You must have heard about Stripe in recent years. Founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010, Stripe processes billions of dollars annually in online transactions. Yeah, turns out PayPal isn’t the only payment processor on the block. There are other options that are just as good or even better.
Stripe is a payment processor that supports the electronic transfer of cash from a customer’s bank (issuing bank), into a merchant’s bank (acquiring bank) as payment for goods or services bought with a credit card. Stripe stands out for its quick and easy solution for receiving payments from all over the world. It’s a great platform for freelancers and remote teams.
In this article, learn how to use Stripe to receive and send payments from all over the globe. It’s a quick and easy platform for freelancers and remote teams.
What Makes Stripe Standout Among Remote Teams?
Stripe is an excellent credit card processor for online-only businesses. If you have experience as a developer then it’s very fast and easy to implement. With Stripe’s API, it’s possible to build your own e-commerce environment. But one of the major disadvantages of Stripe is that it doesn’t support PayPal payments.
Stripe’s biggest attraction is it’s easy and free API. This is why it’s a big hit among developers. This allows small companies with development resources to build out custom experiences for their e-commerce site.
But, this can be disadvantageous for small companies that have no developers or budget to hire a freelancer coder. They have to integrate Stripe through the use of another e-commerce platform. These are certainly easier for non-technical companies to set up but they will cost extra.
Stripe asks a standard 2.9% + $0.30 fee for managing online credit card transactions. There are enterprise volume discounts for businesses that have $80,000 or more in monthly sales. Unfortunately, Stripe currently does not offer credit card processing services for offline retail stores.
Integrations
It would be negligent of us if we didn’t mention all the different applications Stripe integrates with (or has a plug-in for). We won’t mention all of them here, but you can be rest assured that they offer the full range from popular accounting, analytics, and automation tools to chat, marketing and business operations services.
Now without any further ado, let’s see how you can create a free Stripe account.
Creating Your Free Stripe Account
Go hereand register your free account on Stripe. Fill the form and click on ‘Create your Stripe account’. They’ll ask ‘How do you want to get started with Stripe?’. Click ‘Skip for now’ at the bottom of the page. Also, don’t forget to confirm your email address.
Since you’ll be receiving and paying through your Stripe account, it’s important to enter details like address and bank account number.
Go to your Stripe dashboard and click on ‘Activate your account’.
Fill in all the required fields.
Don’t worry if your activation form is different. It varies depending on the country.
Enabling Stripe Connect
Stripe Connect is used by marketplaces, platforms, and remote teams to receive money and pay third-parties. Here’s how you can enable Stripe Connect features with customer accounts.
Note: If your company is based in the US, Stripe will review your platform account before granting you access. Read this article to know how to apply for Stripe connect review.
If you’re from another country then follow these steps:
Go to the Marketplace drop-down menu
Tap ‘Connect’ from the list
Click on the ‘Get started’ button
Wait a few seconds to see the Connect dashboard
Tap ‘Settings’ and then ‘Connect settings’
Enable ‘Custom’ in ‘Account types’
Getting your API keys from Stripe
Now you’re all set to get your API keys and input them into the marketplace. To do so, follow these steps:
Go to ‘Developers’ in the left-hand menu
Click on ‘API keys’
You’ll find two keys in ‘Standard keys’, publishable key and secret key.
Stripe is a very good online-only credit card processor that has some of the fairest processing rates and very few additional costs. It’s free and simple API is excellent for businesses and remote teams whose developers can afford to build a custom online e-commerce experience. Unfortunately, businesses that don’t have any technical resources will have to pay extra in order to get a separate e-commerce solution.
Time management apps are becoming increasingly common due to rising demand. Every business enterprise or startup is concerned about maintaining productivity levels, and that is only possible through an efficient time tracking or project management system.
It gives an accurate picture and insight into employee’s productivity and manifests their peak performance levels. Time monitoring apps bring-in more cost efficiency and transparency into businesses thus generating more revenue than ever before.
Here we are detailing 10 best time management apps in 2020 that you will need to save and manage your time:
Slack – collaboration and communication
Slack is one of the most used management apps that companies prefer. It is basically a tool for communication and collaboration. Slack offers shared channels with search options. It can be integrated with numerous other project management app(s). These are some of the features that make the work convenient and staff members located around the world can connect with each other.
You can pin messages and refer to channels
Manage and track documents
Advanced search option
Shared channels to streamline work activities
It’s especially good if you are located in workspaces scattered around the country or world even. You can communicate and coordinate across businesses or units of the same business that require secure communication. Not only this, you can easily streamline your sidebar through it.
For instance, if you need to send frequent messages to some channels more than another. You can make them ascend in the sidebar to ease the process for you. Google calendar app can be integrated to keep your schedule on track.
Stafftimer App is one of the best time management apps available in this competitive market of time trackers. It assists global teams and also remote workers to track their productivity.
There are some unique features offered on this app which include the following:
Real-time monitoring
Task assignment via voice clips
Intelligence reports
Daily work image & video logs
Instant screen capture
Keystroke & mouse activity
The screenshot feature is optional for example if an employee is involved in fieldwork and employers can simply opt-out of screenshot capture feature and just track the time alone.
With audio clips process of assigning tasks is expediated in an unprecedented manner. Lengthy emails are outdated now. Even feedback is given via this method. This saves time for both an employer and an employee. On the other hand, Real-time monitoring is a live screen sharing with an employee. An employer can actually visualize, what his staff member is up to? Similarly, intelligence reports will provide insights into how much time was spent on different URLs.
Above all, daily work videos provide employees with an overview of their whole day’s progress. It has a user-friendly interface and convenient for every significant industry like legal, healthcare, accounting, designing, accounting or even freelancing. So if you want to make time tracking your habit, it’s for you.
Staff timer app provides on-demand integrations with any software of your choice.
Asana is one of the most commonly known and popular products available for project management. It helps you monitor and track your goals and projects to further your business. It helps you decide, and handle your priorities and projects in a structured way.
You can assign tasks and then watch them progress. Never miss deadlines by creating a timeline so you never miss out on anything. There are 100 integrations that help you bring every useful file and document in one place.
Activity feed
Automatic updates on emails
Track tasks and add followers
Comment on tasks
You can track the most important or urgent tasks based on customized preferences. Create projects and teams private to protect sensitive information.
Evernote is one of the best time managing solutions for note-taking especially if you are not organized and feel lost when you are unable to locate your required document. No matter what device you use, it will store and retain your most important information.
There are various methods through which you can store your information with Evernote:
You can type notes, take photos or even add voice notes
Less hassle in organizing or searching the notes
You can create notebooks that are folders precisely
It does offer an interesting feature of tracking data with the help of geolocation which means you can trace data based on the location when you entered it. Asana has an optical character recognition function that caters to images you upload with text on them. For example, a handwritten note whose image you took and added.
Remember the milk is a kind of virtual assistant for managing your time and tasks. It offers a smart list option that sets a distinction between personal and professional tasks. It helps you to:
Update task
Create subtasks
Set deadlines ranging from days, months, & years
You can share tasks and lists with others. It’s a free-to-use app unless you subscribe to its premium features. Pro users can add unlimited users, restrict access to edit, and can work in offline status as well.
Platform: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Fire, Apple Watch
Todoist is one of the strongest task managers that can handle things from simple domestic task to an important and professional one. It’s one of the most suitable time management apps for both business teams or individuals like freelancers. It can handle both basic and advanced level tasks.
Some of its key features are:
SSL secured connection
Task priorities
Projects and subprojects
Active projects can be 80 with 5 members at maximum in each
It offers more than 100 integrated tools. Todo-ist is available on most of the devices with the consistent design shown on all of them. You can pin your important projects, label or filter them accordingly.
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Android, Chrome, Safari, Linux
Basecamp is one of the most popular project management applications. It doesn’t only keep to-do lists, but also keep notes, files and events’ schedules as well. This app holds central importance for task organization. It has a user-friendly interface with a one-month free subscription.
Its benefits include:
Transparent management and accountability
More efficient communication and coordination
Updated customizations and integrations
Every project depicts outdated to-do tasks and stores all the files associated with each of the tasks even if the deadline has exceeded. Basecamp is suitable for companies of all sizes and even for remote workers.
Many renowned multinationals are its clients. This task manager is supported in multiple languages and an ideal fit for globally sparsed teams.
Trello is an extremely user-friendly task management software that gives an impression of a whiteboard. It’s free of cost and you can create multiple boards with your to-do lists, along with ‘doing’ and ‘done’ task cards.
Quick overview
Drag and drop function
Easy to organize with tags and labels
There are cards within boards where one can add tasks and set the due date as needed. Collaborations are simplified with this software. With the free version, one can have an unlimited number of boards, cards, checklists, and attachments. You can remove or delete the cards from the boards and can rename them anytime. Besides you can add as many members as you like into them.
This software provides seamless integrations with google docs and dropbox.
Dropbox is one of the most widely known and popular file-sharing options. It’s considered the most prestigious document storage and sharing software. It is suitable for both businesses and individuals’ needs.
With the help of cloud storage, it makes the entire process extremely convenient for accessing, storing and retrieving files.
Simplified link sharing via email, chat or even a text
Provide offline access
Online backup and file retrieval
Manually determined bandwidths
Accessible from any device
Dropbox offers a successful and trend-setting referral program. Through which 500MB storage is obtained with every referral. There are numerous software that allows data sharing but not as efficient as dropbox even that, for free.
Proof hub brings in many features to eliminate the need of subscribing to numerous apps for task management solutions. It tries to develop a centralized location for communication, project management, and handle teams efficiently.
Workflows and boards
Mobile and tablet compatibility
Advanced search
Multiple languages
It helps you upload your documents easily from a centralized location. No more hassle to manage documents through email. It is a reporting software that presents a report on how the resources were used and give the insight to track the progress of various projects.
Remote members can use it to discuss and share ideas with each other as it also serves as a communication tool.
