As an office manager, you’re responsible for juggling multiple responsibilities at once. Employee and meeting scheduling, event planning, travel booking, and inventory management might all be on your plate — making you one seriously busy individual.
With so many tasks to handle, the right office management system and tools can make all the difference. In this guide, we’ll take a look at some of the best office management software tools out there so you can streamline your workload and feel like a boss.
A major part of your role as the office manager is to lead or be involved with company communications. Whether it’s supporting an office move or getting the stationery orders in, communication is at the heart of what you do. These office communication tools can make your life easier by giving you better ways to stay in touch with internal teams, clients, and contractors.
This messaging and communication tool is a favorite of many office managers. Slack is extremely easy to use with a clutter-free experience that helps you and your team focus on what matters. With Slack, you can create multiple channels of conversation with different people, send private messages, and run your internal communications in a streamlined way.
If you need a communication tool that also helps you work collaboratively, Chatter could be a great option. This Salesforce tool makes it easy to share files and information quickly, so you can collaborate on projects more easily. It also features an internal social media network, giving people the space to get to know each other and bond as a team.
While other tools focus on text chat, Microsoft Teams opens up the floor to other ways of staying in touch — including voice and video calls. Microsoft Teams is a great option for large companies and startups that deal with enterprise clients, as it’s a popular and trusted communication tool that scales well and integrates with the Microsoft Office suite.
Not sure which office communication tool to choose? Check out our guide to the best team communication tools for your office.
Remote work is here to stay, which means there’s a bigger demand than ever for video conferencing tools. The best online conferencing tools help you connect with your team and clients on stable, glitch-free conference calls. Added functionalities like whiteboards and screen sharing are a welcome addition.
This hugely popular video conferencing tool is one of the best places to start if you want to make arranging and hosting virtual meetings easier. Zoom has become a household name, thanks to how easy, affordable, and reliable it is. Not only is setting up meetings a breeze, but it’s easy to record from the platform — so you don’t have to spend the meeting taking down notes.
If you need something more organized for a larger company, GoToMeeting could be an ideal option for virtual meetings and webinars. This enterprise software is packed with useful features and admin tools, like an admin dashboard that lets you oversee and control user access. It also features intuitive voice commands, which is great for team members and clients joining you on the move from their mobile device.
For flexibility and ease of use, Whereby is a great option for your video conferencing tool. This software is designed around user friendliness — with one-click access to join a meeting, no logins required, and easy-to-read virtual room links. It’s a simple way to host encrypted video calls with anyone whether they’re just down the street or overseas.
When you’re a busy office manager, productivity is the name of the game. Managing multiple tasks and deadlines can be tough without the right kind of software. Productivity and time management software tools help you organize your thoughts, tasks, and due dates, so you can work more efficiently towards your goals. Plus, you can roll the project management software out to the rest of the company too — enabling them to be just as organized and efficient as you.
There’s a good reason Asana remains one of the most popular productivity and project management tools out there — it’s intuitive, easy to use, and beginner friendly. Asana allows you to organize tasks by project, and break them down into sub-tasks with assigned users, deadlines, and associated notes. With flexible view options including a calendar view, it’s a great all-rounder for productivity and task management.
For fans of streamlining the number of office management software tools you use, ClickUp is a great idea. This tool helps you organize multiple work streams in one place — including to-do list management, reminders, goal tracking, and time tracking. The fun, colorful, drag-and-drop approach is a fresh take on productivity tools and could help you sell it to the rest of your organization.
Over a million teams now use Trello to organize their projects, teams, events, and more. This super simple project management tool lets you organize your thoughts, goals, and tasks with cards. Cards can be moved from one board to another as you progress toward your goal, and there’s plenty of functionality for you to customize them with notes, checklists, and more. As a bonus for your office management budget, it’s free!
In some offices, part of your role will involve bookkeeping, accounting, and finance management tasks. If that’s the case, you’ll want a robust and user friendly tool to help you oversee spending, manage expenses, and report on budgets.
If you’re a fan of clean, simple interfaces then cloud-based tool ZipBooks should be a top candidate for your next accounting software. It keeps the focus on the numbers with a fuss-free design that makes accounting, billing, and expenses feel easy. This financial software solution will also run intelligence reports, giving you useful insights into the financial health of your operation.
Managing expenses can be a nightmare at times, especially if you’re a small business working with an outdated system or without one at all. Expensify helps you streamline expense management with clever tools like receipt scanning and credit card imports. To make things even easier, it also integrates with popular HR, travel, and accounting tools so you don’t need to manually transfer data to multiple tools.
For office managers that support small teams and startups, Wave is a great option for general accountancy software. It’s a cloud based tool that covers everything from payments and invoicing to payroll — with bonus features like mobile invoicing and online payment solutions that help you send invoices and get paid faster.
As an office manager, chances are you come into contact with plenty of documents every day. Often these are emailed between teams or stored on hard drives instead of in cloud storage, making collaboration, security, and organization difficult. Move to a document and data management software tool, and you’ll be able to keep everything in one place with greater controls around access, editing, and deleting files.
Google has rebranded its popular G Suite into Google Workspace, a fully-featured suite of productivity and collaboration tools, plus storage for businesses. If you work with Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and more, investing in Google Workspace gives you greater admin control so you can set up a cloud-based file sharing and storage system that works for your team.
Spreadsheets can be useful, and so can databases, but they’re often not user friendly and come with plenty of limitations. Airtable is a great software solution, offering a hybrid between a database and Excel-like spreadsheet with a user interface that makes creating and interrogating data a pleasure. Airtable is designed with flexibility in mind so you can use their built-in templates or create your own to plan internal events, organize your finances, or keep track of your supplies.
If you prefer a more stripped back view, Confluence could be a useful contender for your internal workspace and document management tool. You can use Confluence to organize projects, tasks, and notes in a cohesive way across your organization — giving everyone a single place to find the information and documents they need. It’s easy for users to comment on documents and pages, too, opening up new routes for collaboration.
For office managers in creative companies, a good way to store and organize large images, videos, and creative files is a must-have. Hightail lets you store and share files easily within your team and with external contractors and clients. It includes automatic updates that ensure collaborators are always seeing the latest version. Built in collaboration and version features mean you can get sign off on edits or the final version faster — without it getting lost in an email thread.
Managing files on a large scale can be challenging. Box, not to be confused with Dropbox, makes it easier by providing you and your company with one place where you can sort and categorize files within folders and use search functions to find what you need. Seamless collaboration features help you manage approvals, and there are plenty of integrations that mean you can share and access files across your other office management software tools and your CRM.
We love working with other people, but managing their schedules can be frustrating. Navigating leave requests, employee schedules, and sickness records is time consuming — especially if you don’t have the right tools. Investing in an employee scheduling tool frees up your time, streamlines your workflow, and makes it easier to see what’s going on around you.
If your team members work in shifts, you need a tool that simplifies the way you plan, share, and manage shifts. ShiftNote uses smart automation technology to help you automate employee scheduling, and it offers other useful features like group chat, announcements, and manager notes. It also features a manager log book so you can track key tasks, figures, and notes for every shift in one place.
For simple employee time management and scheduling, Sling is a top contender. This free and user-friendly office management software lets you manage availability, time off, overtime, and hours worked, so you can build an overview of your human resources. Alongside this, Sling features communication tools that let you send messages and publish to a newsfeed so everyone can stay up to date with key information about scheduling and time off.
Staying on top of when other people work takes a lot of time, especially if you need to measure information like when people clock in and out, how long they’re out on break, and whether they’re about to run into overtime. When I Work is a simple desktop and mobile app available on both iOS and Android devices that lets you manage this and more so you can be more strategic about employee scheduling, and they can easily check in, clock out, and log time off requests.
If you’re running a front desk operation or are in charge of a flexible workspace, a tool like Envoy is a must-have. Envoy organizes visitor management, hot desk spaces, meeting room bookings, and office deliveries like a pro. Switch your paper sign-in sheets to digital check-ins, send notifications when guests arrive, and run your workspace smoothly with simple desk and room booking tools.
Travel planning and management can get really complicated, really fast — especially if you’re booking plane tickets, hotels, exhibition stands, and transport for multiple people or trips all at once. Travel management software tools help you stay organized and focused so you can plan trips for your team members with confidence.
If you need an all-in-one platform that claims to boast the largest travel inventory, TravelPerk is the way to go. This tool lets you book and manage travel in one place, whether you need to book a hotel and a flight, or a train and an Airbnb for the night. TravelPerk also has a 24/7 customer support team, and you only pay when you travel — which makes this a more affordable solution.
TripActions is an industry leading travel management software tool with big name customers — thanks to its simple, user-friendly interface and AI-powered travel and accommodation suggestions. This means you can set policies and boundaries. Then, trust your team members to explore their own travel options, or manage bookings on their behalf and share the details.
Once you’ve made travel plans, you can’t just forget about them. Often things happen that mean a train is delayed, flight is cancelled, or there’s a problem with the hotel. With TripIt, you can send your travel details to the app, and it’ll create an overview itinerary of the trip. Plus, it’ll alert you to any changes in real time, meaning you can react faster and make new plans.
Every company will have slightly different needs when it comes to travel planning and management. You might need a software tool for a small team to use to plan their own trips, or an enterprise-level tool where you can manage multiple trips with ease. To help you find the right tool, check out our guide to the best travel management tools.
The people you work with do a great job and deserve to get recognized for it. The set up and management of peer-to-peer recognition and employee appreciation programs might fall to you as the office manager, but there are some great tools that can help. Use these tools to run your employee recognition programs and give shout outs to all the hard work done by your team members.
Bonusly gives teams a simple yet effective way to praise the people around them, and cash in the praise they receive for fun rewards. It takes saying “thank you” to the next level with a public wall where team members can call out someone’s great work, highlight a special achievement, or just praise someone’s good attitude on a client call. Team members can hand out “Bonusly points” to thank others, and they can use any points they receive towards rewards — including PayPal, gift cards, and custom options like lunch with the CEO.
Motivosity is another great peer-to-peer recognition tool that integrates rewards, coaching, and listening tools for a wider view on employee sentiment and engagement. Alongside public praise and rewards, team members can create a profile and search others’ profiles to find out more about the people they work with — which is especially useful in a big team or large company.
If you’re looking for a more in depth employee engagement tool, Kazoo is a great option. This tool blends public recognition with goals, performance reviews, and incentives to create a platform designed to help your teams stay engaged and excited about the work they do. An all-in-one employee engagement tool like this is a useful idea if you want to cut down on the number of office management software tools you use.
Sometimes you might want to send out an employee reward to a small group or to everyone all at once. With Hoppier, you can set up an employee gifting program and send a digital credit card to your team member as a thank you, birthday gift, or congratulations. This system works great for corporate gifting too, so you can treat your VIP clients or new customers to a thoughtful gift that they can choose.
Choosing the right employee engagement tool can be a big decision. You want your team members to trust it, find it easy to use, and actively get involved with your approach to feedback, praise, and recognition. To help you find the right software tool, check out our in-depth look at the best peer-to-peer recognition tools.
Unless you work at a big company with a dedicated event planner, organizing internal and external events often falls on the shoulders of the office manager. While this can be a fun area to get involved in, it requires a lot of planning, attention to detail, and quick thinking to pull it off. Event management tools simplify the whole experience from start to finish, helping you stay organized and focus your attention on creating an amazing experience for your guests, coworkers, or clients.
If you’re hosting a public event, Eventbrite is a simple way to launch your event and get it out into the world. This leading event management tool makes it easy to set up a listing, manage tickets and bookings, and promote your event to a built-in audience. It also features powerful analytics that give you a better understanding of what works so you can optimize your next corporate event.
With virtual events growing more popular everyday, organizing catering for events looks a little different. Hoppier makes it easier than ever before to create a hybrid experience for virtual event guests by sending them a digital card they can redeem at local vendors and restaurants. There’s no dealing with complex event logistics or special requirements, instead you can quickly set up your program, set a budget, and send virtual cards to guests in moments.
Whova offers an all-in-one event planning and management platform that works great for in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. The suite of tools features everything you need to host a great event and stay organized — from event management and online registration to a virtual event platform and in-person event app. This is a useful option if you manage a lot of varied events and want to keep everything in one place.
For a more in-depth look at event tools, check out our guide to event technology. It’s a comprehensive look at different event tech tools, and how they can help you plan and run an effective virtual or hybrid event.
As the office manager, your coworkers often look to you for a solution — whether that’s to a technical problem they’re experiencing or an idea about the best place to find something.
You’re a source of knowledge, ideas, and fixes to problems, and the tools you use play a part in how the people around you interact with what you do. With fun, engaging, and effective office management software tools, you’re one of the most loved people in the office.
If you want another easy way to win over the people around you, give Hoppier a try. Our intuitive, user-friendly platform makes managing hybrid event catering and corporate gifting a breeze — and it’s super fun for users too.
Event catering for a virtual or hybrid event can feel almost impossible. There’s a lot of time and energy involved in sourcing products, creating baskets, and mailing them out to your internal teams or external clients or guests. With Hoppier, all of that fuss and hassle is removed — and replaced with a simple digital card.
This means you can run your entire event catering program digitally from one dashboard, and it creates plenty of bonuses for your guests too. Instead of making do with a generic gift basket, they can instead order drinks, snacks, or lunch from a local place or chain restaurant that they love — and they'll feel more involved in the event experience.
Offering ways for team members to praise each other is great, but a tool like Hoppier can help you transition those “thank yous” into meaningful rewards — whatever the occasion.
It’s easy to set up a corporate gifting program to celebrate employee appreciation day or a birthday, promotion, new family member, or successful project.
Create a corporate gifting program, customize your digital card, set your balance, and you can surprise someone special by email in moments with a Hoppier card. Whether you use this for employee recognition or to send your clients a welcome gift, our digital gift cards are a handy way to stay in touch and remind someone that you care about them.
Managing an office is never easy, especially when you have to deal with competing demands from just about everyone you work with. If you’re not booking travel or managing shift patterns, you’re running reports or checking in on project progress with your teams. All of this takes time, which is something we’re limited on — making investing in office management software tools a priority.
We hope this guide has helped you find the perfect office management tools for the job, or given you a starting point to explore what’s out there. The best tools can help you streamline your workflow, optimize your processes, and give you back some much needed time to focus on goals and growth.
If you’re ready to simplify your event catering and corporate giving, try Hoppier. Our digital cards are the perfect way to reward employees for hard work, treat virtual event guests to lunch, or say thank you to a loyal client for referring someone your way. To find out more about how Hoppier can help you impress your team and clients, book a demo.
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
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