The world under COVID-19 has changed. The future is unpredictable for all, and in particular, for accounting practices. Our clients struggle to keep their businesses afloat while quarantines and lockdowns have forced us to change how we work. How, as accountants, do we suitably support our clients while working remotely? In this blog article, we'll name our top picks for apps that will help your practice, its accountants, and bookkeepers continue to operate during this uncertain period.

We've chosen the top apps for remote working that relate to key functions that accounting practices perform:

Slack logo

Slack is a "WhatsApp-for-work." Slack allows you and your practice to have direct or one-on-one conversations and is a great alternative to email. Working in Slack gives everyone in your practice a shared view of conversations and progress. It's designed to support the way people naturally work together, so you can collaborate with people online as efficiently as you do face-to-face.

One of Slack's true innovations was the advent of channels (i.e., chat rooms) organized around a specific topic or theme. Channels allow notifications so you know immediately if someone mentions you by name in a channel that deals with a specific topic, such as "Our Xero subscription" or "Management accounts for clients". Additionally, you can search for anything communicated in Slack, which transforms the tool into a sizable repository of conversations, data, and files.

Slack has four pricing plans:

We'll focus on Free and Standard, as they're the most suited for small and mid-sized practices.

The Free plan has no fee, and features are somewhat limited (but still sufficient). Your entire team will have access to Slack, and your practice will get file storage up to 5GB and a search history of 10k messages.

The Standard plan has a $8.75 fee per user per month, so it can get expensive quickly. On the standard plan, your practice will get file storage of up to 10GB per user and an unlimited search history. You can also make group voice and video calls on the Standard plan, while the Free plan is limited to one-on-one calls.

The Free plan initially. If you need the extra storage and search capability, upgrade to Standard.

Click here to visit Slack.

Manage tasks: Asana

Asana logo

It's easy to lose track of all the moving pieces in a practice and tough to stay up to date with deadlines. Asana is a web and mobile application designed to help practices organize, track, and manage their work effectively, i.e. its a task management tool.

Practices can create projects, assign work to accountants or bookkeepers, specify deadlines, and communicate about tasks directly in Asana.

Asana has three pricing plans for individuals and small teams:

We'll focus on Personal and Starter, as they're the most suitable for small and mid-sized practices.

The Personal plan is free and provides core functionality, including tasks, calendars, assignments, and due dates. This plan is limited to 15 users, which is typically more than enough for most practices.

The Starter Plan is $10.99 per user per month and provides additional features such as a search capability, different user authorities to segment specific clients to specific accountants, and an admin console. The admin console is specifically useful for tracking staff performance (i.e., tasks completed), but for a small practice, it may be unnecessary.

The Basic plan.

Click here to visit Asana.

Zoom logo

Zoom is a fantastic tool for virtual meetings. It's easy to use and reliable for all video and audio conferencing, chats, webinars, and client meetings. Zoom has a fantastic feature set that includes, for example, high-definition (HD) video and audio and the ability to record your meetings. It's useful for both client and internal meetings between accountants, bookkeepers, and other staff. When you create a Zoom call for a client meeting, your client doesn't need to create an account on Zoom to join the call - a neat touch.

Zoom has five pricing plans:

For our purposes, we'll focus on the first two plans. The Basic plan is free, and you can host up to 100 participants in a meeting. You can also access team chat, whiteboard basic, mail, and calendar for clients, Clips Basics, and notes. However, you are limited to 40 minutes per meeting. The Pro plan is for 1-9 users and allows up to 30 hours per meeting, with mail and calendar with client and service included, unlimited videos in Clips Plus, 5GB of cloud storage, AI Companion, and free premium apps for 1 year.

The Pro plan. The 40-minute limit on the Basic plan is a huge inconvenience and not worth the trouble.

Click here to visit Zoom.

Syft Analytics logo

During this unpredictable time, it's important to keep your clients up-to-date with their financial position and share useful insights to help them keep their businesses afloat. Syft is a simple yet powerful analytics and reporting app for QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Sage. Syft helps accountants and businesses uncover insights into financial data and automate monthly management accounts. Syft can brand PDF reports (which can be sent to clients, investors, and staff in under 5 minutes) and visualize data in easy-to-understand graphs. Better yet, Syft's AI-powered insights engine automatically uncovers insights in your visualizations to help you quickly understand what's happening. This is especially useful given the cash-flow challenges businesses currently face.

Syft has four pricing plans (these are the prices for when you pay monthly and commit annually):

The key additional features in Plus are deeper insights, more report customization, and multi-currency support. Advanced allows you to merge financial and operational insights with white-labeling options and tailored onboarding assistance. Scale has all the power of Advanced, along with add-ons, enhanced security, audit logs, and centralized controls.

The Advanced plan.

Click here to visit Syft.

Hubstaff logo

Hubstaff is time-tracking software designed to help you understand how you’re spending your time. It allows you to focus on getting things done without worrying about losing track of what you worked on and how much time you spent on each task.

Once you've set up your projects and tasks, you can start tracking time for them using Hubstaff’s desktop, mobile, or web apps. Your tasks and the time you track will automatically be synchronized across all your devices. Hubstaff also has app and URL tracking and activity monitoring features that will help you understand how productive you are so you can work smarter.

Hubstaff has four pricing plans:

We’ll focus on the Starter and Grow plans, which are the most suited for small and mid-sized practices.

The Starter plan lets you see your team’s activity levels, calculated based on their keyboard and mouse input over time. You can also use it for time tracking, timesheets, limited screenshots, limited reports, clients and invoices, and more.

The Grow plan has several additional features, such as Tasks, Reports, 1 integration, idle timeout, project budgets, work breaks, and expenses.

Accountants will find the invoicing feature incredibly useful as it pulls from your time-tracked data and automatically calculates amounts based on your bill rates and the projects you worked on. You’ll be notified when the client receives the invoice, and they can also send payments through the Hubstaff app.

The Grow plan.

Click here to visit Hubstaff.

We hope you enjoyed our review of the top apps for accountants working remotely. If you have any feedback or would like to suggest a topic for us to write about, email us at info@syftanalytics.com.

Stay safe,
​Syft