Flowlu vs. Plutio vs. Upland PSA

To manage the workflows of our business, we used a number of tools before we began using Flowlu. It combines CRM, project & task management, team communication, invoicing, and account management into a single tool. We are able to save a lot of time and effort by using this all-in-one solution.

Plutio is great for the individual who is constantly on the go, managing a wealth of online information and projects. I can see those who work in education, such as administration, or technology coaches/teacher coaches using a platform like this to stay organized. Freelance or consultants would also benefit as it can manage your digital self.

Incentivized

We have discovered over the last few years using Tenrox that we could adapt our needs or processes to fit in the Tenrox box rather than adapting Tenrox to fit in ours completely. I feel like Tenrox would be better suited for a company that has fewer clients and projects over the course of a year, as well as fewer users. We have approximately 350 clients, 21,077 projects in Tenrox at this exact moment (we close projects as we can), 188 active users currently, and 415,635 tasks (some of course assigned to now closed projects).
With this much information hosted through the Tenrox cloud server, we experience increased lag time frequently. This causes a lot of unwanted rejection towards Tenrox in our company.

Incentivized

• The system of adding only the features you need by installing as separated modules makes it easy to learn without being overwhelmed by the lots of features.
• I really like its structure and clear interface. Not wasting much time by searching for the right buttons and settings. Looks like the developers use their own tool for everyday work
• Flowlu offers a custom domain option to fully integrate fully it into our company toolbox. This helps offering a seamless experience for our clients.
• The elaborated invoice module was the final argument for us to switch to Flowlu.

• Task tracking.
• Assigning tasks with sending notifications.
• Start and complete the task with the notified team leader upon completion of the task.
• Different project management.
• Efficient working with the team.
• Assign team members to manage the task with full or partial access.
• Powerful user experience.
• Set reminders of specific tasks or schedules.

• We love that our timesheets are pre-populated with all our employee's assigned contracts and we get to control what is on their timesheet as far as funder and contract codes.
• Tenrox did very well with our integration and getting a timesheet that exports well with our payroll provider.
• Tenrox has a great email reminder system for when people need to submit or approve timesheets.

Incentivized

• Flowlu should allow user to import their own invoice into app
• Fellow should have their own email marketing system
• It should integrate woo-commerce, a big e-commerce platform on WordPress. This will support users will in managing and sending emails to their customers.

• While the ability to customize is great, it is a little lacking in the visual GUI department. But thats more of a personal preference than anything else.
• When choosing dates and times for tasks and projects I think the input method could be a little less clunky.

Incentivized

• Tax calculation per state tax rules. Tenrox's current capabilities relative to tax codes is extremely limited and we have to do several time-consuming work-arounds in order to apply the tax as needed for our business. What is particularly frustrating about this aspect is that our need is based on tax laws and codes set by states and I feel a financial system should be able to sufficiently structure for legally-defined tax codes.
• Tenrox Project Planning add-on module. This portion of the system has never worked as seamlessly as you would assume given they were designed to work together. We've run in to many bugs and just oddities over the years. It's very finicky in my experience. We only use TPP for a small portion of our projects - those being our smaller or need to have huge task lists per client naming requirements.
• (The bad that became the good!) In the past, we have had significant customer-service challenges with Tenrox and then Upland, however over the past several months we have noticed a marked change in this. If we had not previously experienced issues with the customer service, I would not have any issue with the level of service that we are currently receiving. Given the history, I am cautiously optimistic that our current level of customer service will continue. I think our service concerns finally reached the 'right' people and I am reasonably confident the positive changes are here to stay!

Incentivized

I have found Flowlu while searching [for] a collaborative tool for a friend's non-profit organization. As I read the description and made a trial test, I fell in love with the tool. So we are definitely going to renew. Not only because the delivered solutions are great but also because Flowlu's roadmap seems very [promising].

I am not in charge of renewing the Tenrox contract. However, if it was up to me, I would renew in a heartbeat. Tenrox is an asset to our organization and it keeps us focused. I am not aware of other products similar to Tenrox that provide the depth that they do.

They have a great onboarding checklist and if you follow it you will be able to use the software. That is easy to use in my book. Flowlu has also the ability to turn on and off apps that you use or not which makes it tailored to the business needs.

Plutio puts work into real contribution, allowing me to connect with the team with white-label collaboration. It is an all-in-one platform for me to manage all tasks effectively. Consistently, it positively impacts work and overall growth by adding encouragement. It's worth using this tool to keep track of the task and overall development, so sharing positive reviews might be helpful to others.

I feel like if the user interface could combine time and expense for users to be entered on one screen rather than two completely separate locations it would greatly improve usability. If the expense entry process could be improved completely, it would greatly improve the usability as well. Everything else within Tenrox, makes everything very user friendly.

Incentivized

Great Support normally they respond in a few hours, which is very good, the knowledge base is good and the facebook groups are also very responsive. We are finding many videos online which are explaining Flowlu more and more daily.

Incentivized

I have only needed to reach out for support once and got a quick response. There was an issue with the Mac app, but I knew it was in beta. Leo, the owner, was quick to reply thanking me for letting him know about the issue, that the Mac app is still in beta, and that I can use the web version in the meantime until the bug was fixed.

Incentivized

The support team is always very helpful and strives to ensure they have met your needs and corrected your issues in a timely manner. If they need more information or cannot recreate the issue themselves, then they will follow-up to gather the necessary data themselves. They are constantly striving to meet the needs of all users and understand so many different industries and types of environments out there, it is very impressive.

Incentivized

The main thing with implementation is to make sure you have taken full advantage of the "sandbox testing" site that Tenrox provides to you during development. Try out every scenario you can think of, have other people enter information if needed, so that you can make sure you have not missed any big items. If you have the opportunity, roll out implementation to small groups of users. Depending on how your company is set up, I would choose groups that are not all in the same department so that you can address questions across all areas before adding in more users in the next wave of implementation.

Incentivized

Flowlu is easier to use and has more features, with more coming. ClickUp feels like it's more 'open' for any type of business with a lot of customization, whereas Flowlu feels like it was created for niches like my own, yet it can easily and quickly be customized for any type of business

I have tried Suite Dash, Agiled, FlowLu throughout the process of finding a tool that fits our business the best. Plutio was the easiest to deploy and use by far. The other systems had more features and capability but was pretty difficult to learn how to use and set up. We were up and running with Plutio in a matter of hours with a business process, rather than a spreadsheet and an independent proposal and invoicing process.

Incentivized

The Tenrox software looks and feels older and is not as user friendly! Harvest, for example, is an upgraded version that is easier to track and compile. This is what I'm comparing it to and it's not even close! We only selected Tenrox because it was cheaper and we had a connection in the company with someone at Tenrox to use that platform. We are currently looking for a change.

Incentivized

• Time invested in learning the app was huge, there's no go-to resource center and currently their knowledge is scattered (YouTube videos, Knowledge Base, API docs etc)
• We are able to cancel subscriptions of some of the other CRM and project management apps as the needs are covered by Flowlu
• There's a significant productivity boost after learning the app but this is not quite measurable just yet

• We landed some contracts on platforms like Upwork, due to the professional image we portray with Plutio
• Excellent ROI, we save lots of time with this tool
• Very reasonable pricing for what you get (ROI)
• More organized in our daily business

Incentivized

• Tracking, tracking, tracking. It keeps the data we need and gives us the ability to look at it in countless different ways with just a few clicks, which is a big time saver. Without Tenrox, we would definitely have to increase our headcount in order to accomplish billing and payroll.
• We recently were able to automate a huge portion of business that was still (yes, still in 2014!) being managed out of an Excel spreadsheet. We experienced a great deal of resistance to the change with our own employees, however now that we have it going we have cleaned up our invoicing and impressed the highest-financial officer for two consecutive months - our first/only two months billing directly from Tenrox for that group.
• A newer development for our team - Some client managers in the other divisions our company have begun to look at what we are able to do with Tenrox and our other primary system and get some of their work moved over to our group. This is great and is giving us new opportunities - we will likely need to increase the headcount of our admin. team, but for a good reason (too much work coming our way!).

Incentivized