Top 5 Life-Changing Office Management Tools You Needed Yesterday

Being an office manager is a tough job. Seriously, have you ever noticed the ”thank God, Alex is here” look on your colleagues’ faces? You’re a ray of sunshine to these people! Yes, that’s right, even though on the inside you’re a lost snowflake in desperate need for a huge coffee. To do your tasks flawlessly though, you also need to have a set of office management tools at your daily disposal. 

The tasks of an office manager are never ending. There’s always a new employee who needs training, some papers you must send off, or an event you must organize from scratch.

But don’t worry, we got you! We won’t offer you much emotional support (there, there!), but we will actually give you some top-notch tips for effective office management.

Here’s Top 5 office management tools you should have started using, like, yesterday!

1. Flock

When it comes to organizing teams and communicating efficiently, Flock is all you need. You can start private conversations or group chats with anyone within the company. The whole directory is at your fingertips, so you can contact whomever you need.

If some of your colleagues work remotely, you can easily start video calls with one click. Moreover, you can share files with everyone and receive documents. Everything is stored and easy to find, no matter who sent it.

When you work with external partners, such as PR agencies or vendors, you don’t want to give them access to the entire workspace. That being said, you can add them as guests to specific channels and collaborate freely!

You can also share the news through one-way Announcements channels. If you want to send an email to the whole crew, Flock can automatically create mailing lists. That saves you a lot of time and energy!

Flock is available in a free version, designed for small teams that are just getting started. Unfortunately, this comes with a message limit of 10K. If you work in a bigger company, then choose the Pro plan for $4.50/user/month.

2. Roomzilla

Finding an available room for your meetings will never stress you out again. We pinky promise! Now, of course we recommend you our own software, but that’s because we truly believe in its potential.

Roomzilla is a cloud-based room reservation system. We created it from scratch, to solve our internal problems and help others solve theirs too. This is a real germ in office management tools  package. It has been developed based on real experience, so we know the struggles you’re dealing with.

Nobody likes to almost fight their teammates over a conference room, only to discover that they didn’t even show up for that meeting they’ve booked. Not pleasant, not professional.

With Roomzilla, you can:

• Easily book a meeting room;
• Avoid ghost reservations with the check-in & auto-delete features;
• See the room status in real time;
• Make reservations at the door;
• Manage a booking approval system;
• Use API integration;
• Optimize your space using analytics & reports.

The app has a simple and visually efficient interface, in the form of a timeline. You only need to open it from any browser and select the desired room and time. You will immediately see the available slots.

Why should you use Roomzilla and not a basic calendar? We are glad you asked. The analytics tool is literally life-changing for the company. You can generate reports and get insights about room usage, meeting lengths and total number of meetings. This way, you can optimize your space and make sure every room is used wisely.

The great news is that you can sync Roomzilla with the calendar you are already using, such as Google Calendar or Office 365. Easy peasy, this room’s now busy!

You can opt for a free trial period of 14 days, to see how it works. If you enjoy it (and you will), the pricing for 1-19 rooms is $20 per month. You will get all the features, a dedicated domain and permanent support. If you have more than 20 rooms, you can contact Roomzilla and get a quote.

With this app, leaving passive aggressive notes like `Hope your meeting was productive and you enjoyed the room we booked!` becomes unnecessary. The employees are happy, the guests enjoy their visit and you are stress-free all this time!

3. Microsoft Teams

The name says it all: this software is ideal for teamwork. You and your colleagues can have a digital workspace, where you can chat, schedule activities and share files.

Everything that happens in the office can be inserted and noted in Teams, which will make your know-it-all spirit happy.

Why is Microsoft Teams a must-have?

• You can communicate efficiently, using group chats, online meetings and web conferences;
• You can add other Microsoft apps or third party apps that your company uses;
• You can collaborate on files by using the built-in Office 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint).

Microsoft Teams even has a few quirky features, like offering rewards. `Congrats` stickers are great for motivating your team or acknowledging their efforts.

The poll option is also great and super useful for an office manager. You can quickly ask questions and get responses from your team, regarding new activities, changes and events.

Some might say that this software still needs some improvements. A more granular permission management and a more user-friendly interface would be amazing. Even so, it’s a great option for those searching for functionality.

Microsoft Teams offers you end-to-end security and administrative control. This being said, you don’t ever need to worry about things getting leaked or hacked.

You can have this software for free, using group chats, file sharing and video calling. If you prefer a complete plan, select the Office 365 Business Essentials package ($5/user/month) or go Premium ($12.50/user/month).

4. Evernote

You take notes a lot, we know that. Instead of keeping those on your phone, in your notebook, pockets or God knows where else, we suggest you try this genius app – a real must have in office management tools set.

Evernote is a cloud-based software that stores your meeting notes, documents, reminders, or to do lists. You can create separate folders for different projects, add relevant tags and use templates.

You can’t lose track of anything, because Evernote has a super smart search function. You type *that important detail you forgot* and it searches all the way through Word documents, PDFs, and images. Even the handwritten notes can be scanned and searched!

Here’s more cool things you can do with Evernote:

• Collect web clippings and screenshots from any device;
• Record audio notes;
• Attach PDFs, receipts, files and scanned documents to your database;
• Digitize business cards and create a Contacts list;
• Share notes with other people;
• Turn your notes into cool presentations with one click;
• Use collaboration spaces for team projects and workflows.

Evernote has 3 available plans: Free, Premium ($7.99/month) and Business ($14.99 per user, per month).

The downside of the free version is the limited storage space (60MB) and the fact that you can only use Evernote on two devices. Also, the offline version of the app is only available on desktop.

So, if you want to take advantage of all the awesome features and use Evernote on as many devices as you want, the Business plan is the one you should go for.

Furthermore, Evernote Business integrates with Slack, Google Drive, Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Salesforce. This will make your work faster and easier! You can also choose a free trial for the Premium and Business plans, to figure out if they meet your needs. We highly recommend you try those out!

5. Monday

Not your favorite day of the week, but a really useful app for those who love making lists and get a feeling of tranquility when everything is in the right place (looking at you, office manager!).

Monday is a project management app that helps everyone know what is going on in the company. You can create multiple teams, project boards and timelines, and check the status of each task.

More cool features you’ll want to use:

• Plan your week by using a visually appealing timeline;
• Know who is working on what and when;
• See the exact status of each project, task and subtask;
• Assign tasks to your teammates;
• Track progress and nail all the deadlines!

Monday has one of the greatest interfaces out there, smart color schemes, and an intuitive structure. Even the newest team member can get accustomed to it shortly.

Speaking of team mates, everyone gets a nice and easy to set up account. So, in case you need more info about a project or want to ask somebody for feedback, you can tag or message them directly.

The only disadvantage that we can think of is related to task sharing. You can’t share one task (named `pulse` in the app) to more boards, so you must do everything manually. Otherwise, Monday is a game changer for any company!

The pricing depends on the amount of users and can go from $49/month for a Basic plan and 5 users, up to $1999/month for a Pro plan and 100 users.

All in all, each of these office management tools will step up your game and turn you into the office hero. Use them together and prepare to be amazed by your new super powers!

 

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