Documentation is to your business what water is to the fishes. It’s everywhere. You need it to survive and grow. A good documentation process prevents information bottlenecks, supports collaboration between departments and individuals, and allows your business to learn quickly and improve.
But to access the advantages of documentation for your business, you need a proper way of storing all those documents. Here’s our list of 18 great tools you can use to store your team’s documents, whatever they may be, and go into the new year super organized. We’ve broken them down into 4 main purposes:
For teamwork
For operations
For design
For development
Have a play and explore which tools could bring a new level of productivity to your team.
For teamwork
These tools can bring your team’s documents into one place, so you can collaborate on projects, even if you’re working in different countries and timezones.
1. Quip
An interactive library for your internal documentation. You can create docs, edit them with your team in real time, and share them with others.
Pro tip: Allows you to take email out of your work process.
Pricing:
Up to 5 users: $30 per user per month
Then, $10 extra per user per month
2. Google Drive
A place to contain and share a variety of team documents. You can import your own or use Drive’s array of formats, like spreadsheets and slides. Their Drive for work feature is adapted especially for team collaboration and includes unlimited storage and backups.
Pro tip: Drive for work can be accessed from anywhere, including on your phone and offline.
Pricing:
Drive for work: $10 per user per month
3. Dropbox Business
The business edition of Dropbox includes unlimited storage, backups for files and collaboration capabilities to help teams work together in a safer and more organized way.
Pro tip: Dropbox Business includes unlimited integrations with third-party apps, so you can customize your experience according to your particular working process.
Pricing:
$12.50 per month per user
4. Evernote Business
A workspace for collaboration. Keep files and projects together, and share them with individuals and departments by tagging team members.
Pro tip: It’s a cloud-based tool but you can have offline access too.
Pricing:
$12 per user per month
5. ShareFile
Another collaboration and file sharing app that lets you store your team documents. It also has a file signing feature so you can make contracts and permissions readily accessible.
Pro tip: This one gives team members personalized dashboards, so they can curate their own view of the workplace’s documentation to suit their tasks.
Pricing:
Personal: $16 per month
Team (5 employees): $60 per month, $8 per additional employee
Business (5 employees): $100 per month, $10 per additional employee
6. Teamwork.com
A suite of tools to bring team members’ work into one place, including Teamwork Projects, a collaboration area where project docs can be stored and worked on.
Pro tip: You can bring all your existing files from other tools into one place, including Google Drive docs and Word files.
Pricing:
Small office (40 projects): $49 per month
Professional (200 projects): $149 per month
Business (500 projects): $249 per month
For operations team documents
Use an efficient documenting practice to streamline operations like HR, expenses, and legal paperwork to free up your team’s valuable time.
1. Gusto
This is the place for storing your HR, payroll and benefits docs. Send secure emails to your team and keep everyone’s important info handy for when you need it.
Pro tip: Remote team members can sign and send all their docs securely within the same software as HQ.
Pricing:
Base: $39 per month, plus $6 per person month
2. 1Password Teams
A simple but powerful tool — this one keeps all your company passwords and vulnerable info like credit cards in a virtual vault.
Pro tip: Integrate 1Password into your browser and apps for quick but secure sign-ins.
Pricing:
$3.99 per team member
3. Startup Documents
This is a tool specifically for your legal documents. It generates and stores your team’s legal docs, so you don’t have to think about them. If you’re a small or growing startup, this frees you up to focus on the important stuff.
Pro tip: Learn as you store. Startup Documents has a library of articles explaining the basic “legalese” you’ll run into as a startup.
Pricing:
Sign up: Free
Each legal product then has a fee. For example, incorporating your business in Delaware will cost you $300.
4. Clerky
Another tool for organizing the legal life of your company. It generates all the documents your startup needs, and notifies team members when a signature or action is needed.
Pro tip: It can save you from filling out a form in a hurry and making mistakes with a “prerequisite checklist.” You can check off all the items you need to have completed before using the form.
Pricing:
Per product: $99 to set up incorporation, for example.
5. Expensify
A place to store all your expenses information. Keep expense reports, send receipt records to the right people, and manage reimbursements.
Pro tip: Many lengthy processes are made automatic, like compiling reports from a set of individual records or synching expenses with accounting.
Pricing:
Team: $5 per user per month
Corporate: $9 per user per month
For design
Bring designers and other teams together for greater collaboration and more productive creative work.
1. SketchDeck
A hub for your design projects. Create a brief and Sketchdeck will give you a team of designers who can work with you to realize it. Once you’ve created a project, all stages of ideation and development are still available to view and refer back to.
Pro tip: Flexibility. You can complete design projects quickly as you go without having to worry about hiring.
Pricing:
Pay-as-you-go: Starts at $500 per project
Subscription: From $2,500 per month
2. Invision
Keeps designs and projects in one place and allows you to collaborate in real time with multiple teams. You can create context around your projects and view projects by priority to help you stay on top of multiple deadlines.
Pro tip: Great integrations, including Dropbox and Drive.
Pricing:
Team: Up to 5 team members for $99 per month
An Enterprise level is also available
3. Mural.co
Keep your remote team working together with this tool for brainstorming, synthesizing and collaborating. You can document ideas and changes to create new versions of projects without losing track.
Pro tip: Add images and inspirations to create visual context as you work.
Pricing:
Up to 30 members: $16 per user per month, or $12 per user per month if billed annually
For development
Use these tools to create a dynamic and organized environment for your developers, while bringing the development team closer to the rest of your business.
1. ReadMe
A documentation hub for developers. It allows you to store your team’s API documentation and externals as interactive docs, so you can connect your dev community and your customers.
Pro tip: Customize the look of your doc hub with your own branding to create a UX that feels like you.
Pricing:
Developer Hub: $59 per project per month
White Label: $199 per project per month
Enterprise: $1000+ per project per month
2. GitHub Business
A storage solution for your software. Allows you to store software in development and work on it as a team.
Pro tip: Use integrations like chat apps and analysis tools to exchange and improve ideas as you code.
Pricing:
Organization: $9 per user per month
Enterprise: $21 per user per month
3. Swagger.io
Gives developers access to open-source tools to help them build, design, and store APIs. Swagger’s core tools include Editor, Codegen, and UI.
Pro tip: Swagger is an open source project, so developers can get involved and contribute to a growing community.
Pricing:
Basic: Free
Premium support is available for a fee, depending on your needs, and includes dev support for projects from the Swagger team and tailored advice.
It’s up to you. Use any or all of these tools in a routine that works for you, to make your work day easier.
Head into 2017 with your documents in order so you can focus on your goals.
P.S. If you liked this article, you should subscribe to our newsletter. We’ll email you a daily blog post with actionable and unconventional advice on how to work better.
The post 18 Best Places To Store Your Team’s Documents appeared first on I Done This Blog.