With remote work and hybrid work roles becoming increasingly common, it’s highly possible that at least some of your accounting firm team members sometimes work from home or another location. While having a remote team can come with advantages, like flexibility and cost savings on office space and equipment, the remote setup also comes with its unique challenges. To meet those challenges head-on, you need the proper accounting tech stack that will make it easy for them to work from anywhere, stay in contact with the rest of the team, and keep things efficient. Here are the must-have features for any remote accounting solution. 

Why your accounting firm tech stack matters 

Accountants don't choose the accounting profession just to get bogged down with questions about what software to use to run a practice. But the impacts of the right tech stack can be felt across all aspects of accounting firm operations. 

Your tech stack can help you: 

• Run a more efficient practice through automation 
• Reduce costly errors and bottlenecks 
• Improve client service and enhance client loyalty 
• Differentiate your firm from competitors 
• Gain insights with easier access to accounting firm data 

With all of the benefits that a good tech stack provides accounting firms, investing in the right tools isn't optional anymore—it's essential to thrive in today's marketplace. 

Tech stack essentials for accounting firms 

What makes up an effective accounting firm tech stack today? Look for tools that offer the following features and capabilities.  

Project management 

Effectively managing projects with remote teams can be tricky—back-and-forth emails, requests for status updates, and confusion about who needs to complete a task and when are just some of the issues that can slow down your workflows and eat into your billable time. 

By leveraging a cloud-based project management solution, you’ll never have to worry about missing deadlines or confusion with the workflow because you’ll have all the tools you need to keep your team on track.  

Look for these features in project management software: 

• A comprehensive project dashboard that shows you how projects are progressing with the click of a button 
• Project templates that make it easy to set up new projects in moments, getting your team to work and saving you valuable time in the process 
• Custom workflows that allow you to assign tasks to team members and track project progress in real-time 
• Email notifications that let your team know when projects and tasks are assigned and keep you informed of when a specific part of a project is ready to review 

Document management 

If your team is working remotely, you don’t have time to waste sending essential documents back and forth through the mail or by courier, and you also don’t want to risk sending confidential client information through emails that aren’t secure. 

To avoid document management issues like these, your firm needs a quality document management solution.  

Accounting software will ideally provide you with cloud-based access to your documents so you don’t waste time sending them back and forth and security options that allow you to control who can access specific files.  

Time tracking 

Accurately logging billable and nonbillable hours is already critical when your team works in-house. When team members are working offsite, though, effective time management becomes a bigger challenge. 

To keep your team on track and ensure you’re billing clients correctly for every hour spent on their accounts, you need a time-tracking solution that’s accurate, easy to use, and convenient. 

With the right time-tracking software, your team can: 

• Capture time quickly and accurately by using as many timers as needed for all their tasks 
• Access their timers from anywhere with cloud-based functionality 
• Avoid input errors that usually occur when time isn’t tracked automatically 
• Create batch time entries that save time and money by allowing you to generate multiple time records from one place