Active Collab is a project management solution built around features such as task management, collaboration, time tracking, and invoicing.
$8
per member/per month
QuickBooks Time
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) is a cloud-based time tracking and scheduling app that allows employees to clock in and out from the job site with the devices they’ve already got in their pockets. The vendor aims to help companies replace paper timesheets with accurate, electronic time data as well as make payroll and invoicing faster and less costly. QuickBooks Time also accurately tracks time and GPS points (even without cell or internet service) then automatically syncs when back…
$0
1 user, unlimited projects
Pricing
ActiveCollab
QuickBooks Time
Editions & Modules
ActiveCollab Project Management
$8
per member/per month
Self-Hosted Plan
$999.00
license
Free
$0
1 user, unlimited projects
Premium
$8
per user/month + $20 base fee/month (paid annually)
Elite
$10
per user/month + $40 base fee/month (paid annually)
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.
It would be very useful for certain remote jobs that require a high level of presence, as in the case of web development, or remote maintenance sessions, so that when reviewing the work data it is possible to ensure that there will be no failures. By being able to include files in the management, from the equipment tab, it is possible to fully control the hours in which each change in these files were made.
Support (their help desk team is incredibly helpful and always quick to respond).
Ease of access and use (the app is user-friendly an intuitive, and the desktop version is equally as approachable).
Manager functionality (it's useful to be able to clock employees in and out at multiple events on the same day by sorting them into different groups by manager/event).
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
The desktop version of the TSheets schedule does not have a search feature. This makes it challenging to find things you are looking for without extra work
The app can be a bit buggy. Though it is a great app, there are many reasons that the app will stop syncing and can cause problems with staff scheduling
TSheets tech support people, like Shawn Sommer, from Tsheets. She has been instrumental, after terminating the person in charge of TSheets I was left with a learning curve too high to climb but after 10 mins of her instructions I was able to make payroll in no time. She cleared all errors that nobody had fixed before. TSheets is not a vendor for me, TSheets is my partner in business. Thank you TSheets.
Our employees find TSheets easy to use and spend minimal time at reporting hours using it. As an administrator and user of the TSheets "data and information" I am extremely positive on the functionality and reporting that it has provided me. From its ease of set-up to training to reporting, TSheets has made us so much more efficient from an administration standpoint
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.
I have never failed to have an issue resolved within minutes of contacting Support. Jen D recently assisted my with an export issue and I was back on track in less the 10 minutes. She was knowledgable and thought about the current and future contexts of the issue and assured there would be no recurrence next payroll.
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.
Besides Intuit Payroll (Sage), the only program I've used is WorkBrain through Menards, and it's more as a scheduling guideline for management, employees don't use it to punch in or out or record hours. However, WorkBrain does show scheduling and it matches with a punch clock to record those hours. Every other place I've used has used either punch clocks or handwritten time cards. I think the TSheets is modern, user-friendly, convenient, accessible, and cost-effective for the owners. It also streamlines payroll for the Accountant instead of manually entering all hours for multiple employees by hand into a software program like Sage.
