You could also use sshfs or rsync.
sshfs mounts your remote directory locally over ssh very similar to winscp and nautilus.
The potential advantage of sshfs is that you can map users
sshfs -o idmap=server_user user@server:/directory ~/remote_directory
To automate the process, add an entry in fstab
sshfs#user@server:/directory /home/your_local_user/directory fuse idmap=user 0 0
See Ubuntu Wiki SSHFS
rsync will also sync files / directories and will work over ssh and has a graphical front end, grsunc
See Ubuntu wiki rsync
Last you can edit remote files with vim (if you are interested)
vim scp://user@server//path_to/file_to_edit