ActiveCollab vs. Asana vs. Planday

Scenarios where ActiveCollab works well 1) ActiveCollab works well for small teams specifically T&M teams.Its invoicing feature is unique & can make your life easy. 2) It is very easy to use & posses good range of filters like on the task list, we can drag/drop tasks, Filter by assignee's,
tasks lists, due dates, or completed tasks. 3) It has some simple but awesome features like when you're in
the middle of writing something i.e a comment on story and get interrupted,
it retains what you wrote. 4) It allows you to tag team members in threads of comments to grab their attention, its really needed when teams are distributed. Thus helping team members to collaborate easily & stay on same page. 5) It integrates pretty well with other web apps like quickbooks , Slack, Trello, HubSpot, Zapier etc Scenarios where ActiveCollab did not work well 1) Tasks can not have multiple assignee's here so if two members are working on same task it did not allow you to reflect that. 2) Sorting capability is not their under invoicing 3) It did not work well for larger teams 4) Search option is not very detailed & you may end up wasting lot of time searching one particular bug or issue.

Incentivized

The usability of Asana is broad since it's available in a variety of platforms that are widely used nowadays. I think that it would be great for people who are constantly on the move and switching devices, since it has allowed me to work from my phone, too. I also think that Asana has proven itself to handle a large quantity of work

Planday is a wonderful first step in organizing team management, such as mass communication, scheduling, time off requests, and centralized timesheets. I used it for my retail business and found it to be extremely helpful in communication with my team and keeping track of everyone scheduling needs in one place. As we grew, I noticed a need to assign tasks, which would be very helpful for larger companies or businesses with daily tasks that need to assigned to specific team members, departments, or shifts

Incentivized

• Great for project and task assignments, project workflow and communications.
• Solid web-based platform that doesn't require software downloads, also includes great mobile platform.
• Great reporting tools for managing billing, estimating, project workflow and other essential project details.
• Allows for both the agency and its clients to interact on a single platform using role-specific permissions.

Incentivized

• Through it, we were able to communicate and cooperate with the rest of the team to complete the work in the required manner and at the appropriate time.
• Available for free on Android and iPhone.
• Asana has a simple and easy user interface

• Provides an overview of staffing levels for each team, and the department as a whole.
• The UI makes it very easy to get a snapshot view of the staffing levels for set time period.
• Managing absences and arranging for shift swaps are also efficiently handled using Planday.

Incentivized

• It isn't possible to set members of staff as part time, so if someone is unavailable on certain days you must manually enter them as OOO every single day that they are not in, that other teammates work. Hours also can't be edited individually - everyone is treated as working the same hours in a day, rendering capacity planner useless for flexi working teams
• Subtasks cannot be assigned their own hours and deadlines, meaning the To Do list view can't be seen in actual date order and capacity planner does not reflect all time allocated to an individual's schedule unless every task is set up as a separate task rather than subtask
• There is no way to see all tasks of a certain type across multiple campaigns (e.g all copywriting tasks vs all technical tasks) - support team suggested exporting data and making spreadsheets
• Kanban view isn't available for people's own task lists ('board' view here shows a list)
• Not possible to have one task be assigned to more than one person
• Notifications are not sent when tasks are updated, so you have to leave comments and tag people each time

• Asana is not really a project management tool, it is good for simple projects only
• UI has some glitches (doesn't save preferences, etc.)
• Integration with other tools (Office 365, MS Project)
• No reminders if the working period you entered is on holidays

Incentivized

• Holiday functionality - currently under review, new system launching early 2017 which will improve accuracy, calculate balances and deliver a more user friendly experience
• Payroll reporting - data is not all relevant, could be more flexible
• Schedule - could be more flexible to show employees consistently working across the group on one schedule

• Mobile + Desktop capabilities - Able to use it anywhere, anytime.
• Task management - Easy to view projects and their progress.
• Time management - Easy to see what elements require time / how they interrelate and manage the project on an overall basis.
• Company management - Be able to see from a master dashboard perspective where each project is in its stages of completion.
• Clear communication - It's visually documented who is doing what at what time so that the whole project gets done.

Incentivized

It is very user-friendly. Takes a new employee an hour to start figuring out how the system works. That's an important factor. You don't want to encounter the issue where employees need a week to understand how the system works. For example, JIRA, I tried using it for a week and I still don't understand the complicated layout. Asana has a simple interface. Once you see it, you get it type of program.

Incentivized

Working with Asana on a daily basis

We have not required support for ActiveCollab as it works pretty seamlessly. We didn't have any issues with using the platform or with any billing issues. The self-service aspect of the platform is robust and easy to navigate so we have not encountered any errors that required assistance from the support team.

Incentivized

I haven't had to use their support so I can't rate it. The fact that I haven't needed them reflects the ease of use of the product. I would recommend that any new users schedule a complete demo of the product to ensure that they are using it to it's fullest (there's a lot of useful features).

Incentivized

ActiveCollab is easier to use and simpler in its setup. It has the right mix of features and simplicity. It's also project-oriented which is important for our workflow. Other tools are often too task-oriented, making it hard to track projects. Overall, ActiveCollab has a great mix of simplicity with good features.

Incentivized

Asana is a top-tier project management software that helps us organize and track projects from start to finish. It allows us to apply tasks/to-dos to multiple projects without duplication, divide complex projects into smaller tasks, and track project progress. It also helps us organize work on Kanban boards or linear lists. It stands out from the crowd in a big way compared to the competition.

Ultimately Planday is the perfect tool for simple straightforward team time management, communication and scheduling. I would like to see a task management feature added to Planday and perhaps some integration for employee rewards. Planday is leaps and bounds above Quickbooks Time, and TimeClock Plus but falls behind Deputy only slightly by having less features available. Overall I would recommend Planday to any small business owner with a team of 5-20

Incentivized

I used this tool on a daily basis at work and it runs as a solid rock

• Allows our team to stay organized and keep conversations on tasks.
• The To-Do List email every morning helps me mentally prepare and know exactly what I should be doing as soon as I start work.
• Powerful and useful integrations save lots of time (Google Drive, Slack, Dropbox, Zapier and more!).

Incentivized

• Productivity - Most of all, it allows me to be more productive and have a good sense of where I am with projects and deadlines.
• Easy to use - I can make the most of my time to get up (and stay) up and running.
• Project coordination - Allows me to assign tasks to my interns and communicate directly within the platform to keep the work train moving.

Incentivized

• So much easier to manage than an Excel spreadsheet!
• The relatively low cost is completely outweighed by the time saved using Planday

Incentivized