Filipinos are now adjusting to working from home as a result of the pandemic. With this, millions of people are having trouble making adjustments to increase their productivity outside the four corners of their office.
If you’re one of these people, good news awaits you. The barriers that come with remote work can easily be solved thanks to an abundance of software and apps at your disposal.
Take a look at this quick summary of the tools we’ll look at more in detail:
- Tonik: For automated saving (stashes)
- Canva: For design
- Google Workspace: For documentation, collaboration, and communication
- Trello: For project & task management
- Grammarly: For writing & editing
- Taxumo: For tax filing
- Timely: For productivity and time tracking
- Maya: For online & invoice payments
8 Best Work-from-Home Tools for Filipino Remote Workers
As you can see, each tool we will discuss can help you with an aspect of your work and help you maximize your productivity.
After reading this article, we expect you’ll be using four or more of these.
Let’s get started.
Tonik
Cost: Free
Features:
- Physical and virtual Mastercard
- Time deposits (as much as 6.5% interest per annum)
- Stashes (4 to 4.5% interest per annum)
- Quick Loans
- Easy cash-ins/deposits
Gone are the days when you have to go to the bank every time you need to make a finance-related errand. As digital banks make their entry into the country’s market, Tonik remains one of the most reliable ones.
Tonik is a digital bank that helps you monitor your finances from the comfort of your home using your phone.
This app is famous for its high-interest rate on their savings account so it’s an amazing option for remote workers who want to build their savings. Moreover, Tonik is also secure so you’re sure that your money is in good hands.
Opening a Tonik account is relatively easy. All you need to do is download the app, and complete the registration process with a government-issued ID. From here, you can get a main account, and open up to 5 times deposits and 5 stashes within the app.
You can take advantage of the Solo Stash Account with an interest rate of 4% of annum, or Group Stash Account with an interest of 4.5% per annum. Stashes can be used to save up for different things such as emergency funds, vacation funds, or medical funds.
Meanwhile, time deposits allow you to earn as much as 6% interest per annum if you pledge a certain amount of cash for a specific period.
When you get this app, you can also have a physical and virtual card to use for online and physical store transactions.
Canva
Cost:
- Free
- Premium: starts at P2,490/year for up to 5 people
- Enterprise: P1,490/month per person
Free plan features:
- Over 8,000 free templates
- Over 100 design types (letters, presentations, social media posts, and more)
- Free photos and graphics
- Canva app so you can design whenever, wherever
Pro plan features:
- Tools to help with brand identity
- One-click design magic resize
- Over 420,000 free templates
- Over 75 million premium videos, graphics, photos, and stock images
- Upload own logos and fonts
- Custom templates
- One-click photo background remover
- *plus all free plan features
Enterprise plan features:
- Tools to help with brand identity
- Upload in Canva with brand controls
- Built-in workflow for design approval
- Advanced template locking
- Unlimited storage
- *plus all pro plan features
Whatever industry you belong to, a graphic design tool can help you in so many ways.
Without question, Canva is the most used online graphic design software in the world.
Think of it as a combination of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and even PicMonkey. With Canva, you can do things such as:
- Improve photos with effects
- Use drag and drop
- Access stickers, photos, shapes, icons, videos, and many more
- Animate images
- Build your unique brand kit
- Plan your content
- Design business cards, presentations, posters, flyers, and many more
This platform is a complete design tool for people who have no prior experience in design. Here, you can design social media posts, reports for work, flyers, invoices, infographics, and even PDFs – the sky’s the limit.
For beginners, Canva also has a bunch of templates to use. If you want to let your creativity shine, you can start your work from scratch.
Canva is the perfect tool to use for marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners, and remote workers who want to design stuff in minutes.
You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to learn design in Canva even if you haven’t used Photoshop before. The best part of this tool is that you don’t have to invest in a heavy-duty computer to handle it.
Google Workspace
Cost:
- Free
- Business starter: $4.20/month (around P219)
- Business standard: $9.60/month (around P501)
- Business Plus: $18/month (around P941)
Business starter plan features:
- Custom and secure business email
- Over 100 participants in video meetings
- 30GB cloud storage per user
- Security and management controls
Business Standard plan features:
- Custom and secure business email
- Over 150 participants in video meetings
- 2TB cloud storage per user
- Security and management controls
- Standard support
Business plus plan features:
- Custom and secure business email +eDiscovery, retention
- Over 500 participants in video meetings + recording and attendance tracking
- 5TB cloud storage per user
- Enhanced security and management controls
- Standard support
Formerly called G Suite, Google Workspace offers tons of powerful office and collaboration apps that are suitable for every remote worker and business.
When you use this tool, you can gain access to a suite that includes:
- Docs, Sheets, Slides, and many more
- Drive
- Calendar
- Gmail
- Meet
Google Workspace is free for everyone who has a Google account, especially for those who want to experience an incredible cloud-based office suite.
With this tool, you can give up your desktop-based apps such as Microsoft 365. Another reason why Google Workspace is a must-use is that it makes it so easy to share files with other people.
The files created with Sheets, Docs, and Slides can also be accessed seamlessly, just like you’re opening a file from your computer.
Trello
Cost:
- Free
- Standard: $5 per month (around P261)
- Premium: $10 per month (around P522)
- Enterprise: $17.50 per month (around P914)
Free plan features:
- Unlimited cards
- Up to 10 boards per workspace
- Unlimited power-ups
- Unlimited stores (10MB/file)
- 250 workspace command runs per month
- custom background and stickers
- unlimited activity log
- assignee and due dates
- iOS and Android mobile apps
- 2-factor authentication
Standard plan features:
- Unlimited boards
- Advanced checklists
- Custom Fields
- Unlimited storage (250MB/file)
- 1,000 Workspace command runs per month
- Single board guests
- Saved searches
- *plus everything in the free plan
Premium plan features:
- Dashboard view
- Timeline view
- Workspace Table view
- Calendar view
- Workspace Calendar View
- Map view
- Unlimited Workspace command runs
- Admin and security features
- Workspace-level templates
- Collections
- Observers
- Priority support
- Simple data export
- *plus everything in standard
Enterprise plan features:
- Unlimited Workspaces
- Organization-wide permissions
- Organization visible boards
- Public board management
- Multi-board guests
- Attachment permissions
- Power-Up administration
- Free SSO and user provisioning with Atlassian Access
- *plus everything in features
Coordination, organization, and tracking work are hard enough to accomplish in office settings, what more in remote work?
This is where Trello comes into play. This tool is a fun and intuitive app to help you facilitate collaboration.
This tool fits into the Kanban board collaboration category, which is a method for organizing, managing, and tracking work. Think of it like creating to-do lists using an illustration board and stick notes.
For example, you can make three columns, called lists on the app, and name them “to do,” “in progress,” and “done.” Then, you can write chores and put them in each column.
From here, you can assign them to a person. After this, the chores can be moved to another column until the task is done.
This tool is great if you want everyone in your team to have visibility on everyone’s state of work. It also makes way for improved accountability.
While Trello is famous as a team collaboration app, you can also leverage it if you’re working alone. This tool can be used to keep track of your individual tasks and ideas. All in all, this is a flexible app that can be used in various contexts.
Trello can be used both as a mobile, desktop, and web app. The web app is preferred thanks to its seamless drag and drop capabilities.
Grammarly
Cost:
- Free
- Premium: starts at $12 per month (around P627)
- Business: starts at $45 per month up to 3 members (around P2,352)
Free plan features:
- Spelling
- Grammar
- Punctuation
Premium plan features:
- Clarity-focused sentence rewrites
- Tone adjustments
- Plagiarism detection
- Word choice
- Formality level
- Fluency
- Additional advanced suggestions
- *plus every feature in the free plan
Business plan features:
- Style guide
- Snippets
- Brand tones
- Analytics dashboard
- Priority email support
- Account roles and permissions
- SAML SSO
- Invoicing is available for annual plans of 10 seats or more
- *plus every feature in premium
Whether you’re working as a writer or not, the last thing you want to experience is to constantly be corrected for typos and errors in your writing. This is why you need to have Grammarly.
While Filipinos are known to be excellent English speakers and writers, you may still find yourself needing an additional line of defense, especially if you’re a professional writer or social media manager.
This tool is the most popular grammar checker in the world thanks to its accuracy. It is also very easy and fast to use.
This powerful writing assistant is an integral tool for any remote worker who is in need of grammar and plagiarism checks, and those who want to improve the readability of their work.
Essentially, this tool scans your writing and uses AI to identify mistakes and issues including:
- Grammar and punctuation
- Readability
- Writing style
- Editing reports (downloadable)
- Plagiarism check
Grammarly only provides tools for English Grammar. However, you can also tailor the settings to be specific to:
- Canadian English
- American English
- British English
- Australian English
Taxumo
Cost:
- Free
- 8% plan: P399/month
- Micro Business: P599/month
- Small and medium: P799/month
Free features:
- Basic features, including real-time tax calculation
8% plan features:
- Income tax return
- 2nd annual itr payment
- Registration renewal
- Percentage tax return – zero dues
- Summary of alphalist of withheld taxes (sawt)
- Books of accounts
- Account delegation (max of 2)
Micro Business plan features:
- Income tax return
- 2nd annual itr payment
- Registration renewal
- Percentage tax return
- Percentage tax return – zero dues
- Expanded withholding tax
- Withholding tax for compensation
- Summary of alphalist of withheld taxes (sawt)
- Quarterly alphalist of payees
- Books of accounts
- Account delegation (max of 2)
Small and medium plan features:
- Income tax return
- 2nd annual itr payment
- Registration renewal
- Percentage tax return
- Percentage tax return – zero dues
- Expanded withholding tax
- Value added tax
- Withholding tax for compensation
- Income tax return for corporations and partnerships
- Summary of alphalist of withheld taxes (sawt)
- Quarterly alphalist of payees
- Summary list of sales and purchases (slsp)
- Books of accounts
- Account delegation (max of 2)
Can you imagine how much time you lose by computing and lining up to pay your taxes?
With Taxumo, you can do this without any hassle. This tool is a godsend for remote workers who don’t have the time to figure out how to file and pay taxes.
This app is perfect for self-employed Filipinos, freelancers, corporations, and small business owners. It will also let you have access to various payment channels such as Maya, PayPal, credit and debit cards, and pawnshops.
Although it doesn’t have a dedicated app, the web page can easily be accessed on any device, including smartphones.
Timely
Cost:
- Starter: $8
- Premium: $14
- Unlimited: $20
Starter plan features:
- 50 projects
- 3 teams
- Automatic time tracking
- Native integrations
- Automated notifications
- Automated timesheets
- Custom reminders
- Reporting (hours rates, project budgets, report templates, tag lists)
- Control (log hours for others, timer, timestamps)
Premium plan features:
- Unlimited projects
- Unlimited teams
- Automatic time tracking
- Native integrations
- Azure ad integration, jira integration, zoom integration, quickbooks integration
- Error detection
- Automated notifications
- Automated timesheets
- Custom reminders
- Reporting (hours rates, project budgets, report templates, tag lists)
- Control (log hours for others, timer, timestamps, requires tags and notes)
- Project management (project dashboard, time entry history, locked hours, recurring project budgets and rates, cost rates, weekly capacity)
- In-app support
Unlimited plan features:
- Automatic time tracking
- Native integrations
- Azure ad integration, jira integration, zoom integration, quickbooks integration
- Error detection
- Automated notifications
- Automated timesheets
- Custom reminders
- Reporting (hours rates, project budgets, report templates, tag lists)
- Control (log hours for others, timer, timestamps, requires tags and notes)
- Project management (project dashboard, time entry history, locked hours,recurring project budgets and rates, cost rates, weekly capacity)
- In-app support, priority support
- Team visibility (team leads, company view, notify in bulk, people dashboard)
- Advanced reporting (branded reports, live reports)
Timely app (not to be confused with Timely booking software) is one of the most powerful time-tracking tools you can use, especially for remote workers who are in charge of project management.
The platform also has a user-friendly interface which means you don’t have to adjust to using it.
With this tool, you can stay connected with your workforce seamlessly. It will also enable you to accurately report on business aspects from team management, resource planning, billing, and project management.
As for remote workers, this tool is great especially if you want to keep track of your billable and nonbillable hours. With Timely, you can focus on getting work done without having to worry about time capture and making sure you stay on top of your time sheets.
Maya
Cost: Free
Features:
- Money transfer
- Digital banking
- Credit access (up to P15,000)
- Crypto exchange
- Online shopping
- Load purchase
- Bills and merchant payment
Formerly known as mobile wallet app PayMaya, Maya has evolved to become an all-in-one money app that aims to help Filipinos save, spend, and grow their money.
Just like other neobanks in the Philippines, Maya also excels in offering a high-interest savings rate of 6% per annum.
Remote workers will appreciate how easy it is to use Maya, especially because it’s one of the most convenient prepaid cards to reload in the country.
Therefore, you can take care of any financial transaction even if you don’t have a credit card.
If you already have a PayMaya account before, simply reinstall the app on your phone, and you’ll immediately become a member.
Meanwhile, new members simply need to download the app and fill out the online form. New members can even enjoy rewards which include:
- Sign up bonus (P20 upon joining, P80 upon sending money and upgrading your account)
- Referral program (P100 when someone you refer opens a Maya account and completes a transaction)
- Load cashback (100% cashback, up to P50 for basic users, and P200 for those who have upgraded their account)
