WFH: Guide to Remote Working

As a company that works with people all over the world, we’ve been working remotely for a number of years. We’ve seen in our networks that there are people struggling with problems that we see as basic things, to which we know there are simple solutions out there.

We simply wanted to share these solutions with you, so you can see what apps might be available for certain problems in your business.

The Chart

We’ve split our PDF into “Microsofty” and “Non-Microsofty” solutions for those who are for or against Bill Gates and his squad. Then we’ve broken down various business functions, and applications, with tools spanning different objectives.

Explaining Things Further

We’re going to write a small passage here about each section to try and explain each application in the guide, with useful links to various tools and websites to help you further. We’re also not going to use tracked links, affiliate links, or mention any of our products or services in this article, due to the nature of the situation.

Communications

As many of you know, Skype has been the go-to app for text or audio communications for Windows users for years. So it comes to no surprise to some of you that it’s top of the list, and spans a broad spectrum of applications as it can be used as a chat app, an internal calls app, or it can be used as the main business phone system.

Alternatives for the more Mac friendly open-source community out there, like ourselves, include: Slack; a great tool for chatting with teams informally to save emailing all day, you can also transfer files with slack and host video chats.

Secondly, is Circle Loop. This is a relatively local business based near Rochdale I believe, that offer a cloud based business level phone system boasting such things as voicemail, voice assisted menus (press 1 for this dept. and so on) and easy to use apps for all devices. This allows you to have a geographical phone number on any device.

Zoom is rapidly becoming the leader in video communications and is a great app for remote meetings, file sharing, screen casting, and webinars. It has a free tier also which is great if you’re just trying it out. Not to mention apps for all devices also.

Office 365 Email, and GMail’s business grade email solution GSuite, are also two great options for getting proper business level email services, with virus scanning, spam filtering, and loads of other great features including contact lists and sharing, calendars, and so on.

Links to downloads:

• Skype
• Slack
• Circle Loop
• Zoom
• GSuite
• Office 365

Productivity

Getting work done is obviously very important during this time. So these two productivity suites allow just that, and are both cross-platform. So they will work on Windows, Mac, and most mobile and tablets too.

Both platforms we are suggesting come with live collaborative working. Meaning you and your colleagues can work on the same documents, at the same time, in real-time. You’ll be able to see each-others edits as they happen, and work together collaboratively.

The Microsoft flavour comes with the aforementioned Office 365, and the Google variety comes with GSuite, linked above.

You can create documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, knowledge bases, and much more, on both platforms. 

The Microsoft suite comes with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and many other productivity tools. The Google suite comes with Docs, Sheets, Slides, and more. But both of them are linked together with a wonderful cloud based file sharing/storing solution, so you don’t need to mess around with VPNs and emailing files to get shared folders.

File sharing is available on either platform, on Microsoft it’s called OneDrive, and on Google it’s called, you guessed it, GDrive.

Both are available across all devices and browsers etc. so you’ll always have the latest version of your files available to all members of your team, at all times, no matter where you are.

Project Management

Keeping people on task whilst working remotely is key. Managing their work loads, to do lists, and sharing notes and statuses of tasks across teams is absolutely paramount to make sure everybody knows what they’re doing.

Microsoft Teams, part of certain Office 365 subscriptions, is a great all-in-one tool for working collaboratively and remotely if you’re already part of the Office 365 ecosystem.

For the rest of us, Trello is an awesome, card-based, project management tool which is absolutely brilliant for keeping everybody on the same page. You have lists of cards, which can be assigned to different people on the team, so everybody can see where the squad is up to.

For more granular or “to-do” list based project management, there are a number of tools out there. We love Asana, but there’s also Monday.com, and a hoard of others. Asana is highly customisable with due dates, status fields, automations and more, as is Monday. It’s all about preference and pricing really. Research and try both tools. We literally couldn’t survive without them.

Creatives? Check out Milanote. It’s a fantastic tool for creative teams to share project resources and develop ideas together. You can share todo lists, images, files, notes, videos, colour palettes, and more, all in a huge single board view so you can get an overview of the whole project at a glance. It’s brilliant for web developers, graphic designers, content creators, and a whole hoard of other creative industries.

All of the tools have loads of online resources for help, and guidance to assist you getting started.

Links to signups:

• Microsoft Teams
• Monday.com
• Asana
• Milanote

Combined Collaboration Suites

Finances

Everybody’s least favourite thing to keep track of: the accounts.

You’ll probably already be aware of the plethora of online accounting and bookkeeping packages available. If you’re not, and still using a server installed version of Sage or perhaps making your own invoices in Word and Excel, you might want to go and change your pants after researching these tools.

For agencies, and consultants, we find Freeagent to be an amazing piece of software. It literally appifies your company finances, accounts, and has super simple click through wizards to do some pretty damn complicated accounting tasks. Not to mention it integrates with payment gateways such as Stripe, GoCardless, and PayPal to make sure you get paid quickly. It’s pretty bloody amazing.

Freeagent will even chase your late invoices for you, and does your payroll, and god knows what else. I’m not an accountant, but I love this.

Other alternatives, which have very similar features, are Xero and Quickbooks.

If you have an accountant, speak to them, we’re sure they’ll have their preferred tool for using, and most will be happy to use any tool that you’re already working with.

If you’re local to us, and don’t have an accountant, our guys over at Tussies are comfortable with any platform, and have their own portal for dealing with remote accounting sign-offs for your returns, so you don’t even need to visit to get your accounts done.

Alternatively if you want a more hands-on experience for your accounting and need help getting set up on one of these platforms, our friends over at Aspire JD Accounts are Xero partnered, and will be happy to assist you.

An add-on app to these bookkeeping and accounting apps is Float, useful for tracking cashflow, and it plugs straight in to these accounts packages to help you keep your eyes on the cash.

Links to apps:

• Freeagent
• Xero
• Quickbooks
• Float App

Sales

Keeping the sales machine ticking over in these uncertain times is key. You’ve got to keep your marketing going, and survive this crisis. When things pick back up again, you’ll want to get the cogs turning quickly.

One strategy to try is to put an offer on now, for pre-payment of a service you could deliver once the quarantines have been lifted. But to get the word out there you’ll need some marketing tools.

ActiveCampaign, Drip, and Mailchimp are three excellent platforms for setting up marketing automations, mailing lists, and keep the leads flowing.

Once people have enquired, you’ll want to track them in some sort of sales pipeline tracking app like Pipedrive or Keap.

Before you send anything out however, you’re going to want to make your campaign look the part. To save you 3 years at design college whilst you’re getting off the ground, check out Canva, which is full of great templates and tools to help you get your branding sorted.

Once you’ve made the sale, hit up Stripe or Paypal to help you remotely process your card payments. Or if you’re on a subscription based business, GoCardless is the perfect way to set up direct debits for your clients.

…and as we mentioned, all of these apps plug in to the above accounting packages, so you won’t even have to manually reconcile invoices. How cool is that?

More app links:

• Active Campaign
• Drip
• MailChimp
• Pipedrive
• Keap
• Canva
• Stripe
• PayPal
• GoCardless

Utilities

Now you’ve signed up to 30,000 web apps, and you’re struggling to keep everything up to date, now’s the time to start automating.

Apps like Zapier and IFTTT (which stands for If This Then That) allow you to easily build automations from other apps.

For example, when someone clicks a link in an ActiveCampaign email, add them to the “Hot Leads” pipeline in PipeDrive. Or when you send an invoice to someone, have ActiveCampaign follow up 7 days later with a thank you email and a referral link. Or why not have Slack message someone when they get assigned a task in Monday or Asana so they don’t miss anything?

Lots of the previously mentioned platforms have integrations with many of the others as part of their features list, but for anything you’d want them to do that they don’t out of the box, we’re willing to bet theres a Zapier or IFTTT link that will add that functionality for you.

Here’s a link to both platforms for more inspiration:

• Zapier
• IFTTT

Finally. Keep your mind in check through all of this crap. Getting stressed, worrying about the future, and panicking the next few months away is not a healthy way to go. Keep your sanity in check, and live more in the now, with Headspace.

Headspace is a guided meditation app for most devices. It’s brilliant for clearing your mind, helping you sleep, and grounding you in the now. There’s not an awful lot we can do about this current situation other than the old British adage “keep calm, carry on” … so why not get a little help with the mental health through all this with Headspace.