BigTime IQ is time and expense tracking software from Chicago-based BigTime Software.
$20
User per Month
Redmine
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Redmine is a project management web application written using the Ruby on Rails framework. It is cross-platform and cross-database, and free to download and use as an open source project available on the GNU 2.0 license.
I'd like to start by saying, I rarely give 10's on anything, almost always 9's, the main reason for my 10 rating is the support I've received from this team/company. BigTime Software has been well suited for our company b/c it's giving a window into the project budget and time frames to our Project Managers to proactively manage their projects and look for areas to improve and celebrate with support staff. I would say efficiency in time management. BigTime Software is not an accounting software and I love that about it. We were looking for a tool for staff to manage their projects and stay on budget and track time and generate invoices all in one place and we've found that with BigTime Software.
Redmine is a perfect solution for businesses that are looking for a FREE and open source solution for project management. It is great for teams that are managing numerous tasks or projects at one time. Redmine is easy to set up and is fairly self-explanatory for anyone who is semi tech-savvy.
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.
The design and user-interface are a little outdated. It looks like a product that was designed ten years ago and doesn't have a polished look and feel like newer apps have.
It's not particularly designed to support agile-based project management methodologies such as Scrum.
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.
Redmine is a great product to have in an organization. It's extremely flexible, costs much less to maintain than other alternatives, and as a tool, it is relatively fast to get experienced with. The primary advantages of working with Redmine are: flexible platform, API, open-source and highly configurable, stability.
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.
Redmine is free, easy to use and it's everything you could want in a free project management program. The fact that it has wiki integration and that it can track on such a granular level is amazing. Assigning tasks to other users, such as our development team, is fantastic and ensures we are always up-to-date on where we are what - on what projects.
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.
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 entry. And it didn't track time or bill which are necessary functions
Jira is a great project management tool for software product life cycle management for an agile environment based on agile methodologies. Jira is an intuitive and modernized user interface design compared with Redmine but Redmine is a lightweight and affordable project management and task tracking solution with its essential features and functionalities.
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.
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.
Customers receive updates on all progress made for their issues -- this results in an informed customer who is being given transparency on all steps of our process.
Customers have responded well from being able to not have to track down emails and instead come to a central place for requests.
