Accelo is a Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform designed to provide visibility into operational risks for service-based organizations. While traditional tools often focus on historical data, Accelo is intended to surface real-time risks such as Project Overruns, Resource Overloading, and Scope Creep. The platform integrates the full client lifecycle, including CRM, Quoting, Project Delivery, Support Ticketing, Time and Expense Tracking, Retainer Management, and…
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BigTime Software
Score 6.3 out of 10
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BigTime IQ is time and expense tracking software from Chicago-based BigTime Software.
Harvest and Asana combined don't even scratch the surface of what Accelo can do. Harvest is nothing more than rudimentary time tracking. It's about as easy to use as they come, but it stops there. There's no tie in to project management, invoicing, capacity planning, etc. and …
We switched from Teamwork to Accelo. Teamwork outperforms Accelo when it comes to tasks and email communications. However, Accelo does exceed Teamwork when it comes to impeccable time management. Being able not to overspend time on a client has had a significant benefit in ROI.
Accelo doesn't really exceed any competitors in any one area of their product, but in 2015 when we made the move this was the best option that included all the tools we wanted. However, user adoption was low in some areas due to the UI, so we scaled back Accelo and added other …
We used Workfront prior to using Accelo, mainly for project management and retainer management. There is no comparison between the two as Accelo blows it away.
After all the research and demos I watched, I had narrowed it down to BQE CORE & BigTime Software. We actually started w/ BQE CORE, which is an incredibly robust software with a lot of great abilities. It ended up being way more robust than we needed or wanted. We switched …
Many of those other softwares did not provide the detailed reporting capabilities that Big Time does. It was harder to get the data we needed out of those systems, and some just did not have it all together...
I didn't use the reporting features much on ClickTime, so I can't compare that. The previous company where I was that used ClickTime may have had just a basic subscription for timekeeping.
I liked the client management, but it didn't do time tracking, billing or syncing with quickbooks. It was too robust for my needs. I tried it for the client management and thought I might use it along with bigtime, but it was too cumbersome and would involve too much double …
BigTime Software blows Zoho out of the water because it's all in one place and the customer service is 1000x better than Zoho. It's easy to get answers and understand where the problem is and how to fix it. Zoho was confusing, didn't communicate well between modules, and the …
We selected BigTime [Software] because it had the most features that we needed in our company. It is lacking some features but overall it is a good fit for us.
The main reason why we have decided to change services [...] is because we have carried out an internal analysis to determine which tool [is the best], with the [most] appropriate functionalities to fulfill our labor proposal. [We] came to the conclusion that BigTime [Software] …
While they have similar capabilities, our main reason for switching to BigTime Software was that Harvest could not reconcile expenses and labor hours into one budget line item, which threw off entire project budgets. In this regard, BigTime Software is more accurate and a much …
We looked at several different options, but most of them charge a percentage of the profits to use their service. BigTime is a flat rate for access/use and that works better with our business.
It’s a great alternative to other invoice software since it's easy for a quick Excel invoice or other timesheet for contracting work. It was easy to enter time and upload receipts as well. I uploaded a receipt for a software purchase when I had to add that to my billing as …
BigTime was recommended by enough people in our circle that we didn't even consider any other options. All other options were outside our price point as well.
The best services management, easy operations reporting, and data analytics features from Accelo are impressive and easy on data visualization and workflow management software. Accelo was very helpful in collaboration and easy to collect feedback from integrated platforms and the scheduling ability is very unique. The Automation tools are also cost-effective and the ability to manage time through Accelo is perfect.
I believe it is well suited for our industry! We are professional services consulting firm and we need this! However if there is a smaller company who does not need to track these items, then they should not use this big of a platform
Tracking customer interactions. Nice integration with G Suite, could be a lot better if they acknowledged that contacts may actually have more than one email address.
Support Ticket system is integrated, so we can view support history and other email correspondence easily. It's cheaper that Zendesk.
Support is reasonably good, usually prompt and responsive.
Constant development - lots of updates, just not often to areas that we use.
Invoice Style and detail..Bigtime allows the user the ability to choose more of what you need to appear on your invoice with its window options.
Phase/Percentage Billing; ease of adding additional phases to a project mid-project; clearly identifying Retainers
Support Team- In particular Melissa D and Lina Z...Par Excellent on the Teams
WHIP/Reports/Review of Invoices just make the entire billing process a BREEZE has cut my time frame in half, a Incredible help in this Season of Remote Work Environment that we are adapting to.
The client portal needs to be improved. It does not have the same user interface as we have within Accelo and we get a lot of client complaints about it.
It needs more executive-style reporting and the ability to create your own reports and filters.
It needs to be faster. With all of the things Accelo is doing to give you all the data, it is kind of slow compared to other systems in the browser.
For some types of projects, we are unable to use BigTime's invoicing feature. It would be nice if we could further customize invoices to fit our needs. We still have to use Quickbooks to complete certain invoices.
Being able to create Purchase Orders in BigTime would be extremely useful to us. We currently use Quickbooks for this.
Overall most areas of the software are easy to use. I tend to spend a lot of time in analytics and reports. Those are not as user friendly, in my opinion, and could use some improvements. I think it just takes time to get familiar with where items are stored in the program and what changes affect what.
From the beginning the Accelo team has been very invested in ensuring our success and overall happiness with the platform. The initial implementation specialists and trainers did a fairly good job of learning our company and needs, and tried to tailor the trainings accordingly. However, once we made the formal switch to the platform, meaning we no longer were using our legacy systems, we found that we had a lot of questions....and a lot of ideas and recommendations. The support team is extremely responsive and seemingly happy to receive our continual feedback. And if we encounter an issue that seems to be a system issue, they work diligently to fix it (we've actually had an engineer join a call with us to learn of the issue - and subsequently fix it)
The support is amazing! They are always available through the chat interface in the program. Each support person has fully answered my questions the first time. I have had a positive experience with each inquiry. It is very important to me that I am able to get instant access to help so that I can make the most of the software and all of its capabilities.
I touched on this briefly, in another survey section, but my implementation manager, Kevin, was exceptional. The actual implementation process took 3 months, not 1 before I was comfortable rolling it out to staff. We also had to wait/schedule time and coordinate for our custom xml. invoice to be generated and in a place we felt comfortable sending it out to clients. In the end I was very satisfied, but during the first few months it was challenging.
Harvest and Asana combined don't even scratch the surface of what Accelo can do. Harvest is nothing more than rudimentary time tracking. It's about as easy to use as they come, but it stops there. There's no tie in to project management, invoicing, capacity planning, etc. and the reporting isn't great. Asana we found to be very difficult to use for complex projects with multiple deliverables, multiple deadlines, multiple teams - and it didn't tie back to budgets and hours worked. So the deficiencies of those two tools are what led us to Accelo. In terms of more comparable systems, I had previously used Workamajig. The sophistication of Workamajig was there, but it didn't seem to have quite as much flexibility and customization. ProWorkflow we evaluated just based on sales and marketing information available on the platform and felt it wasn't quite as good.
The main reason why we have decided to change services [...] is because we have carried out an internal analysis to determine which tool [is the best], with the [most] appropriate functionalities to fulfill our labor proposal. [We] came to the conclusion that BigTime [Software] is much more complete in terms of functionalities and even [at a] lower price.
The product is useful for faster billing and efficient timesheet logs. I do like the report features however there are many options and can be overwhelming for the user. It is most helpful to set up reports speaking to an agent to ensure the right fields are set, etc.
Save Money on Lost Time. You won't go over your client retainers in any given month if you use Accelo properly. This ultimately saves your company time and money.
Lost or Broken Communications. They need to get it together with their email system, aka "request inboxes" ... There are too many lost or broken emails for them to be trustworthy with this. My suggestion is to make sure you know everyone you communicate with (including outside sources like Google or other companies) and set them up in Accelo, then send test emails. Also, when in doubt, use your Outlook or other primary sourced email when you want to make sure an email goes through with all appropriate files.
Before BigTime, we were using Excel to track everything, creating invoices, and run reports. Getting on BigTime has saved us tons of time and effort which equates to dollars saved on labor.
From a legal standpoint, BigTime has allowed us to be organized and prepared in the event we would need to present financial details to anyone.