Telecommute from 700 miles away?

[Monkeyleg]

My wife's been working for our brother-in-law's HVAC company for the last four years. Now that we're just three weeks away from moving out of state, he's panicking about not having my wife there to take care of things. He and my wife's sister don't like entrusting someone else to their finances and sensitive information.

Months ago he joked about her working for him via computer. I told him that doing so would certainly be possible. She could work on his machine via remote desktop and handle just about everything. Work involving real paper could be done via fax or FedEx. With a little investment, it could be set up so she could even lock and unlock the doors and see who's coming and going.

She makes decent money at this job, and it has excellent health insurance.

Is this pie-in-the-sky, or really possible?

[Hawkmoon]

Telecommuting is telecommuting. Once the worker is not physically in the office, it makes little difference how far from the office they really are. Go for it.

[Nick1911]

I believe it's possible, so long as the expectations are clear to both parties from the get go.

[zxcvbob]

I'm in Minnesota.  One of the guys on my team moved to Dallas about a year ago and works from home.  (lucky dog doesn't have to pay state income tax but I assume he didn't take a pay cut when he moved)  It's working out pretty good.  He attends meetings via teleconference.

[AZRedhawk44]

I work from home.  They get a lot more hours out of me than if I drove in every day.

It's got good and bad for both parties.  Just takes honest folks on both sides.

[S. Williamson]

Just takes honest folks on both sides.

Could be said for a lot of things. 

I'd recommend going for it.

[mtnbkr]

I work for a large multinational.  We have quite a few folks who work from home on a permanent basis.  Because all of my work revolves around clients in Europe, I work from home a lot myself.

Because you're working with sensitive financial info, you're going to want to make sure your connection to him is secure.  I'm not terribly familiar with RDP, but I wouldn't trust anything less than a fully encrypted VPN for that sort of task.  I'd look into that, then run RDP through the VPN tunnel.  Many SOHO broadband routers can support IPSEC VPNs...

Chris

[BMacklem]

MilwaukeePC had its' cheif financial officer (Head accountant basically) do all our payroll and other financial stuff from home once she moved up to Rice Lake, so it's quite possible.
Also the other accountants in the office had a much better time dealing with the "tyrant" never being there.

[Tallpine]

Why not 

The last real job that I had, I worked out of an office in Grand Rapids, MI for a client in Lynnwood, WA.  I did have to go out to WA a few times for a week or two.  Still not been to GR.  I now work (or don't, mostly) out of the Phoenix office (again).

Before that, I worked out of another company's office in Phoenix, for an end user client in England, and an English supplier with an office in Indiana, USA.  Oh yeah, we did a variation of that product for another end user in Japan.  I've been on some interesting teleconferences 

[Monkeyleg]

Thanks, everyone. I pretty much figured it could be done.

My BIL is really down about us moving, as he doesn't think he'll be able to get anyone as good as keeping things organized. To make matters even worse, his wife wants to take over my wife's job. Her lack of organizational skills, combined with no desire to work, are the reason they hired my wife in the first place.

I've broached the subject before, and my wife has said they wouldn't go for it. Now that it's less than three weeks away, though, maybe I can get him to change his mind. There's very little that couldn't be done via remote desktop or FedEx.

[lupinus]

I don't see why it couldn't be done.

In fact I'm surprised more and more that we don't see more telecommuting.

Hell I'd LOVE to work from home and wish a legitimate work from home gig was easier to find. Looking for one means being buried to the gills in survey sites and garbage 

[41magsnub]

A customer of mine is an accounting firm that does not have an office, everybody works out of their homes in Western MT and Idaho, they have I think 15 bookkeepers and accountants.  They have a dedicated terminal server in my server rack along with a separate application/file server.  They make a condition of their working for a client that they have a scanner set up in the office.  When the customer has something on paper that the accountant/bookkeeper needs to see they scan it to PDF and then upload it to the server.

A smaller scale version of that would work great, a dedicated PC with remote desktop in the office along with a sheet fed scanner replacing your wife's inbox.  Whenever there is something that needs to go to her scan it, the preset default scan location would be her electronic inbox on that PC.  As long as both sides have good internet connections it should work out pretty well.

[Monkeyleg]

41magsnub, these folks aren't that organized (which is why they need my wife). I was thinking more along the lines of, "each day throw all the papers you get in a FedEx box and send it to my wife, and she'll sort it out."

The BIL and my wife's sister are the most disorganized people I've ever seen. They'll complain about money being tight when there's a stack of invoices totaling tens of thousands of dollars that haven't been taken care of. They lose jobs because he forgets to submit proposals. This is where my wife comes in.

I'm going to do a hard sell on everyone involved. She gets decent pay from this job--not great, but decent--and excellent health insurance. If it worked out she'd have a job for life. Plus, I wouldn't have to worry about what sort of crummy job she'd have to take when we move, how little she would make, and whether or not she'd have health insurance.

The only downside would be spending every work day in the same room with my wife. 

[Brad Johnson]

The only downside would be spending every work day in the same room with my wife. 

For a hundred bucks I won't tell her you said that.  

Brad

[AmbulanceDriver]

Heck, for 50 bucks I'll tell her Brad is lying.  :)

[BridgeRunner]

For $200, I'll help her figure out that she really needs her own workspace.  She'll probably feel so bad about rejecting you that she'll offer you the nicer space.   

You haven't bought a house, yet, right?  No shortage of places with space for two home offices.  Heck, I could pull that off now if I set my mind to it, and I've got a fairly average sized place.

[mtnbkr]

If they're a heavily paper-based business, telecommuting is going to be more difficult.  That is, unless they plan on scanning and emailing docs.  Fed-Exing stuff back and forth, along with the delays, isn't going to fly for long.

Chris

[Tallpine]

In fact I'm surprised more and more that we don't see more telecommuting.

The biggest problem seems to be that you are unable to waste most of the day in meetings   

[Brad Johnson]

If they're a heavily paper-based business, telecommuting is going to be more difficult.  That is, unless they plan on scanning and emailing docs.  Fed-Exing stuff back and forth, along with the delays, isn't going to fly for long.

Chris

Office printer/scanner/copier.  Hooked up via network with an IP address and you don't have to physically mail unless a signature is involved.  They can scan to her, she can print directly to the printer.

Brad

[French G.]

The only downside would be spending every work day in the same room with my wife.  shocked

Wireless and a ready made out-building from Lowe's, we don't want to see you in the headlines. Put a couch and fridge in there for good measure. My wife works from home, gone exclusively journalism now, having escaped the madness that is public relations. Journalism and copy writing is a pretty home friendly biz though.

[Scout26]

Office printer/scanner/copier.  Hooked up via network with an IP address and you don't have to physically mail unless a signature is involved.  They can scan to her, she can print directly to the printer.

Brad

Yep, and for $500 I'll tell her Brad said that, deny you said anything, recommend BW's idea, and have 41Magsnub set it up for free.    

[Monkeyleg]

Thanks for all the bounties.

BridgeWalker, we've bought a house, so there's only one office.

I mentioned it to my wife briefly tonight, and she said that both BIL and her sister are against the idea. I don't think my wife has pushed it very much, though, and I don't think that BIL has thought it through (or is aware of just how much can be done).

I could push it now, but I suspect it would just make them stand their ground more firmly. I think a better tactic would be to give sister a few weeks to really screw things up (the way she had them royally screwed up when they hired my wife), and then suggest it again. By that point, BIL should be more receptive.

Sister does things like forgetting to pay taxes, pay employees, file union papers, file tax returns...all that stuff that keeps a business going.

[sanglant]

on the office thing, it might be worthwhile to invest in some cubical walls. at least it'll dull the talking when your both on the phone at once.

[Vodka7]

My Dad's telecommuted from Florida to Montreal for the last several years.  Flies up there for about three weeks every few months, and flies as required to client sites.

A few tips if she gets the go ahead:

1) Get her a really, really good headset and phone.  Make sure it's something that she can charge while it's in use, with enough range from the base unit to go to the bathroom, kitchen, etc.
2) Consider a smartphone or set up a really loud alert sound for Outlook.  My Dad likes to take two hour lunches so he can watch a movie, so I set up Outlook to chirp when he gets a message.  When he leaves the office for the living room, he just cranks his speakers.  As far as his coworkers can tell though, he's at his PC from 8am till 9pm.