Do I need a project management tool for interior designers?

A one-stop productivity app for interior designers? Well, that sounds like the Holy Grail. At the moment, there are a few specific project management apps available for interior designers. They are generally North American based and seem to do a combination of the following:

1. Task Management
2. Project management between offices with a number of designers
3. Scheduling
4. Pinboards and mood board creation
5. Proposals and invoicing
6. Product clipping
7. Client communications
8. Purchasing
9. Accounting /reporting
10. Time tracking

The apps that exist at the moment include Mydoma, Design manager, Gatherit and the new kid on the block, Programa.

I haven’t used MyDoma and Gatherit but I used DesignManager a few years ago and have just started using Programa.

So firstly, let me go through my process and what I think is necessary for a good design app. The main issue that I have with these apps is that they try to reinvent the wheel. It would be great for an interior designer to be able to go to a one-stop shop but essentially we are not all working in a vacuum and it is difficult for one app to do it all.

1. Communication between colleagues: Communication apps like Slack seem to do the job, especially if you have to bring in contractors who you work with closely but who may not be an employee of your business. Correspondence between vendors really could be done with email. Programa for example lets you upload correspondence and this may be helpful but actually creates more admin work.
2. Communication with clients: I would much prefer to be able to share things will clients outside of our main communication systems. I think a certain level of demarcation is needed between the client and the design office. Having a central contact list is important and keeping them accessible to all projects is also key. They all have contact lists to do this but it is difficult to share pinboards and mood boards with clients and have a discussion with them. In the past, I used Basecamp which I really loved and was a great platform for communication. It became a bit expensive to keep though, on top of all the other programs I am paying for.
3. Time tracking: The concept is awesome, but a bit useless if you don’t have an app that can easily tally up and add to your billing. Programa something like this, but often we are our clients, or in a meeting. I use an external time-tracker called Harvest which has an app, a widget on your computer where you assign time to the project etc. Much more useful than having to be in the program itself
4. Accounting: Linking to bookkeeping software is key. Let’s just keep it simple. Why not integrate Xero or QuickBooks.
5. Project and task management: Why would you reinvent the wheel yet again? Between Monday, Trello, ClickUp, Asana etc why would you try and develop a complex management system…just integrate with something that already exists.
6. Product clipping: I really need this one. I am always trying to collect images from websites and upload them to image boards in order to use them for my projects.
7. Purchasing: I don't charge for buying products for clients but I tend to pass the discounts on to them and let them settle directly. I understand it is practised in the US that this kind of thing happens. And I guess if your profitability depends on it, then it would be very very important to have this included in any project management platform. As far as I can see, my DOMA, Design manager, Gatherit and Programa all do similar things. Essentially, you would upload your products to the program, create the schedules, and then if your clients are going to pay for those, they would choose and confirm the purchase of these items. You would then create a schedule and then be able to invoice via the app.
8. Creating mood boards: This is incredibly important for an interior designer to be able to quickly create image boards that you can pass on to your clients, particularly when you're in the initial conceptualization phase. You'll often be passing ideas backwards and forwards with your team and with your clients that maybe won't make it eventually into the final board. It's great if clients can comment on the board. And for this task, I use an app called Milanote. It's really, really great & very easy to set up. It's very intuitive to work on. You can send it to your clients, and it's outside of your workflow. Later on, you can then create PDFs. The only issue that I have with Milanote is that because the background is infinite, which basically means that your images aren't really confined by space, you can just create an infinite number of images. This can be really difficult when you're trying to put them onto a PDF.So the best practice is to send a link that takes your client directly to the board and they can comment on that. In the end, I would create some sort of PDF that will have the final design selections on it. This may mean that you might go into Layout or InDesign and so on and then create a PDF to present to your client. At the moment, none of the programs does this particularly well. Again, I just wonder why they don't just integrate with an app that already exists.