Working Remotely? Here are 10 Handy Tools to Level-Up Your WFH Game

If you’ve just started working from home, you may find it overwhelming to try to collaborate with your team, organise your time effectively, and perhaps you’ve got a two-year-old running around leaving Lego pieces everywhere.

You may feel a little like this…

Yep, I get it.

Like you, I understand the challenges of working from home (and these are made even worse with the added stress of a pandemic) so I can imagine you’d be going a little crazy trying to get everything done as well as keep everyone safe and healthy.

So to help ease the stress of getting your work done, I’ve put together 10 little- to no-cost wonders that will help you organise your time, and manage your team.

1. IFTT (If This, Then That)

IFTT helps all of your products and services work better together. What that means is that these applets connect features across multiple apps to do things like get a notification if it’s going to rain tomorrow, or automatically save new Gmail attachments to your Google Drive. Cost: Free.

2. TinyScan

I love this app so I don’t have to have to use my HP scanner. TinyScan is a scanner right in your pocket ? ready to scan in documents, receipts, or even multiple files in seconds. TinyScan uses your smartphone camera to take a photo as a scan of any A4 document (in colour or black and white), all while on the go. It stores your virtual copy ready to share via email or a cloud platform. It’s simple to use, saves time, and keeps all your files in one place. Cost: Free limited use version. Full version: A$7.99 or US$5.99.

3. Asana

If you’re looking for a trackable, task-oriented work app, Asana is one that’s easy to use and easy to delegate work to others. While this app isn’t new, it includes recent boards, custom fields, offline mobile access, team management for administrators, and lots of third-party integrations to make project management with a team easy. Cost: Free with upgrades to premium starting at A$11.99 per member per month.

4. Unroll me

If you’ve subscribed to work-related email newsletters (and every single email from biz gurus like me), it’s probably causing your inbox to burst at the seams. Rather than trying to wade through your inbox and unsubscribe one by one manually, Unroll.me sends you a once-daily summary of all of them and lets you quickly unsubscribe to the ones you no longer want. Cost: Free.

5. Spark

Are you tired of trying to organise your inbox? If you need help managing your emails, then Spark is for you. Its main goal is to help you “love email again” and it does this by helping you prioritise your emails ? if you need to respond right away, or set a reminder to respond later. It also helps you organise when you can read emails you’ve subscribed to. Cost: Free.

6. Albert

Unlike a budgeting app, Albert keeps an eye on your accounts and helps you manage your savings and debt. It alerts you when various bills are due, suggests ways to cut costs and even has a built-in savings account. Simply connect your accounts to the easy-to-understand interface and Albert will set to work. Cost: Free.

7. Maybe*

When you want to engage with your audience, spy on your competitors, manage your Facebook Ads, and check sentiment on your brand, you need Maybe* — a full suite of social media and engagement tools at your fingertips. It will help you stay connected to your customers, and make sure you’re part of the conversation when you need to be. The features I love most are you can see what your competitors are doing so your business can make smart product or service decisions, and you can also train the AI to better recognise negative or positive sentiment so it provides you with better information. Cost: Free forever tier gives you enough insights to make boss moves. #Easy

8. MyWeeklyBudget

With a streamlined and simple-to-use interface for tracking your spending, MyWeeklyBudget allows you to enter the item and amount after each purchase. It can be a little time consuming, but it’s a great way to stay on top of your daily purchases. It’s a good alternative to a spreadsheet or logging into an app once a month to see you haven’t stuck to your budget. Cost: A$1.49 or US 99c.

9. Revue

If you’re spending too much time on your email newsletters, Revue is there to simplify the process. This handy tool lets you compile interesting articles, automatically add content you’ve saved to other services (or created yourself), and easily drag and drop images. Cost: Free for 200 subscribers, then $5 per month.

10. HypeAuditor

Looking to partner with an influencer for a campaign? HypeAuditor analyses the engagement and follower rate of the influencer’s Instagram, and gives you an accurate report of their online community to see if they’re really worth the fee. Cost: Free for one report, then $149 for 10 reports.

BONUS: Free Google Chrome Extensions I can’t live without.

1. If you’re anything like me and like to Google dangerously by having 1,453 tabs open at once, you need The Great Suspender that “snoozes” your inactive tabs.
2. For finding email addresses on any website, I turn to Hunter.io.
3. To stop you from sprinkling “sorry” throughout your emails when you don’t need to, you need the Just not Sorry Gmail plugin.
4. Need to record a video to show a client? Use Loom to record your screen.

**

Need More Resources?

I’ve put together some more of my favourite tools and resources to help boost your productivity, collab with your team and generally get sh*t done…

It’s called “The Little Black Book of Work-From-Home Resources”…

??You can get it for free here (no email required, and it opens in Facebook Messenger).

Full disclosure: I currently work with Maybe* on copywriting and marketing strategy.