Small Firm Exchange

This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Small Project Practitioners and Small Firm Round Table .
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Happy New Year's Eve everyone,

As we start a new year, we are thinking and rethinking how we do things here in the office, always trying to make things better and more efficient.

I am on the hunt for a good, user friendly, project management software.
We have several projects going on at once, several staff asking what is due and when, and client expectations to manage.
Can any of you recommend good software to help do this?
Something visual, that is either online or/and has an iPad app.
We don't need any accounting incorporated into it, we have quickbooks for that.

Thank you!
All the best.

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Jean Dufresne AIA
Architect
SPACE Architects + Planners
Chicago IL
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Hi Jean, and Happy New Year!

My guess is that your firm and any firm will be disappointed with what anyone else may have created for themselves.  Suggest that you consider starting a Master Project Schedule & Management Spreadsheet for your company.  I did this about 20 years ago and it still serves me well. 

With something as flexible as a spreadsheet, you can always enter more items To Do, along with due dates, project team members and other reminder data.  I also integrated billings, as you mentioned, and you could omit that if you have that covered by other means. 

My point is that each practice will have things particular to how they conduct their business that you will want to customize and you can't find anything easier to use and more customizable than a spreadsheet, which also has the added ability to add and subtract days as formulas, which give you start dates, completion dates, days left for certain tasks and similar data.  You could post such a Master Project Schedule into your company's DropBox Cloud file, where everyone could access it, from anywhere.

Happy 2013! 

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Rand Soellner AIA
Architect/Owner/Principal
Home Architects
Cashiers NC
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Have you checked out ArchiOffice? Very visual, designed by architects for architects.
http://www.bqe.com/default_ao.asp


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Betsy Nickless
SDA-orange County Chapter
Newport Beach CA
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