The Best Apps to Manage Multiple Projects and Multiple Clients

Navigating the maze of multiple projects can be like juggling flaming torches—exhilarating but risky. So, how do we handle the chaos and boost our efficiency? Let’s dive into the intricacies of dealing with the workload when you’re juggling multiple projects.

Here’s everything you need to know on manage multiple projects effectively

How to Deal With Work When You Manage Multiple Projects?

In the hustle to manage everything simultaneously, it’s easy to forget that our brains aren’t exactly fans of multitasking, so when you try to do everything at once, it will be hard and exhausting. Some researchers suggest that multitasking can actually reduce our productivity by as much as 40%.

You probably know this from the experience if you work as a project manager or in a marketing agency. You try to remember every task and client request, but when the workload is too big, you just end up with all those missed deadlines and angry customers.

Project Management Techniques for Multiple Tasks

Spencer Coon recommends a few methods worth using in order to meet the challenge of managing multiple projects and tasks at the same time. If you have your own strategies, that’s great, but if you need some inspiration, here are some:

Use outsourcing whenever you can

Since it has been noticed that employees are more productive when given more autonomy, trust has become more relevant. That’s what outsourcing is about. It’s about handing over the responsibility for the project to the external employee, a person who doesn’t work for you on a daily basis.

Outsourcing is also a great solution to team overload. Even the best project management methodologies won’t help if your team members are overworking. To assess the cost-effectiveness of this approach, consider using an outsourcing calculator.

Hire employees with various skills

Project managers should think about their duties as if they were the CEOs of startups. They need to keep work flexibility and be focused on the goal they’re trying to achieve, not on the method they will achieve it with.

Try to find people with different skills for all your projects and give them the right communication tools to share their knowledge. Regularly check how successful they are in their tasks. And for better estimation, always collect employee data for each worker.

Centralize communication

Managers don’t have time to switch between fifteen different apps just to define project tasks and work for particular teams. They need a centralized space for communication and strictly defined rules of collaboration.

Some task management tools also offer a communication feature, so keep it in mind when you are choosing the right software for your team. It helps in efficient project planning for more than one project.

Monitor work on a daily basis

If you manage multiple projects, you can easily get lost in daily duties and all the tasks. That’s why it’s crucial to create your daily habits, which you will perform despite all the problems that surround you.

It’s good to have a morning routine. Some of the best practices for managers include not checking their email on the first hour/s of the day, dealing with the biggest problem first thing in the morning (the so-called “eat that frog” method), or preparing a detailed plan of the day, and sticking to it (but with some time for unexpected tasks and meetings).

The Biggest Challenges of Managing Multiple Projects

If you are an entrepreneur, you probably know all these challenges of working with many clients and switching contexts dozens of times every day. But if you are just starting your career or thinking about going freelance, you should be aware of the most popular problems.

1. It’s hard to create project schedules and meet deadlines when your team is involved in many projects. A problem in one project can cause delays in others.
2. If you want to calculate project profit margin, you need to track time by project and divide fixed costs properly. So when you track multiple projects, you need to remember to manage resources accordingly and set accurate estimates
3. It can be hard to prioritize projects. With too many work requests, you need to prioritize tasks and allocate resources to those with the highest priority.
4. Competing deadlines: Everyone in the team should be on the same page with projects to avoid delays and waste of resources. Sometimes one team member is waiting for another to finish his/her task, which is very inefficient.
5. Putting every single task from all the projects in the project schedule is impossible and too time-consuming when you have many projects going on. You need to make a list of milestones for the project plan and divide them later. Don’t be afraid of losing track of the project without a detailed plan. I’m sure you’ve accomplished a lot in your life without step-by-step instructions.

Use The Right Tools!

The market offers many applications and software created for those who work on multiple projects with multiple clients. They enhance collaboration. Below, you will find a list of tools that will help in managing your and others’ work. We’ve also added some tips on how you can use specific features for managing multiple projects.

1. TimeCamp Planner

Collaboration and communication with the team for simultaneous projects.

It’s a perfect product for teams dealing with many tasks. It allows managing tasks and projects with the advanced chat feature. This app is somewhat the combination of Slack and Trello in one place. TimeCamp Planner solves various problems because it provides many possibilities:

• Standardized task management with all teams – focusing work on communication projects with all teams in one application.
• Communication with outsourcing companies – thanks to the feature of separate Workspaces and guest seats you have the possibility to create task communicator for outside companies. This way, you can easily hold conversations and define tasks.
• The reference to popular Trello, task and project management software for multiple projects, gives you the benefits of using such tool, including the fact that in your work you can use Kanban method.
• Your employees can participate in multiple projects at the same time, including inner projects as well as those carried out with outside companies.
• Focusing work on just one dashboard – it’s possible to finish all your work in one tool!
• Convenient MyTasks view – the complete list of tasks from multiple projects assigned to the user.
• Calendar and timeline view for keeping an eye on deadlines.
• OverWatch view for monitoring priority projects in one place.
• Time tracking for tasks with free TimeCamp integration.

Pricing: Free plan is available for up to 5 users; Pro plan costs $2.99 per user per month, billed annually ($3.99 billed monthly). 

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2. TimeCamp

Monitor progress and define project goals with robust time tracking.

TimeCamp is a tool for monitoring your and your employee’s work, including people who work remotely. Thanks to its functionality and ease of use, the software allows for working time optimization and boosting employees’ efficiency. It also enhances resource management and allocation. When you decide to implement TimeCamp in your company, you gain many benefits:

• The desktop app for all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux), extensions, and mobile app for iOS and Android. All that to help users track their activity no matter where they are.
• The highest quality at the best price.
• Automatic time tracking that allows you to easily switch between tasks.
• The possibility to set a limit for each task so that you can effectively monitor your team’s work.
• Accurate customer billing thanks to the ability to monitor projects budget.
• Entering time to invoices based on estimated hourly rates.
• Integrations with various tools that help in managing projects and accounting, such as Podio, Trello, Xero, QuickBooks, and many, many more.

Take your company to another level! Sign up today and boost your team’s productivity with TimeCamp!

For managing multiple projects and a number of clients, Apploye could be a reliable platform for you. It is a top-notch time tracker that offers an array of features related to employee monitoring and multi-project management.

Its functionalities are enough to manage multiple projects simultaneously and handle client-handling requirements. Moreover, using Apploye, you can boost your team’s productivity. Some of those benefits are as follows:

• Automatic time tracker: This feature enables you to track employee working hours easily.
• Versatile project management: You will be able to open and manage multiple projects, measure time on projects and monitor project progress, assign roles, and keep track of your project budget via Apploye. You will be able to see the current status of the projects and set budget alerts.
• Client management and invoicing: Apploye allows you to create your client database and invoice them for your completed work. You can keep track of paid and unpaid bills.
• Task management: You can use Apploye to generate the required number of tasks, allocate those tasks to employees, and view the total time logged in individual tasks to keep track of your project portfolio to stay organized.
• Payroll management: You can pay your employees according to the number of hours they worked for you and have project hours, assignee and date-wise views while managing the payroll.

Pricing: Apploye offers three types of pricing plans. The Standard plan is priced at $5/user/month, the the Elite plan is priced at $7/user/month, and Enterprise with custom pricing. You can grab a 50% discount if you choose to pay annually.

4. Google Calendar

Best for project prioritization and planning.

Google Calendar is one of the most popular tools used for planning. It’s perfect in every situation due to its ease of accessibility. You can use it no matter where you are—on vacation, a business trip or in the office.

Google Calendar is very easy-to-use, and its simplicity allows you to effectively plan time and allocate hours based on your availability during a particular work week. Additionally, the app sends you notifications and reminders before an important meeting. Just so you don’t forget about your daily tasks and commitments. You can also use it to plan ahead, to avoid context switching with block of time.

Moreover, most of the applications and software available on the market integrate with Google Calendar. That extremely enhances work between different tools.

5. Jira

Resource allocation for different project teams; best for technical teams.

Jira is an advanced project management tool used mostly by software development teams. It’s easy to create many projects in Jira, so it’s a great tool to organize and schedule everything in one place.

If you are working in agile and use story points or critical path, Jira can be your perfect solution. The app offers many customization options, so you can manage projects and tasks the way you like. Managing multiple projects with Jira can be much easier.

Jira solves various challenges because it provides many possibilities:

• you can see all tasks from different projects on one board and create project dependencies and critical path,
• use the external share feature to share live content from Jira with your clients (you don’t have to create new paid client accounts),
• integrate with other apps to create a comprehensive project management system,
• keep your project team and client updated thanks to email notifications about tasks,
• resource planning with project dashboards,
• to save time for the project manager, you can set up automation rules for multiple projects in a few clicks.

Pricing: Jira offers fully functional trials of the cloud products and plans. Cloud Standard can be trialed for 14 days, and Cloud Premium/Cloud Enterprise can be trialed for 30 days. Free plan is available for up to 10 users; other plans include Standard at $8.50/user/month, Premium at $16/user/month, and Enterprise plans are also available with custom pricing.

6. Asana

Managing multiple projects with many complexities.

Asana is a very popular project management software suitable also for managing multiple projects. For every project, you can choose from useful templates like content calendar, meeting agenda, team goals and objectives planning, business strategy plan, and many more.

In every project you can use different views to visualize your workflow. It’s easier to meet client expectations when you can add him/her as a guest and allow to collaborate with your team members. Asana can save you a lot of time and effort in project management.

Other useful project management features of Asana include:

• timeline feature that allows you to track different tasks, deal with delays and find a way to meet deadlines,
• report and dashboard for managers and client to visualize project performance,
• automation for repetitive tasks,
• standardized forms to plan resources and people for every task,
• workload management for team members.

Pricing: The basic plan, which is mostly useful for individuals or small teams, is free. Teams that need more advanced task management features can choose between the Starter option for $10.99 per user per month and the Advanced option for $24.99 per user per month. For additional security, control and support, there is an Enterprise plan, which is priced individually.

7. ClickUp

All-in-one platform for all your projects.

ClickUp is an intuitive project management tool that will help you and your team in managing multiple projects. The app offers 3 different views for tasks: board, box, and list. With ClickUp, you can manage everything in one place, easily report progress to clients, and keep everyone in the loop.

Here are some cool features that will help you with multiple projects:

• Multitask toolbar—this simple toolbar allows you to edit tasks in bulk like to-do-lists.
• Workload view—for easier resource management and allocation by comparing how many tasks are assigned to each team member and their capacity.
• Pulse—to report what is the priority task of the team or employee right now (it uses machine learning to identify tasks with the highest focus).
• Portfolio—mission control for the project management in your organization, that help you check the status of multiple projects in one view.

Pricing: ClickUp offers a free forever plan with limited functionalities and storage. Unlimited Plan with all features is $7 per user per month, and Business Plan is $19 per user per month.‍‍

7. GanttPRO

A Gantt chart tool like GanttPRO serves as a dynamic project management tool, adept at managing both single and multiple projects with equal efficiency. Its comprehensive Gantt chart capabilities offer project managers unparalleled precision and clarity across project workflows, and ensures meticulous attention to every detail from start to finish. GanttPRO addresses all facets of project management, including detailed planning, scheduling, time tracking, alongside effective budget, resource, and workload management.

For handling multiple projects, it provides:

• A portfolio view for project portfolio management
• Workload tabs for monitoring assignments across projects
• A centralized communication hub for enhanced collaboration
• Cross-project tasks and time tracking features
• Various configurations to streamline the management of multiple projects within a single account.

Pricing: GanttPRO provides a 14-day trial and offers various pricing plans to cater to user needs. Prices start at $9.99/mo for individual users and $7.99/mo for team users.

8. ProofHub

Effective team collaboration and project management tool.

ProofHub is a project management and team collaboration tool designed to streamline workflow and manage tasks. It enhances the organization’s process and boosts productivity by combining tools for chat, file sharing, managing tasks, time tracking and scheduling all-in-one platform. ProofHub makes team management easier and reduces stress for managers.

ProofHub has earned 4.6/5 rating on Capterra and has been recognized by industry leaders like Boeing, NASA, TripAdvisor, Nike, Google, and others. From enhancing team collaboration to better project management, ProofHub stands as the best choice for all of your needs.

Here are some benefits that ProofHub offers:

• Streamlined Communication: ProofHub organizes email madness by bringing all project conversations, task progress, and client communication in one unified platform.

• Enhanced Organization: It provides tools like Kanban boards for visualizing the project as a collection of boards or using Gantt charts with a clear understanding of who is on which team, one can ensure that all members have the same vision of the project.

• Efficient Client Management: Client-specific areas for organization-specific work, which allow clients to access only the projects’ files and discussions.

• Improved Accountability: ProofHub helps you make better decisions by defining goals and objectives, timelines and the option of real-time tracking of the work done, managers facilitate teamwork making it easier to achieve set results.

Price: ProofHub lets you avail 14-days free trial -no credit card required. Visit their pricing page to learn more and experience the future of project management firsthand.

Conclusion

We hope that our tips and recommended project management tools will help you deal with multiple projects and clients. Don’t hesitate to delegate tasks if you need to, or give more attention to higher priority projects to avoid stress.

However, remember that even the best tools won’t help if you don’t have the right people in your team who share a common business goal and support each other.

Ola Rybacka Content Specialist at TimeCamp, foodie and doxie lover, full-time otaku. よろしくお願いします！

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