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.
AvidXchange is well suited for companies with multiple locations where approvals may be hard to get directly. A user can log on when they have time basically from anywhere to review, code and approve invoices. This would allow for processing of invoices centrally more efficiently then with appear invoices being moved from one place to another to be processed
Our contractors and vendors can submit invoices electronically through AvidBill, removing the tedious task of sorting and coding mail. This feature saves on time and administrative duties.
Communication is key, and being able to log a comment or question in AvidInvoice allows for clarification and expedited approval process.
Having multiple properties, having the Property Code and % Allocation features allow us to ensure the correct entity is charged it's portion of expenses. For example, we may have a service that is coded to all 32 properties. With AvidInvoice we are able to allocate each entity's pro rata share of the invoice.
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
AvidPay needs some improvement to minimize the amount of time it takes to issue payment for invoices
The search features within AvidXchange on the advanced search screen sometimes do not function correctly (sorting by ascending / descending order doesn't work all of the time).
The log enhancement follow-up procedure could use some work.
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.
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.
We are presently evaluating a move to Concur Invoice, not because of any real lack of functionality from AvidXchange, but simply because we have other business functions already on Concur Invoice. From what we have seen so far, the functionality is similar, though I believe Concur Invoice is more expensive.
