Likelihood to Recommend For accounting systems, users and/or evaluators often want to see some type of matrix or "heads up" comparisons of specific features and functionality of a system in key areas such as: 1) General Ledger 2) Order to Cash cycle 3) Purchase to Pay cycle 4) Cash management 5) Inventory and/or Cost Accounting (Projects/Jobs, etc) 6) Revenue Recognition 7) Fixed Assets management 8) Budgets 9) Tax 10) Reports and Analysis It would be great if this kind of matrix existed to be filled in by reviewers so that others could benefit from their perspectives about the applications and how they address or handle the specific features/functionality. With respect to FinancialForce, the company has found that nearly all the key features it needed were available from the application.
Read full review Planview AdaptiveWork is by far the most flexible project management tool we've ever used. The ability to customize and create solutions to fit our needs is beyond capable. We often find ourselves creating new workflows that make automatic actions in parts of a project, or send notifications, or add users, or update statuses... the list of things goes on and on. Essentially the ability to create an IF statement on pretty much EVERYTHING you can do in the system is unparalleled. If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.
Read full review Pros User interface is more modern and user-friendly than other software Dashboards allow for good visual interpretation Reports are able to be customized to better fit users' needs Read full review Highly customizable, can develop organization specific workflows, modules, etc. Interface (in most instances) is easy to use. Timesheets, project details, and report modules are fairly easy to navigate and understand. Good comms tools like discussions, group pages, automatic reminders and notifications. Read full review Cons Since SalesForce was not made with accounting in mind, building FinancialForce as a module on top of SalesForce gives problems because the overarching architect of SalesForce cannot facilitate all the accounting requirements. The FinancialForce integration team was not very good, and did not help us set up our FinancialForce very well. Their customer support is also lacking and takes a long time to respond and troubleshoot our problems. FinancialForce doesn't actually build financial statement reports. We were only able to run a trial balance, and we had to build the statements ourselves in Excel. Read full review Yes, Clarizen has time tracking functionality. But in the end, so does much other software, and they do it with a better, less confusing interface which is one of the reasons our organization ended up switching. The platform was crowded and made it confusing for users who only used it to track time (like me). Our organization also wanted software that would better house PTO information, in addition to time tracking, and Clarizen's program wasn't efficient enough. The point above also goes with expenses. We wanted a more diligent and robust expense report system. For our needs, Clarizen wasn't it. Read full review Likelihood to Renew The company has now converted its legacy, "home grown" operations system and built it on the force.com platform, and the integration between it and FinancialForce is deeply entrenched. No other application would be able to replicate this functionality, and the company will be able to scale and leverage the force.com platform as it grows.
Read full review I give my renewal of this product a 9. It's only because we never know what product may come out next and how other factors in our office political environment may cause impact upon this. If I always had my way, this is what we'd settle on as our de facto project management system.
Read full review Usability Change management is always an issue, but the evidence of the application's usability is that both long-time employees (used to the legacy systems for many years) and newer employees have been able to learn the system and improve their business processes.
Read full review It is easy to configure, intuitive. The customization process is in some ways better than Salesforce.com. It has a great UI. It does however depend on how it's implemented. The design of it is generally fine, however the ability to data upload people from a spreadsheet is an obvious miss.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Unless the internet is completely unavailable - which has not happened yet - the application is always accessible. Since FinancialForce is built on the force.com platform, it's uptime is tied to Salesforce security and system performance standards
Read full review Sometimes it is slow when everyone is entering their time on Fridays or Mondays but other than that we rarely see downtime and maintenance notifications are well in advance.
Shel Hankley Information Systems Analyst, IT Project Manager and Clarizen Administrator
Read full review Performance If Visualforce pages are enabled, they sometimes slow down the load time.
Read full review Reports: Quick to Reasonable Most Ancillary Pages: Quick to Reasonable (By "ancillary" I mean lesser used/master data maintenance pages - e.g. People, Customers, Individual Tasks, Milestones, etc.) Work Plan (with 100 sub items): Reasonable to Slow
Read full review Support Rating The response time for FinancialForce is exemplary. Immediate acknowledgement of the support request by automatically logging a case/ticket on the provider side, then less than 24-hour follow up by a support team member with specific questions, information or resolution for the issue.
Read full review Read full review In-Person Training • We worked with a Project Manager on their side. He was very good about developing a project plan to hit our goal. I think we had weekly or twice weekly calls – very steady cadence over 3 month period. • Their PM skills were great – kept us on task. For the last week, they sent 2 people on site and they did training for power users. After that a couple of them revisited here
Read full review Online Training Through its Xtra login website available to its customers, FinancialForce offers a complete set of online, video tutorials, training and documentation. Each tutorial is "bite-sized", meaning it imparts instructional, step-by-step information in 2-3 minute narrated videos. For a particular cycle or process, like invoices to payments for example, each tutorial builds on the last so that the user can get a complete picture of the steps and process in less than 10 minutes.
Read full review Our trainer, Alex, is exceptional and knows the product really well. I swear he must have wrote the product himself! His manner with training is very easy going, gives you homework that is applicable to what you need to learn and stages it correctly for you. It was a pleasure to be trained by him.
Read full review Implementation Rating The company decided to run parallel for three months in order to soften the impact of the change from the legacy "system" - which users had been interfacing with for over a decade - to FinancialForce. While not recommended, this did provide time for the in-house "super user" team of 2 people to become completely familiar with the application, and thus provide hands-on training and be a resource for the users who would be processing the daily accounting transactions.
Read full review I performed the implementation with our Clarizen provide trainer, who knew the product 100% and it went quickly and without a problem. It was a pleasurable process without the problems other software implementation often encounter. Kudos to the Clarizen team for making this a worry free process for their clients because it is worry free.
Read full review Alternatives Considered FinancialForce Subscription & Usage Billing has more features, more useability, and manages higher numbers of customers. The systems I have used in the past are easier to navigate but couldn't handle this number of customers.
Read full review Planview AdaptiveWork was the right size, at the right price point that fit our customization and integration flexibility. It is intuitive to use but allowed us to add complexity as our needs grew
Read full review Return on Investment Beneficial to easily be able to track impact of fluctuating currencies. Integration with Salesforce.com reduced/elimintated manual entry which saves various colleagues time. Increased visibility over the entire sales cycle because of the integration between Salesforce.com & FinancialForce Accounting. Read full review We use the time tracking reports to help identify types of projects for which we're under charging for implementation fees We use the notes tracking for assisting with post mortems when projects go off the rails We use the tracking of ARR and implementation fees to pull together reports based on go live that let us know how we're tracking towards our yearly goals Read full review ScreenShots Planview AdaptiveWork Screenshots