5 Best Project Management Software for Interior Designers
Whether you’re an established interior design firm or an individual just getting your business started, you can use today’s best interior design project management software to plan, organize, and scale your business – plus, save yourself a lot of time and headaches.
In this post we’ll look at the top interior design PM software on the market today, as well as some tips for keeping your interior design projects organized.
What is the best project management software for interior designers?
For this list, we looked for established PM software with robust features, great reviews, and a track record of being used to manage interior design projects.
A couple of the platforms are made especially for design and creative businesses. Others are cross-industry PM tools with premade interior design project management templates that can be used with minimal setup.
In addition, most of our top picks double as CRM (and, in some cases, financial management) software.
So without further ado, our top picks for the best interior design project management software include:
- Bonsai
- Honeybook
- Monday.com
- ClickUp
- Asana
Bonsai
Pricing: Starts from $17 per month for an annual plan.
Bonsai is a business and project management software for interior designers, event planners, real estate agents, architects, and more.
Its suite of project management tools includes time tracking, task templates and project workflows, file sharing, and collaboration features for your clients and team.
Bonsai is also a complete CRM solution. You can use it to keep track of all your leads, clients, and other contacts; schedule appointments; send proposals; onboard clients with intake forms; and send end-of-project surveys.
Finally, Bonsai offers a set of financial management tools, including invoicing, payments, expense and budget tracking, financial reporting, and tax estimates.
Highlights
- Project management, CRM, and financial management all in one platform
- Organize your interior design projects with tasks, documents, payments, and timesheets
- Invite team members and assign tasks, add comments, share documents, and track time
- Add new tasks or save time with reusable task templates
- Create client profiles and track ongoing projects together
- Create a branded booking page and automate meeting and appointment scheduling
- Add service packages and upsells to your proposals and automate approvals
- Customize, send, and e-sign legally vetted interior design contract templates
- Collect client info with onboarding forms and end-of-project surveys
- Manage hourly projects with time tracking, timesheets, and billing platform
- Secure, automated invoicing and reminders
HoneyBook
Pricing: Plans start from $16 per month when billed annually. Sign up for a no-credit-card seven-day free trial.
HoneyBook is a CRM and project management platform for independent professionals and consultants, including interior designers, photographers, and other creative entrepreneurs.
You can use the platform to manage projects, automate workflows, book and schedule appointments, send proposals and invoices, accept online payments, onboard clients, and send contracts and questionnaires.
HoneyBook has an active online community of creative entrepreneurs where you can connect and collaborate with others in your industry, create a professional profile, and share your portfolio of work.
Highlights
- Project management, client management, and payments platform in one
- Manage interior design projects from inquiry to payment
- Create step-by-step automations for tasks, emails, and documents, triggered based on your selected criteria
- Keep all project-related documents – invoices, contracts, proposals, client correspondence, onboarding surveys, etc. – organized in one location
- Clients can review, sign, and pay proposals, contracts, and invoices all in one place
- Get access to readymade and customizable contract templates for interior designers
- Automatically respond to inquiries, follow up with leads and clients, and offboard clients with custom messages, surveys, or a request for a review
- Securely accept recurring or one-time payments
- Integrates with your favorite tools, including QuickBooks, Calendly, Zapier, Zoom, and more
- Run your interior design business from anywhere with the HoneyBook app for iOS and Android
Monday.com
Pricing: Plans start at $8 per month when billed annually. Sign up for a no-credit-card free trial. Monday.com also has an unlimited free plan.
Monday.com is an easy-to-use but highly customizable work OS and project management software that is widely used by creative and design teams, including interior design and architecture firms.
The platform lets you create workflows, automations, and reporting dashboards on a granular level, customized exactly to the needs of your interior design business.
As one of the top project management platforms on the market for teams of all sizes, Monday.com offers a huge number of integrations, an active community of users, and an extensive database of premade templates and workflows.
Highlights
- Manage projects using Kanban boards or Gantt charts and the waterfall project management methodology
- Choose from customizable workflow templates
- Track each milestone of your interior design project, from concept development through schematic design and construction
- Create detailed project timelines to manage and collaborate with contractors, suppliers, and vendors and keep your clients in the loop
- Create interior design mood boards
- Create purchase sheets to track material costs and share them with your clients
- Track billable hours and invoice clients
- Manage inventory
- Track client relationships and manage onboarding with a complete CRM solution
ClickUp
Pricing: Plans start as low as $5 per month when billed annually. ClickUp also has a free-forever plan.
ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity and project management tool for businesses in all industries, including creative and design firms.
They offer a wide variety of project management templates, including a readymade template for interior designers, so you can hit the ground running.
Although ClickUp can be used with teams of all sizes, we also chose ClickUp as one of our best project management software for small teams and individuals based on its ease of use and affordable pricing plans.
Highlights
- Comes with interior design project management template
- Break complex projects into manageable subtasks and assign comments as action items
- Choose from List, Calendar, Gantt, Board, or Box view, or customize your own views for project workflows
- Collaborate with your team with whiteboards, docs, shareable screen recordings, and real-time chat
- Save time with project management templates, recurring tasks, and automations
- Organize project timelines in any way you need to
- Track time spent on tasks and optionally mark entries as billable
- Complete CRM and sales pipeline solution for client management
- Integrates with over 1000 apps
Asana
Pricing: Plans start from $10.99 monthly for the annual plan. Asana has a free plan for individuals and teams just starting out.
Asana is the project management software of choice for many interior designers. In fact, if you search around, you can find several interior design blogs that offer templates and tutorials for using Asana to manage your interior design projects.
Asana’s greatest strength is its intuitive and minimalistic design, making it a great choice for interior designers with no experience as a project manager. That said, Asana is robust enough to scale as your business grows.
In addition to being a fully fledged project management and collaboration platform, Asana can be used as a lightweight CRM.
Highlights
- Create and automate team workflows
- Set project milestones and priorities, delegate, collaborate, and get status updates
- Track your work with calendars, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and more
- Manage Scrum sprints and Agile projects
- Create templates for recurring tasks and projects
- Integrate with your favorite apps
- Get real-time reporting on team progress
- Onboard clients with intake forms
- Set and track strategic goals with your team
- View team member workloads and capacity
- Manage your interior design business on the go with the Asana app for iOS and Android
What is interior design project management software?
The best project management software for interior designers can help you achieve the following goals and more:
- Organize all project-related information and documents in one central location
- Open the lines of communication between clients, contractors, vendors, suppliers, and team members
- Set and manage project timelines for large or complex projects
- Delegate tasks and subtasks
- Track project costs and billable hours to ensure the project comes in under budget and that you get paid
What software do interior designers use?
A typical software stack for an interior design business includes the following:
- Accounting software
- 3D design software
- Project management software
- CRM
Some software lets you achieve more than one of the above functions. For example, a few of our top-recommended software platforms for interior designers have both project management and CRM capabilities (and even financial management tools).
How do I keep my interior design project organized?
The following tips will help you manage larger and more complex interior design projects, or multiple interior design projects at once.
- Set project goals and milestones. You and your client will both need to know who is responsible for what and when.
- Communicate with your team, contractors, and clients. You’ll need a system for real-time status updates and, ideally, a central control panel that your team can access remotely to post comments or get updates.
- Track material costs using purchase sheets, and, if applicable, track billable hours. Keeping a good paper trail will help you avoid any headaches and disputes down the road.
- Keep vital project and client details organized. This includes proposals, contracts, onboarding documents, invoices, questionnaires, receipts, and any other correspondence.
The best interior design management software can help you achieve all these objectives and more.
Final thoughts
Even if your interior design business is in its early stages, it’s a good idea to get organized by setting up some baseline systems and processes using interior design project management software. This will help you set the stage for success and create an environment that makes it possible to scale your business later on. Although getting set up can take a bit of time and planning, your efforts will quickly pay off.
