The complete guide to office management
Top 30 best office management software tools
Amazing project management softwares for office managers
Asana’s many task viewing options (including timelines, boards, and task lists) make this tool a fan favourite. For each project, you can choose the organisation system that makes the most sense. You can assign tasks to different team members, create interactive calendars and track your progress in real-time.
Trello can help you streamline collaboration with easy-to-follow workflows and task boards. Comment on tasks, upload relevant files and track progress. Not to mention that there’s a mobile app available for both iOS and Android!
If your team doesn’t yet have a communication tool like Slack or Flock (or is open to switching over), then TaskWorld can be a great way to get communication and collaboration all in one place, because this tool offers not only task management and project planning, but public and private channels and chats as well.
Bitrix24 is a robust, powerhouse software that combines document management, calendar management, event scheduling and customer resource management with project management and collaboration.
The importance of document collaboration
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Where would any of us be without Google Drive? If you haven’t yet switched your team over to Google Drive, what are you waiting for? Talk them into taking the plunge. For most documentation needs, we suggest you change to this cloud storage system right away.
For teams that can’t rely on Google Drive and need a smoother way to collaborate on documents that can more reliably be exported as .docx of .xlsx or .pptx, then LibreOffice is the perfect cloud collaboration solution.
Communication tools for modern teams
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King of office chat, Slack is a communication tool that allows you to send direct messages to individual colleagues or to converse informally in groups called channels. Channels can be organised around teams, projects, topics or all three.
While most chat and communication tools are built to reduce email and get people outside of email, that’s not always helpful. For teams that need to communicate with people outside their internal organisation (clients for example), then integrating with email is a big plus. Fleep lets everyone choose their preference, whether that’s their inbox or the Fleep app, and integrates all communications.
In addition to individual and group chat, file sharing, and chat search, Flock also offers to-do lists, polling, and email list building (for when chatting isn’t the best medium but you still want to contact everyone in that channel). Flock is also the cheapest chat solution.
Video conferencing tools for remote work
Previously known as Google Hangouts, this is Google’s solution to enterprise conferencing software. It’s offered for free as part of the Google Workspace, or any Google user. It’s a great, hassle-free way to meet with colleagues no matter where you are.
If you’re more into the office suite, Microsoft Teams is a great option for Office 365 users. It’s completely compatible with all of Microsoft’s other tools like Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Use the free browser version as a guest, or check out their pricing options to get the full suite.
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The famous Zoom! The popularity and prevalence of this video conferencing tool have skyrocketed since remote working became the new normal in 2020. It’s a highly reliable tool with some great functionalities that make teamwork and collaboration quick and easy.
Travel & Expense management software
TravelPerk is built for booking and managing business travel. Aggregating all the flight and hotel options you can find on Google and delivering that inventory alongside business-critical features like travel policy limits for self-booking and spend reporting, TravelPerk is a no brainer. And did we mention the 24/7 trip support? It’s amazing. Business travellers will thank you for it.
No one likes writing expense reports. Really no one. Expensify automates the whole expense reporting process with receipt scanning and bookkeeping integration and fast reimbursements.
The elements of stellar event planning
As a survey tool, Typeform can be used for so many different things, including getting feedback on a recent event, asking for lunch orders, or discovering what type of furniture your team would like to have in the new lounge. But one of the best uses of Typeform is event planning.Need to discover when team members will be arriving or what their preferred itinerary is? Typeform is so helpful for grouping people together and tackling trip booking or other event related tasks.
Ok, so we know we mentioned TravelPerk but bear with us here. TravelPerk has some awesome services built into the platform and overall experience. Group booking is one of them.If you’ve ever organised a retreat or a summit, you know what a headache group events are. The TravelPerk specialists will handle group booking for you and make sure all of the itineraries and travel data is inside your TravelPerk account so that you as an administrator can keep track of everyone and your CFO can see all the spend.
Office management and general organisation
Make everyone’s lives easier by implementing the use of Google Calendar across the entire team or company. If you have to book group lunches or meetings, it will be so much easier to pick a time (with no back and forth) if you can view the shared calendars for the relevant parties.And if anyone on your team in charge of client care or customer support uses scheduling tools like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling — tools that integrate with Google Calendar — any event you create in their schedule will then be automatically blocked off. Best of all, Google Calendar sends event notification and reminders so missed meetings are much less common!
Q can do a whole lot of things but our personal favourite is powered by a startup called Hivy, which Q recently acquired.Now baked inside the robust Q platform, this smart tool integrates with the Slack bot so any employee can ask for more forks or more chamomile tea or more staplers, and follow up on that request to make sure that you’ve ordered it. When other team members are on the lookout for items in low supply (and they remind you), it’s a blessing for a busy office manager.
You and your team use so many different tools every day! I mean really, you should be using most of the ones on this list. That means so many different login credentials. Say goodbye to needing to remember dozens of passwords, and use OneLogin to login to every other tool that you use. Not only is this more secure, but it also keeps you more productive because you can login once and go about your day.
For the modern receptionist, Envoy is a must. Here’s what you can do with this platform: allow guests to sign in, send notifications to the host, get signatures from visitors on legal documents if needed, and quickly print guest badges. And it’s completely optimised for touch screen use on tablets. Hooray!
Amazon, why do you have to make life so easy? The retail giant isn’t just for consumers. They’ve got fast shipping and easy ordering for businesses too. You can even set up approval workflows for ordering supplies, pay in the way that’s convenient for your business, and get exclusive savings.
The best bookkeeping and account management tools
Enter profits and losses, categorise items, run quarterly reports, and be fully prepared come tax season. QuickBooks has been around for a long time as a desktop application, and has successfully made the jump to an easy-to-use web app.
Xero is a bookkeeping and accounting platform known for its reliable mobile experience and quick and easy reconciliations.The 600+ app integrations make it a fan favourite.
Professional, easy-to-create invoices from a free tool? It doesn’t get better. If your company uses a robust suite that includes invoicing, you won’t need this. But if you’re using simple finance tools, then this is the perfect add-on for creating quick invoices.
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If your company does client work, then as an office manager you probably handle the contracts and proposals. If you’re handling this manually with Microsoft Word, it’s a real pain. Switch over to a smart system like PandaDoc to handle proposals and contracts and allow clients to esign on any device.
If your team bills for their hours, then having a time tracker integrated into your invoicing system can be a huge time saver for you. FreshBooks allows you to track time, send invoices, manage expense reporting, and collect payments. Perfect fit for law firms, agencies, IT consulting firms and more.
Note taking and list making for admin work
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With Evernote, create dynamic notes that include links, checklists, tables, attachments and audio recordings. Best of all, these notes are easy to search and can be shared and collaborated on with others.
This robust app (available on any device) can help you organise your lists and notes into folders, create due dates and push notification reminders, and even help you manage your deluge of incoming email by turning emails into tasks.
In addition to creating to-dos and organising your daily calendar, you can set up recurring tasks, collaborate with your team, get location-based reminders, and more. If making phone calls is part of your daily workflow, this is the perfect app for you because it integrates with your phone dialpad.
Types of email management tools
Collaborate with other teammates to reply to customer emails by tagging conversations, triggering auto-responses, marking a conversation as complete, mentioning other colleagues in private comments and more.
Perfect for large ecommerce brands, eBay sellers and Amazon sellers, ReplyManager helps you tackle customer support email with centralised, faster replies.
This all-inclusive customer support software features an omni-channel support inbox that has made scattered interactions a thing of the past. Support agents can easily access all emails, chats, and messages from different channels on a single platform.
This affordable is a great tool if you’ve never used a customer support tool before and you’re still doing everything in your inbox. It can even help you if you don’t actually handle customer support but you get so much incoming email that you need canned responses and scenario automation. (We won’t tell).
As an office manager, responding to dozens of email everyday is part of your job. But if you don’t bulk email management then you won’t be able to get anything else done. Inbox Pause literally puts your inbox on pause so you can set aside 15 or 30 minutes to handle other important tasks.
While many users rely on Yesware for email tracking, it’s template feature is even more useful. If you find yourself having to answer the same question over and over, or send the same onboarding email to new clients or customers, then Yesware templates will be a life saver. The follow up and reminders features are amazing too.
Designed to help you get to Inbox Zero, SaneBox helps your prioritise important emails, send distractions to a “SaneLater” folder, customise other folder types, and send emails to yourself at a future date.
Software suggestions for office managers
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Make business travel simpler. Forever.
- See our platform in action. Trusted by thousands of companies worldwide, TravelPerk makes business travel simpler to manage with more flexibility, full control of spending with easy reporting, and options to offset your carbon footprint.
- Find hundreds of resources on all things business travel, from tips on travelling more sustainably, to advice on setting up a business travel policy, and managing your expenses. Our latest e-books and blog posts have you covered.
- Never miss another update. Stay in touch with us on social for the latest product releases, upcoming events, and articles fresh off the press.
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