Administration is a more accurate word than management for what this software actually holds, because it is a body of records rather than an activity. An office administration is four record sets, and a product either holds them properly or holds some of them and pretends about the rest. This page describes all four: what belongs in each, the field that is always missing when offices build them in a spreadsheet, and the reason the four have to sit together rather than in four separate places.
Suppliers and contracts, with the field everyone forgets
The supplier, what they do for you, what it costs and when it renews. The forgotten field is the notice period, and it is the one that matters most: a renewal date without a notice period tells you when you will be billed, not when you had to act, and by the time the date arrives the window has usually closed. Record both, and set the reminder against the notice date. This single correction is worth more than any other change on this page and takes an afternoon on your existing list.
Equipment, and the person rather than the place
What the company owns that has a serial number, and who has it. The instinct is to record where a thing is; the useful record is who signed for it, because things move and people are accountable. Capture it at handover, when the person is standing there, rather than in a stock take later, which never happens. This record's whole value shows up at two moments, when somebody leaves and when something is stolen, and both are moments where reconstructing it afterwards is impossible.
Procedures and the move, and why all four sit together
Procedures are how the routine jobs are done, written once by the person who does them. The move is the task list with owners and dates when the lease ends. These four sit together because each references the others: the move cancels contracts, transfers equipment and rewrites procedures, and a move run against four separate lists is a move where one of them is forgotten. That is the argument for a single record rather than four spreadsheets, and it is the only argument that needs making.
Questions people ask about office administration software
Is administration software different from management software?
In the market, no: the same products answer both queries. As a description, administration is the better word, because what you are buying is a set of records rather than a management method, and thinking of it as records makes the buying decision much clearer.
How long should we keep these records?
That depends on the record and on your obligations, and it is genuinely not something a software page should assert. Retention periods vary by document type and by circumstance, so build your own retention schedule with your accountant and apply it, rather than taking a single number from anywhere on the internet including here.
Can this live in our accounting package?
Partly, and it is the right place to start from because it knows what was paid. What it does not hold is the notice period, the equipment holder, the procedures or the move, so it gets you a supplier list and not an administration.