Using Asana for Project Management in Your Floral Business

There are countless reasons you should systemize and organize your business (check out this podcast to hear the three pillars of organization).

And Asana is one of the many potential solutions to this ever-pervasive issue! It is a project management tool (that is free) where you can even add your team members to keep everyone on the same page.

Here are the top 3 features in Asana that have changed the trajectory of my floral business and helped me organize my workflows. (Saving me so much time!)

Teams

Asana allows you to create “teams” on your account, treating that as a “hub” of sorts. My teams include “Business Planning,” where I have a board for each of the following:

• Goals

• Planning

• Standard operating procedures

• Education

• Batching

• A business blueprint for other things, such as branding

My other teams included are my businesses “Posh Peony” and “Fleursociety,” and those include boards for weekly tasks, workflows, and specific project management.

Lastly, my “Team” team has everything my team needs to operate in their roles in my business, such as branding, blogging, marketing, social media, and meetings.

Once you create your teams, you can add the board pertaining to each project or workflow you will create.

Asana Boards and Lists

The beautiful thing about Asana is that you can create both a visual board and a simple list for your projects. I prefer the board because I like the visuals it provides.

You can add cards for each task/workflow, photos, lists within each card, links, uploads, tags, and more. These visuals make it easy for my team and me to navigate when they are completing and checking off specific tasks in their process.

Inside each board, you can tag and comment with particular people on your team, which keeps communication organized. You can create these as a template to later duplicate and use for each upcoming event/project.

Scheduling

Another great thing about Asana is the ability to schedule your tasks/workflows within each board/project to anyone!

In my business, I assign the person responsible for each workflow and set a deadline. They are then notified of any upcoming deadlines via email, making it easy to stay organized and communicate the expectations for each project or workflow. You can then view your tasks in the “List” or “Calendar” view to see upcoming or due tasks.

If you’re currently struggling with staying on top of your client onboarding and off-boarding process, managing event timelines or workflows, organizing standard operating procedures in your business, then it is time to get systemized!

To break this down even more, I want to show you what is possible when using project management systems such as Asana. Here are 3 boards you should definitely consider creating in Asana for your floral business.

Business Hub

Your team hub is where you organize and store all the business details that you and your team can access whenever they create content for marketing use.

Include a branding guide with fonts, logos, and color codes so that your branding is communicated and consistent.

Other things to consider are recurring tasks that can be automated with checklists, standard operating procedures, workflows, important documents like legal or payroll, links to tools you use, mission statements, core values, headshots, etc.

Lastly, a card for goals, planning, and sales tracking is very helpful to have to refer to and check things off as you go.

Using Asana for your floral business

Blog workflow checklist in Asana

Wedding Team

This board is perfect for managing your team, both full-time and freelancers, when you hire and onboard them into your business.

This board includes everything they need to know about my business, including core values, code of conduct, dress code, compensation, media expectations, and more.

I have also listed the team roles so that everyone knows the hierarchy in my business and can problem-solve independently.

There is a checklist of responsibilities and expectations for each position that can be accessed at any time. On top of that, you can list the events that are upcoming and include all the details.

My team can see ahead of time if the events are a good fit and claim their spot to commit. This is extremely helpful for planning the logistics and getting help onboard fast.

Using an asana board to manage your floral design team, including freelancers

Outlining core values

Wedding Workflows

This board is where you will add all your workflows for an event. For me, this includes our wedding workflow, client workflow, and floral prep and design workflows.

The wedding workflow includes a to-do list of everything we like to do, from 120 days before the event to 7 days before the event.

To create this, I jotted down every step in our process on a piece of paper (or digital document) and what we have to do to execute a successful event. I then broke it down by timeline to organize the tasks into a list inside of Asana.

I did the same things for the client workflow and jotted down all the things we like to do for client experience, deadlines, ordering details, questionnaires to send, and testimonial requests. Again, organize this list in a timeline so that you can check them off as you go.

Lastly, the floral prep and design workflow is super helpful for my team to prep and design the week of the event. I listed the entire process from Monday to Monday on what needs to get done each day. This includes lists for processing flowers, prepping vases, designing florals, picking up rentals and materials, packaging, loading, and unloading.

My team can easily check things off as they go along in the production week process. You can also assign specific tasks with deadlines to team members to hold them responsible and accountable.

Once you have all your workflows documented, create a “template” of this board that you can later duplicate to create for each upcoming event.

I hope you found value in learning about this free tool and how you can use it in your floral design business.

Trust me: You will enjoy mapping it all out so that you have everything documented as you grow a team and start delegating more, and all while scaling your business!