Trello - an easy-to-use interior design tool for tracking products and materials
How many hours a week are you spending tracking and monitoring shipments for your design firm and clients? Are you going from one shipment carrier to the next typing in long tracking numbers, making phone calls and wasting valuable time and creative energy in keeping track of your orders? Are you also still using spreadsheets? Then I have great news! There is a better way - a simple project management software can save you valuable time and frustration.
As designers we know that tracking all the items in one room is a lot, never mind a complete home. Image: Spacejoy
Tracking interior design products can be a real headache! You've got shipments coming from different suppliers, each with its own set of tracking numbers and delivery dates. And don't even get me started on the unexpected delays and damaged shipments! Tracking interior design orders is critical to your project success, your energy, financials and ultimately the client experience.
How to set up your Trello board for effective tracking
When you create and refine your tracking board it is important to think of the whole procurement process from ordering all the way through to claims and each and every step along the way. Important lists to have would be some of the following
Read to order
Ordered
Pending acknowledgement
In production / progress
Delayed
In Transit
Delivered
Check for damage etc
In this example your product moves through different stages from left to right and as it does, you can move each card to the next stage.
Add a splash of color!
Using color coded labels will make your tracking so much easier. If you color code your process and also add room labels you will be able to instantly see the progress for each room.
Imagine LIVE tracking!
Imagine a tool that will automatically track all your shipments (from all the major carriers) 24 hour a day without costing you a cent! Yes, Trello is capable of doing LIVE TRACKING of all your products and it will even work for your samples and memo tracking too.
The live tracker works wonders - you enter your Tracking number and Carrier only once and it will track your shipment automatically - this is an example of what you will see in your Trello card
An example of the live tracker feed - this gets updated automatically! Imagine how many hours you can save in week!
How to get started with Trello procurement tracking
The easiest way to get started with Trello is by investing in Templates that are already created by other users in the industry. Trello has free templates that can be downloaded and modified to fit your business.
You can also purchase ready to use Templates right here at B Design Space - we have 3 great templates:
Client Onboarding template
Procurement / Product tracker
Full Service interior design project tracker
Did you know that we also offer 1:1 Trello training to get you started!
Any Trello questions?
Not sure if Trello is right for your Interior Design business? I would be happy to answer any questions, please send me an email to info@bdesignspace.com
