The Best Apps to Organise Your Day

13 Oct The Best Apps to Organise Your Day

Whether you are a business owner managing multiple clients and staff, a busy Mum or Dad juggling school and sporting commitments or just want to be able to sync calendars with your other half – there is an app that can help you with that! There are so many different options out there and it can be quite daunting knowing where to start, so I have put together an outline of my favourite apps to organise your day.   

Asana

I am a HUGE fan of Asana when it comes to project management and running my business efficiently. It is great for single operators, teams and everything in between. You are able to set up multiple ‘workspaces’ for each client you work with, and can control what you do or do not share with your team/client. You might like to use it purely as an electronic ‘to do list’, but if you are like me and love your plans and processes, this is something you can really sink your teeth into! Asana allows you to create tasks which you can choose to link to larger projects and relevant files such as SOP’s. You can assign a task to your team and they can in turn comment within the task, tagging the relevant person so that all communication is kept in one central location. You are able to follow projects and tasks through from start to finish, create visual project plans and timelines, set priorities and deadlines and share information all in the one place.   

Teamwork

Teamwork Projects is another project management system that I use. It is similar to Asana, giving you the ability to track projects from start to finish in collaboration with your team, however it has a lot of handy extra features. It has a simple and intuitive interface and includes features such as time tracking and reporting, an in-built document editor and the ability to assign tasks to multiple people. You are able to invoice directly from Teamwork, integrate with lots of popular apps and quickly access and report on user stats. I am only scratching the surface here – I am a huge Asana fan, but if you run or work with clients with complex needs, Teamwork is the next step as far as functionality goes.    

Slack

Slack has been a real game changer for me. When you are working with and managing multiple clients and team members, your inbox can start to get out of control with emails or messages. This is exactly what was happening to me, and I was starting to feel at risk of missing things – so went looking for a better solution. Slack can be best described as a hub where your team can come together to collaborate. You are able to create ‘channels’ specific to your business. In my case, I have a channel for each major client as well as a general team chat space where team members can join or leave as required. It provides a central place to ask on topic questions, has the ability to tag/notify specific members and integrates well with most popular apps. Slack has file sharing capabilities as well as screen sharing and voice/video call features. Although my team are all over the country, it is a great way to feel like a part of a team and give you that ‘office water cooler’ feel, in a virtual kind of way! And the best part? My inbox is looking a lot less scary!

G Suite

G Suite is a cloud based app which gives you the capability to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations and simultaneously collaborate and share with team members whilst doing so. Note the word simultaneously – meaning that multiple users can be making changes to a document in real time. Some other apps don’t allow this, leaving you with multiple different versions of a document, and a whole lot of frustration! G Suite also offers an email application (Gmail), which is often compared to Outlook. If making the switch, it can take some getting used to, but in my opinion the change is definitely worth it – I have converted many clients and fellow VAs along the way! Other than the layout, one of the main differences you will notice is that rather than organising emails into individual sub-folders, you will now be using labels. This can take some getting used to, but with the ability to tag an email with multiple labels, you will soon be wondering how you ever coped without this feature! G Suite’s cloud based file storage app, Google Drive, is another integral part of my business. The collaboration and sharing options make it so easy to share information and have multiple people working from a single document, and in my opinion, is the hands down winner as opposed to a comparison such as Dropbox.

I would love to know what your favourite apps are to get you organised in both business and life – drop me a comment below!