Organize your Interior Design Business with Asana and Google Drive
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Updated September 2024
There are a million tools and methods available for organizing your interior design business—and, in our 1:1 consulting and software implementation services, we’ve helped interior designers set up many of them. What I’ve learned through my years of operations consulting and owning two businesses is that it doesn’t matter what tools you use or how robust they are.
What matters is if you are using them consistently (and properly).
As a team, our favorite business management tools for interior designers are:
✏️ Want to see how Asana can streamline your interior design business? Grab our complimentary Asana Blueprint for Interior Designers here.
If you’re looking for my favorite software to manage your product library and sales, that’s a separate conversation.
When interior designers come to me and say they are using any of these tools, my team and I jump for joy because I know there are SO many ways they can integrate these tools to elevate and streamline their client-facing and behind-the-scenes operations.
When I had my wedding design and planning business, I used my website and blog, a reputable directory site, and client and vendor referrals to grow my business. My biggest focus back then was sharing valuable resources on my blog (I posted a new blog every.single.morning), serving my clients well, consistently asking for testimonials, and sending handwritten letters to every client and vendor I worked with (I even sent cards to the parents of the couples I worked with).
Back then, Asana and Google Drive literally didn’t even exist yet!
😱😱😱
So, how did I run a multi-state business with multiple high-touch service offerings in the luxury market?
Paper checklists.
I had a multi-page checklist for each service I offered for each new client. This checklist was printed out and then went into the top of each client binder, and I would work through that list and check things off as I went for each project.
Once the wedding or event was over, it didn’t stop there. I had about twenty items on my post-wedding checklist, and I never missed a thing.
I also kept a communication log to document who I spoke to or met with and what we discussed. This allowed me to remember all the to-dos and details for various clients.
This meant all of my business management documents were created in Microsoft Office (Google Drive wasn’t a thing yet!) and then printed on paper. Even when it was busy wedding season and I was working with brides in multiple states, this system worked well because I consistently used it with every project.
While it matters what software you use based on your specific needs, it matters more that you use your software consistently and to the fullest.
How Interior Designers Can Organize Their Projects and Behind-the-Scenes
I find that even my most seasoned interior designers aren’t always consistent with their software or their processes, or they are, BUT they’re STILL running everything from their brains with nothing documented. This gets difficult as an interior design business starts to get busy with larger projects (things fall through the cracks) or when they bring on new team members (they have to spend SO much time training someone new, so the task of hiring seems more daunting than it needs to). Click here to read more about my top processes for your interior design business.
One of the first things I do with my interior design clients when we start working together is talk through their client-facing processes. From there, we document everything to map out the steps that go into delivering each phase of their service(s). Then, we can determine which steps of their process should happen in their different software tools. Only then does it become possible to automate, delegate, and/or enhance each step.
Once we have the client-facing processes nailed down, we can then work on the back-end processes—all the behind-the-scenes tasks and details that take place to complete the client work. Then, of course, there are all the operational tasks (the non-client stuff) to organize—marketing, finance, sales, admin, etc.
We’ve worked with clients who use Trello, Asana, ClickUp, Basecamp, and Monday, and our favorite project management software for interior designers, hands down, is Asana. Asana is a project management tool (it’s not a CRM or product management software) that allows you to set up teams/departments and projects so you can manage and assign tasks, communicate with team members, manage all company-related projects (not just client projects), and track progress.
Asana is PERFECT whether you are a solo interior designer or are running a large team. I mean, Uber, Stripe, Airbnb, and Pinterest use them, and they have between 7,000 and 30,000 employees, so it’s DEFINITELY robust enough for your interior design business.
Once you have your teams and projects set up, you can then document your processes and link all your files.
✏️ Need SOPS (standard operating procedures) for your interior design firm? Check out the done-for-you processes here.
All communication about specific projects and tasks can be found right within each task. This means you’ll spend way less time searching through your emails, not to mention, you’ll pretty much eliminate emails from your team entirely (that’s what we’ve done at my company). EVERYTHING happens in Asana.
What Happens When Your Interior Design Business Is Organized
The 1:1 implementation work we do with our interior design clients is similarly transformative to the work interior designers do with their clients to transform their homes. We start off by talking about what’s working and what’s not. Then, we talk through their goals and vision for how they’d like the behind-the-scenes of their business to look and feel. Then, we create the step-by-step plan and build out the software and systems to get them there.
Sure, our work may not physically be as beautiful as a brand new, perfectly designed room or a polished freshly built home, but to see the changes that take place in a business when the back end goes from hot mess to streamlined and efficient is seriously a dream.
In fact, we had one interior design client who was able to go from $1MM/year in revenue (and it was painful for her to get to that $1MM) to $4MM/year (and counting) in revenue after we went through our entire process with her to build out her client-facing and internal processes.
I remember when one of our interior design clients was worried because she didn't "feel busy". Because we were forecasting and reviewing financials every month, I knew she was on track for her best quarter ever ... so we dove a little deeper and she realized it was because everything was running efficiently and she wasn't pulled in a million directions.
She had a clearly defined process for each phase of her design service, her team knew what to do at each phase, and we had all the tools and resources in one place, so it was easy to follow the steps and cross things off as they went. She was removed from having to remember all the little details and being pulled in a million directions; she could finally focus on doing the design work that was the most profitable for the company. This particular interior design client went from $1.5M/year in annual revenue to $4MM/year in annual revenue after we worked together.
It's all about investing the time (and money if you don’t have the expertise) ONCE to set everything up correctly so you can leverage it FOREVER.
With a solid foundation in place, ongoing maintenance is simple to handle as your business grows and changes. And when everything is organized, you’ll have more time and energy to see what’s working and what isn’t, and more time to focus on growing your company and being the CEO.
If you don’t have time to organize your business when things are slow, how will you have time to do it when your pipeline is full and you are in the weeds with client work?
How Interior Designers Can Organize Their Businesses With Google Drive & Asana
Whether you run your business with checklists, software, a paper planner, or a combination of all three, taking the time to organize your interior design business is worth every second. I used to use a combination of software and paper lists, but when I realized how redundant that was (and how overwhelming it was making things), I said byyyyyeeeeee to paper lists and went all in on Asana. Everything lives in Asana—both my personal projects and to-do lists AND my professional ones.
If you’re ready to stop running your business from your brain and finally get everything organized in one place, my free Asana Blueprint for Interior Designers will show you exactly how to:
Map every step of your client-facing process so nothing falls through the cracks
Decide what to automate, delegate, and streamline
Use Asana and Google Drive together so every task, file, and conversation is at your fingertips
📥 Grab your complimentary Asana Blueprint here and get the same setup we’ve used to help interior designers scale from $1M to $4M/year.
How I Use Asana in My Own 7-Figure Business
I used to be a sucker for paper lists and crossing things off as I went, but as I put more and more into Asana, I realized they were just a waste of time and created additional and unnecessary stress. Now, my Asana houses all my personal and professional projects, tasks, and goals. It houses 95% of my team's communication (the rest is in Voxer). Asana has also replaced just about 100% of all internal meetings.
When I work with interior design companies that use paper/notebooks/whiteboards, email, and in-person meetings with their team when running their business, I feel like I’ve gone back in time. And I’m from the 1900s, so that DOESN’T feel good.
I’m able to manage my entire company, my team of four plus outside contractors, our Designed To Scale® Method designers, our Foundations designers, our private clients, our Design Library & Workroom customers, and our insane editorial calendar (6 blog posts/month, 6 newsletters/month, Instagram posts and stories, Pinterest pins, FB/Instagram ads, our guest interview outreach series, and media pitches) all inside of Asana.
For most of the day, you'll find me in my Asana Inbox and Asana My Tasks, where I need to know what to do next.
While I also use HoneyBook and Flodesk heavily to organize and automate parts of my business, that’s more for the client experience side (proposals, invoices, contracts, waitlist emails, onboarding, and offboarding). I love when clients come to me and are already using HoneyBook and Squarespace because I know we can use these tools to create many amazing experiences for their clients.
✏️ Learn how to leverage email marketing in your interior design business, plus EXACTLY what to write about that will get your audience to open and read your emails. Grab the free training here.
How To Get Started With Asana For Your Interior Design Business
If you are struggling with using Asana to streamline your interior design business, I recommend starting small and getting into the habit of having Asana as your first program/first tab in your toolbar. Start small by using the My Tasks section to map out your tasks in whatever way makes the most sense for you: Due today, Due this week, Outsource. Or Client Work Urgent, Client Work Admin, Business Work Urgent, Business Work Admin. Then, each morning, open up the My Tasks and start working through them.
I’ve gone through a few versions of categorizing my My Tasks and it took about three years to finally land on a system that consistently works well for me and captures everything I need it to. So, don’t beat yourself up if it still feels overwhelming at first. Keep iterating until you get it right. My team and I all organize our My Tasks section very differently.
To really leverage it for your interior design business, here’s what I recommend:
Start by refining your processes.
Then, create the client experience workflow for each service (check out the complete Client Experience Templates here) because that’s typically the most pressing.
Then, input the entire client process for each service you offer into Asana. Tasks within each process become the SOPs. Your files and resources are then linked inside each of those SOPs.
Grab our complimentary Asana Blueprint here.
Asana can do SO much, and I encourage every interior designer to use some sort of official project management software to manage their tasks, projects, teams, and internal communication.
