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One of the lasting legacies of the COVID-19 pandemic is remote work. Initially, what began as a necessity has now turned into a growing practice. In 2023, the Pew Research Center estimated that about 14% of U.S. workers, or roughly 22 million people, worked remotely.
In 2022, workers in the entertainment, design, arts, sports, and media industries spent the most time working from home.
Quite surprisingly, the pandemic showed that working remotely is also possible for accounting firms. Research reveals that 97% of accounting firms offered remote auditing in 2022. While a remote accounting firm is profitable, your success lies in managing it efficiently. How do you do that, then? By using the right tools.
In this article, we’ll share some of the best tools that will make your remote team productive and efficient.
1 Slack: Best Communication and Collaboration Tool
Effective communication is the cornerstone of success for remote teams. Unlike face-to-face, communicating through emails, texts, or chats can lead to misinterpretation if the message is misunderstood.
That is why a messaging platform that helps you communicate with all the members of your accounting firm is essential.
Slack, a free messaging tool, can help you connect with your team members so that you can communicate and collaborate with ease. You can create and organize channels on this productivity platform by client, project, or whatever makes sense for you and your company.
Slack boosts productivity by allowing managers to integrate it into industry-leading software and apps, including Zoom and Google Sheets.
Key Features
- Connect over audio or video and share screens with your team to boost productivity
- Saves documents, links, and messages shared in huddles automatically
- Workflow Builder allows for the automation of tasks with drag-and-drop simplicity
Pricing: Slack isn’t free. Pro plan costs $7.25/person/month; Business+ costs $12.50/person/month; contact sales for Enterprise Grid price estimate
2 Mango’s Document Management Software: Best for Organizing All Your Documents in One Place
Remote accounting firms manage documents digitally. That means they are saved from the hassle of trawling through piles of paper documents to search for whatever they are looking for. Yet, things get messy. Searching for and retrieving a specific document is challenging and time-intensive when documents aren’t organized in one place.
Document management software is, therefore, a must-have for every remote accounting firm.
According to Mango Practice Management, document management software allows accounting professionals to store all their documents in one place. This makes it easy for the team members as well as the clients to access them.
Mango’s built-in view feature lets users view how documents appear to the clients without leaving the page. This document management software’s intuitive document previewer lets you view documents quickly in large views.
The fast and flexible way to view documents is just one feature of this best document management software. There are many more features that set it apart from others. Its folder permission profiles let you control which team members can access different folder levels.
You also enjoy complete control over all the folders you share on the client portal. You can define the level of access granted to your clients.
Generally, accountants give clients “read” access, meaning they can only view the financial documents uploaded in the folder. You can also control whether your clients can download or upload financial documents. Thus, Mango Practice Management’s document management software allows for seamless collaboration and document exchange between the firm and the clients.
Key Features
- Offers HTML email templates, which are customizable, and you can add personalized messaging with custom fields
- Allows users to edit and correct financial documents with ease
- Version control ensures nothing gets lost during edits
Pricing: The basic plan is priced at $35/user/month; the plus plan is priced at $55/user/month; the pro is priced at $65/user/month
3 Fireflies: Best AI Notetaker
Note-taking is essential for accountants because clients often provide important details or instructions regarding their goals or financial situations. Capturing all the details accurately is important for future reference.
Manual note-taking is an age-old way to record information. However, it’s easy to miss information when capturing notes using your hands. An AI notetaker, such as Fireflies, will be a worthy addition to the tools in your arsenal.
Fireflies automatically records and transcribes meetings across several video conferencing apps such as Google Meet and Zoom. All you have to do is invite it to your meetings and it will start capturing your conversations. This way, you won’t have to multitask. You can share these recordings with your team members to ensure everyone is aligned on the requirements and needs of clients.
Thanks to its AI-powered search feature, you can review one-hour-long meetings in five minutes. You can also share meeting notes on other apps like Slack.
Key Features
- Create your own custom topic trackers
- Turn important parts of meetings into shareable soundbite snippets and share them with your team members
- Can be integrated with Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, and Calendly
Pricing: Free for individuals; $10/seat/month for small teams; $19/seat/month for fast-growing businesses; $39/seat/month for large-scale enterprises
Wrapping it up, managing a remote accounting firm isn’t that challenging if you have the right tools at your disposal. These are just a few tools that will help boost the productivity of your remote workforce and increase efficiency. There are several other tools, such as Zapier, Convertkit, and Loom, that you can benefit from.
Before purchasing any tool for your remote accounting firm, be sure to schedule a demo, so you can try it out for free. Doing so will help you understand if it’s worth investing.
