The 9 Best Tools for Remote Businesses

According to the estimates published by the Global Workplace Analytics, nearly a third of the entire workforce (25-30%) will be working from home several days a week by the end of the next year. The chances are that you’re reading this blog while taking a break from work and sitting cozy in your living room.

Now, working remotely implies that there’s a physical distance between you and your coworkers. So, you’ll have to rely on online channels to keep in touch with your colleagues and tackle work issues. That’s why it’s vital you choose the best tools for remote business.

Here’s our list of 6 apps that will make telecommuting more convenient for you, no matter if you’re a remote team manager or an employee.

These six tools can help remote teams communicate, collaborate, and manage their work more effectively. By incorporating these apps into their daily routines, remote employees can increase their productivity and streamline their work processes.

1. Clockify - for time tracking

To ensure that their remote employees are handling tasks and meeting deadlines, companies can request employee time tracking. That way, employers can find out how much time workers spend on particular tasks and whether they’re overwhelmed.

Clockify is a time tracking app that lets you log in your work hours, either by:

• Turning on a timer when you start working and turning it off at the end of the day,
• adding your hours manually, or
• adding time in a timesheet app.

By logging your time daily and adding a description for every task, you’ll have a weekly overview of your assignments. Thus, you’ll know what tasks demand more time. Besides, Clockify allows you to mark your hours as billable and non-billable.

Moreover, managers can watch the progress of any project and keep an eye on the project budget.

2. Slack - for team messaging

This tool allows you to reach out to your colleagues whenever you need their help or just want to chat. These are the major features of Slack:

• Instant messages: you can either send private messages or make a group chat for your team.
• Channels: you can create channels that have one topic in focus.
• Statuses: you can add a status when you need to inform your colleagues about an important matter. For instance, when you don’t want to be disturbed because you need to focus on an urgent task. You can also use slack pto status.

Aside from these features, you can use Slack to send files to your coworkers.

3. UberConference - for video conferencing

Apart from chatting, video calls are a vital part of communication within remote teams. With UberConference, you can join video meetings without having to download the app or use additional PINs.

Here are other valuable features:

• Sharing the screen during the calls.
• Voice intelligence: This tool can capture significant moments of your meetings. Then, you’ll get a list of Action items from the call, so you can review them later.
• Custom hold music: You can make hold music more fun by selecting your own songs.

Another useful option is that, when someone is speaking during the meeting, their feed will be highlighted.

4. Monday - for project management

When teleworking, you need a reliable tool for managing your projects remotely. Monday is an app that helps you take care of projects, assign tasks and deadlines to the team members, all in one workspace. When evaluating different Monday alternatives, you’ll find that Monday stands out with its clean interface and powerful visual structure.

These are the main options of this tool:

• A board where you can organise your projects and tasks.
• Automation: for instance, whenever there’s a status change on the task, the app can automatically add particular team members to the task. That way, nobody misses any important updates.
• Integrations: to have a more practical workflow, you can also connect the tools you usually use with Monday.

Besides, if your remote team members are located around the globe, be sure to create a board for the entire team, along with their locations. By doing so, you’ll be able to see local time for each location and each employee.

5. My Hours - for time tracking

When teleworking, you need a reliable way to track how time is spent across projects and clients. My Hours is a time tracking app that helps remote teams log work hours, monitor project budgets, and generate accurate reports for billing, all in one straightforward workspace.

These are the main options of this tool:

• A timer and timesheet view: you can either start a timer as you work, or fill in your hours manually at the end of the day, whichever fits your workflow best. 
• Date duration calculator: if you need to quickly work out how many working days fall between two dates, useful for planning project timelines or calculating deadlines across time zones. My Hours includes a handy date duration calculator so you don't have to leave the app.
• Billable hours and budget tracking: you can mark time as billable or non-billable and set hourly rates per project or team member. That way, managers always know where the budget stands before it runs over.
• Reports and invoicing: you can generate detailed reports on time spent across projects and export them to PDF or XLS, or create invoices directly from logged hours to send to clients.

Besides, My Hours integrates with tools like QuickBooks, Xero, and Zapier, so you can connect it to the rest of your remote work setup without disrupting your existing workflow.

6. Jotform Apps - for document collaboration

Create a custom app for your business using Jotform's drag-and-drop builder. Store all of your documents and create forms to make a company portal that anyone can easily access and collect the data you need.

Here are the best features of Jotform Apps:

• Templates: get access to over 600 app templates to get started on creating your app and customise it to match your company branding.
• Easy to share: generate a QR code to share your app easily or send a link to your colleagues. Access the app from any device and see your colleagues collaborate on it in real-time.

Jotform Apps has a free plan that comes with all of its features with some form limitations. You can try it out and create a fully custom app in seconds. It is a great way to automate tasks in your workflow and keep your documents all in one place.

7. Confluence - for file management

This app lets you gather all important documents, notes, and files in one place.

Here are the major features of Confluence:

• Templates: there are over 75 custom templates you can use to create reports, planning documents, or project strategies.
• Social intranet: this feature is extremely useful for remote teams. The company’s management can keep significant documents in Confluence and share them with all employees. For instance, if the company requires following any specific rules, these documents should be available to all workers.

Much like Monday, Confluence lets you create integrations with other apps.

However, the only constraint is you get only up to 2GB of free storage per user. If you need more free storage per user, you can consider Google Drive, one of the best alternatives to Confluence. It provides 15 GB of free storage per user. 

8. Timezone.io - for time zone management

Being part of a remote team sometimes entails working with colleagues around the globe. That is why we highly recommend using an app for managing various time zones, such as Timezone.io.

These are the best components of this tool:

• Dashboard: once you’ve added all team members and their locations, the dashboard will show you particular locations, all your colleagues who live at those locations, and their local time. Having this overview helps you find suitable times of day for setting team meetings.
• Transparency: by looking at these time zones, you can see which employees are available at the moment. So, if anything urgent happens, you’ll be able to reach out to these colleagues.

Thus, the time difference won’t be an issue anymore.

9. FactoHR - HR Management System

In the dynamic landscape of modern business, managing remote teams efficiently is crucial for success. FactoHR, an innovative HR management software, empowers companies to seamlessly navigate the challenges of remote work by offering advanced features to monitor employee tasks and ensure timely project completion.

With FactoHR's integrated time tracking module, companies can effortlessly request and streamline employee time tracking. This feature enables employers to gain insights into the time spent on specific tasks, helping them assess workload and prevent burnout among their remote workforce.

Key Features of FactoHR:

• Employee data
• Salary master
• Organisation chart
• User defined fields
• Offboarding
• Custom report builder
  

In today's fast-paced business environment, FactoHR stands out as a reliable solution for HR management, providing the tools needed to optimise remote work productivity. Take control of your workforce management with FactoHR and ensure the success of your projects and the well-being of your team.

Bonus: HR Partner - for HR Management

HR Partner is a feature-rich HR portal that eases the administration of HR duties for small and medium-sized enterprises. You have complete control over your team's HR requirements because it centralises all of your HR functions, from handling hiring to tracking employee leave.

Important characteristics consist of:

• Leave management: Makes keeping track of workers' vacation days and absences easier.
• Tools for recruitment: They let you list jobs, manage applicants, and expedite the recruiting process.
• Employee self-service: Enables workers to directly request time off and change their personal information.
• Checklists for onboarding: Automate procedures for new hires to ensure a seamless onboarding experience.

Additionally, it interacts with Slack, Google Calendar, Xero, and other technologies to make managing HR procedures across platforms simple.

In conclusion

Working remotely requires a diverse set of rules than working on-site. But, if you incorporate these tools into your daily routine, you’ll be able to communicate and collaborate with your colleagues with ease. Moreover, you’ll keep track of your assignments and manage your workload better. You’ll soon realise that, with a little help from these apps, your performance can thrive when telecommuting.

Author bio:

Ivana Fisic is a time management researcher and writer. She is always exploring the new methods of how time management can help you organise your workflow more effectively, as well as how you can increase your productivity.

Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels