#3 Schedule regular catch-ups, encourage communication & collaboration

You need to check-in with your team and discuss where they are at. Distance is no excuse for this not to happen. Make use of your video conferencing tool and schedule these meetings regularly. It’s not quite the same as chatting in-person, but it’s pretty close.

You can have different catchups with different objectives. We suggest:

• A weekly team meeting (videoconference or teleconference): the length of this meeting will vary according to the size of your team, but it can go anywhere between 10minutes to 45 minutes. Everyone in your staff, from partners to junior accountants shares what they need to accomplish during the week, if there are any blockers, or if they will be unavailable. Another option is to have a "representative" of the department share what that team will be working on (a popular choice in horizontal accounting practices.)

• A weekly 1-1 meeting between manager and each team member (videoconference): this meeting can go for 30 mins and it's a chance for you to set the groundwork for the week. You can assess how the previous week went and, if you are able to see your team member's to-do list, you can assist in prioritizing what they are working on, and go through those particular tasks that you can see will consume most of their time. Check the progress of pieces of work and see what items are due soon.

• A daily standup (teleconference or chat) where everyone in the team very succinctly shares what they will be working on that day.

Outside of meetings, it’s important that blockers are identified, and communication is tracked. If a job is stuck because you are waiting on a client to send you information, mark it as such (and set reminders to re-ask for it!). All phone conversations with clients should be recorded (or at least notes taken) so that anyone else involved in that job or with that client is aware.

#4 Standardize processes

When the team is working from different locations, you can’t leave any doubts about who is responsible for doing what, or everyone executing in a different manner. This is where standardizing your most common processes becomes key.

For complex processes involving multiple members of the team, or those compliance jobs that you want efficiency to be at its maximum, set up a template job that has a standard checklist with every single step everyone needs to take to get it done.

Each checklist item should be assigned to someone, and include a due date. You might find it useful to add a final item in each standardized process called “Review work”, and assign it to yourself.

With this process, everyone will know exactly what they are responsible for, what their deadline is, and what other colleagues are working on towards the overall outcome. It’s the perfect way for a team to collaborate on a shared project from multiple locations.

As a manager, you will have a birds-eye view of all of this, and easily be able to keep track of how close the project is towards completion.

#5 Gain the confidence to trust them

Managing remote accountants and bookkeepers requires an element of trust. However, we know accountants like to be in control; so if this is you, ensure you implement systems that allow you to have full visibility over everything going on.

It's not about micro-managing—it's about tracking, learning and setting corrections in place so that mistakes are not repeated and productivity is increased in every iteration. If you have the systems and communication checks in place, it will become more and more natural as time goes by.

A remote team will allow you to scale faster, hire the best talent available and provide attractive work options to employees. If you have the right systems and processes in place, you will find that collaboration, communication and visibility will not be sacrificed. In fact, you may even find that it all works even smoother than if you were all in the same building.