, sometimes working remotely isn’t as easy as it sounds. There is a lot that can go into it regardless of your industry. It takes discipline, determination, and quite a bit of help from technology. Here are some online tools to help you work remotely, effectively and efficiently.

1. Video and Conference Calling

Working from home can sometimes feel isolating. As humans, we need interaction with other people. It is important not to isolate yourself and have the ability to connect with people face to face.

It not only creates a community, but it also allows you to feel connected to your clients, team, and colleagues.

These are some ways of achieving this:

• Schedule check-ins with your team. It helps you make sure that things are not falling through the cracks and gives you all quality time together.
• Microsoft Teams, Skype, and Whatsapp are all good online options to consider.

2. Messaging Channels

Messaging channels are great to keep it feeling like an office environment. These are also great ways to contact your colleagues or team without the hassle of long threads and having a million emails to get through. Have a channel that is dedicated to non-work-related chat, this can be a channel whereby you have normal conversation and reconnect as a team and as people.

Some great messaging apps include:

• Slack has a searchable history feature that allows users to easily find past chats and shared information in less time. This app will even let you share documents like PDFs, images, and videos.
• Microsoft Teams is not only a great app for video and conference calling, it is also a great messaging platform, thought of as an alternative to Slack.
• CloudApp is one of its kind – this is a visual communication platform that brings screen and webcam recording, GIF creation, and image annotation features securely to the cloud.

3. Project Management

Managing people and projects remotely can be a nightmare. But it doesn’t need to be. These apps will help you keep everything in tow.

• Trello is a visual project management software. All your work happens on Boards. Boards are divided into lists, which represent different stages in a project and populated with cards. A Card represents a specific task and can contain due dates, chat boxes, attachments, and more.
• Todoist is a smart to-do list app. Perfect for remote workers seeking simplicity.

4. File sharing

There is one app that does this perfectly and that is Dropbox. It is easy to use and is immensely popular and used by millions of people around the world.

All you need to do is upload your file to your Dropbox account and then share access to it with your colleagues. Easy!

5. Cloud-Based Accounting Software

Firstly, the cloud is a platform to access data and software online anytime from any device. This platform keeps data secured and up to date. How can this help you?

Quick Books Online is a cloud-based accounting software that allows multiple people to access and work on an account from a variety of devices, while your data is kept secured and up to date constantly.

These are some of the benefits you get with using QuickBooks Online:

• Dashboards allow you to get a snapshot of your business. This includes Profit & Loss, Overdue Invoices, and Bank Balances in seconds.
• Your data is secured with the same encryption technology used by the world’s leading banks. QuickBooks Online Security.
• QuickBooks integrates with ABSA, FNB, Nedbank and Standard Bank to allow you to import your bank statements easily.
• Know where your business stands and have ready access to 65+ reports in a single click. Get a clear view of the overall state of your business with the Company Snapshot.
• Get enormous flexibility by customizing how your invoices and receipts look and what information they contain.
• Handle multiple currencies and track currency gains and losses.
• Give your employees access, while maintaining control over what information they can view or modify with multi-user collaboration.
• Take your business with you anywhere, anytime and access QuickBooks Online on any Internet connected computer, tablet or phone using any operating system.
• Free Mobile/Tablet App
• Your accountant has free access to your financials
• If you need help, free and unlimited support is just an email or phone call away.

Working remotely requires extra focus and tools to help you get work done fast and well. We hope that this blog has given you some advice on how to do just that.