If you decide to hire remote staff, then you have to prepare various things including tools or applications that can help your task and remote staff in doing the task.
There are several categories of tools that you and your remote staff can use. Here are some of them!
Financial Tools
The first category of tools you can use to manage your business is financial tools. If you have a business of your own, of course you need a tool to record your income and expenses. You also have to know your financial condition and the taxes that must be paid from year to year. Instead of just thinking and worrying about your expenses and income, it’s best to keep track of everything using the following tool!
1. FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a financial tool that is widely used by businesses. This tool is one of the easy tools that business owners can use to record finances and make invoices look more professional. You can use it easily any time.
2. HoneyBook
HoneyBook is a financial tool that not only serves to help manage your finances. You can use this tool for other tasks such as managing projects, clients, sending invoices and more. You could say this tool is a multifunctional tool that can help you manage system management and is also useful as a client portal.
3. Self-Employed QuickBooks
Paying taxes is an obligation for business owners. If you are worried about taxes and how you should pay them, you can use this tool as a solution. QuickBooks can help you provide tax payment options and also help create invoices and create a system that can track your business income and expenses.
4. Hurdlr
Hurdlr is another great tool that you can use to organize and track your business finances including expenses, income and taxes. You can use this tool in developing your business because Hudlr has many features and offers free options if you don’t want to pay a fee to use this tool.
5. Wave
Wave is a free accounting software that you and your remote staff can use for bookkeeping. This software allows you to send invoices, add payroll, have an e-commerce shop, and also store client credit cards. Wave can also make it easier for you to track your expenses and income as well as taxes so that everything becomes more organized.
6. Xero
If you need a bookkeeping software or tool more than anything else, you can use Xero. Xero can help you bill clients and track backend financials for your business. Xero is one of the most sought-after bookkeeping software globally.
7. Bench.co
Bench.co can be a great alternative if you don’t use FreshBooks and Quickbooks Self-Employed. You can use this tool for three bookkeeping and use other features that are no less slick.
Tax Systems
In addition to using financial tools, as a remote staff or virtual assistant you can also use special tools that can manage business taxes. Here are some tools that can help manage your tax system.
1. co
As a virtual assistant, you’re considered an independent worker. Because of that, you don’t get paid sick leave or vacation time. And, you have to pay your own taxes. If all of that sounds daunting to you, Catch.co makes it easy. As a virtual assistant, you will not get paid for sick leave or vacation time. You also have to keep paying your income tax. If you find it difficult to manage everything, you can use this tool. Catch.co can work according to the rules you set. If you want to pay 15% tax on each invoice, Catch.co can directly transfer the 15% tax fee on every bill you send. If you want to go on vacation, you can also use this tool to find out how much money you should save and then automatically save the percentage of money that you will use for vacation expenses.
2. Keeper Tax
When you have prepared tax funds and are about to pay them, Keeper Tax can be a very useful tool. Keeper Tax can help you find out which deductions you missed. This tool was created by business owners and freelancers, it is guaranteed safe so you don’t have to hesitate to use it Keeper Tax is free to use the first time, and their filing fee of $89 is cheaper than any other tax filing services. If you want to make your quarterly payments online, you can be a member and pay just $12 per month.
Graphic Design Tools
Graphic design is one of the things that cannot be separated from the business world. Here are some tools that can help you create graphics from time to time for your clients.
1. Canva
If you are not very proficient in using Photoshop, you can use Canva, Canva is a great tool that can help create images, logos, invoices, flyers and more. Canva is very easy to use and can even help beginners. By using paid content, you can also access many of the features that Canva provides. So it will be very helpful if you need digital items that you will use it as content or other things.
2. Deposit Photos
Your business will certainly need photos on certain content or website. You can use Free stock photos to fulfill this need. One tool that provides many royalty-free photos is Deposit Photos. Besides being easy to access, Deposit photos tend to be easier to access and cheaper than other image-providing tools or websites.
Scheduling and Calendar Tools
Do you often have meetings or phone calls with clients? If so, you may find trouble coordinating a lot of meetings. Here are some scheduling tools that you can try and help you to fix any appointment schedule.
1. Acuity
Acuity is a great tool that you can use to schedule a virtual meeting. This tool also offers a text message feature to remind clients about their appointment with you. This tool will certainly be very useful if you have a forgetful client no matter if you use it for free or a paid feature.
2. Calendly
Calendly is a tool that you can sync it with Google calendar, which is pretty much in helping schedule an appointment. This tool can help avoid double-booking and missing appointments. It is also useful to re-schedule appointments if you or your client missed them. You can also associate this tool with the payment system you use if there is a bill that needs to be paid in the future.
3. Zoom
Zoom is a popular tool today for holding online meetings. Many people think that Zoom can perform better than Skype, with less lag time and dropped calls. This tool is very helpful for holding meetings with teams, and clients or for other purposes., it also integrates with Calendly, you can books a call with anyone and send , the Zoom link for the meeting.
Organization Tools
One of the most essential skills that every remote staff must have is the skill of organization. Here are some of the best organization tools that can be used by virtual assistants.
1. G-Suite Google’s
G-Suite can be beneficial for any task, including email, calendar, documents, and spreadsheets, and also share documents with team and clients, and a lot more! G-Suite syncs well between the phone and computer, and it works well with Asana too. In other words, G-Suite can help you manage your business with ease.
2. Dropbox
Although many people use G-Suite, Dropbox is another great organization and storage tool that can be beneficial for business owners or virtual assistants. This tool is also great to use if you have multiple clients and want to store their information separately from each other. All you need to do is create a folder for every client and share a link to the folder with them!
Other Tools for Virtual Assistants
Besides all the tools that are already listed above, there are other tools for virtual assistants that are highly recommended to use.
1. Project Management System
There are many multiple task management systems that you can use such as Asana, Trello, Click Up, and Basecamp. We recommend you use Asana because it offers lots of benefits. Here are some of those!
- Even if it has paid option feature, you can still use it for free.
- There are multiple views in Asana, including a board view, a calendar view, and a list view.
- You can create sections and color-coding to keep things organized.
- You can also create secret projects so not everyone on your team member has access to the project.
- The duplicate task feature helps you to save more time.
If you don’t get used to Asana, you can use other tools like the following!
Click Up – This tool works much like Asana, but it’s best if you have a lot number of clients or high-level projects that require a lot of time and attention.
Focuster – This tool is great because you can “automate” your to-do list and save time planning every month. It also offers integration to your calendar, and tasks, so you can give more attention and stay focused on important tasks.
2. Spell-Check/Writing Tool
As a remote staff, proper grammar and spell check are important in content writing. You should be professional, approachable, and of course, smart in order to deliver the right content writing. Grammarly is one sample of a free “grammar assistant” that helps you to check typos, grammatical errors, plagiarism, and more.
3. Vimeo
You may need software to store any video especially if you need video as a marketing tool. Video is another type of content that can send message directly to the target market. You can also make various other videos such as testimonials from clients, projects, and other things that you can post on social media. Vimeo is a tool that can help you save videos anytime and anywhere. You can access and save videos easily through this tool.
Those are some tools that will be very useful in carrying out your duties as a virtual assistant or business owner.
Good luck and have a try!