People often ask what sort of tools we use for working virtually.  As I spend most of my waking time online (yes, it’s sad I know, I should be out in the fresh air running or something) I’ve built up a reasonable list in the last few years.  These are my top five tools at the moment.

1. Google Calendars – Yep, it’s an oldie but a goodie.  Google calendars are really versatile, so easy to use and they seem to do just about everything you want to do with them.  You can access them from anywhere with an internet connection, send out invites, share your calendar, schedule recurring events, get a countdown time to your next meeting, get SMS and email reminders for events.

2. www.smartsheet.com – When we started using this site it took a while for me to get into it.  Now it seems that every time a new project comes up I think “ah, we could do that with a smartsheet”.  It allows you to create and share online spreadsheets that are so flexible you can use them for just about anything.  We use them to keep track of tasks and projects amongst ourselves and also with clients.  They completely take away the need for endless emails back and forth with attachments.  Anybody who is able to view the sheets can instantly see what the status of tasks is and you get an email notification when any updates are made so you don’t miss what other people are doing. 

3. www.timeiq.com – We used to each have a desktop timer for recording time on client projects.  It used to mean that at the end of the month I would have to get everyone’s timesheet and waste time collating into one report for clients.  With Time IQ we keep all our timesheets online so it doesn’t matter if we are working on our desktops or our laptops we can still record our time as we work.  When it comes to the end of month reports it’s a 2 click process to pull together all the info I need to bill clients.  It’s not free but it’s low cost and the time it has saved me is more than worth it.

4. www.dropbox.com – This is a great file sharing tool, it’s so convenient to sync and share files and you get up to 2gb of online storage free.

5. www.popfax.com – I rarely need to send or receive faxes, probably once every 2 or 3 months.  so it doesn’t make sense to have a fax machine cluttering up my office.  I use this service which provides an online fax number with a geographical prefix.  People can fax from a regular machine to your number and it just ends up as a PDF in your inbox.  You can also fax documents straight from your PC to any fax number.