FunctionFox provides TimeFox which is a timesheet and project management solution for small creative companies. The vendor says TimeFox is currently used by over 100,000 creative professionals in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
$5
per user
Microsoft Excel
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application available as part of Microsoft 365 (Office 365), or standalone, in cloud-based and on-premise editions.
$6.99
per month
Pricing
FunctionFox
Microsoft Excel
Editions & Modules
FunctionFox Classic
$5
per user
FunctionFox Premier
$10
per user
FunctionFox In-House
$20
per user
Excel with Microsoft 365
$6.99
per month
Excel for 1 PC or Mac
$139.99
perpetual license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FunctionFox
Microsoft Excel
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
No hidden fees. All customer support, and regular upgrades are included free of charge.
If you are trying to track time across teams or functions, that is really what FunctionFox is designed for. I think this would work better for individual, smaller teams with similar tasks and activities, instead of for larger companies with more complex organizational operations. If you are just getting started with time tracking, this could be a good place to start.
I don't really know another program as powerful as Excel. I've used Google Doc programs but do not feel they come close. So far, anytime I've needed a table of some sort for data, whether it's budget oriented or information off a survey, the best system has been Excel. We do web audits on occasion and we create an Excel worksheet featuring every URL of the pages we're auditing, notes, data about the content, information about files attached to the page and other information to help us determine what pages need updating, deleting or otherwise. We also use Excel primarily to export our Google Analytics to in order for us to create reports for clients that need to see specific information about their traffic.
With only a couple clicks I can still easily pull reports by employee on a weekly basis which provide the information I need to run payroll.
I pull reports by client each month for our monthly client billings, which we have broken down by project so I can easily see how our time was spent on their account.
We set a budget for the approved number of hours we can apply to any one project for the month, and the system provides the project manager with a warning as the limit comes near. That function has been fantastic!
FunctionFox's Help Desk personnel are wonderful, providing an exceptionally personalized experience. They take their time, and will even schedule a call to go into greater depth, such as an entire account review just to ensure you're able to use all the product features to your company's best advantage. Our entire team jumped on a half hour call a couple months ago, and she answered ALL of our questions, including providing us with info on some features we hadn't realized even existed.
It is very good at embedded formulas and tying cells to one another
It allows me to compare deals terms on a side-by-side basis and talk my clients through it easily.
It is very helpful as well in terms of allowing me to filter/sort results in many different ways depending on what specific information I am most interested in prioritizing.
The function of the site is not as user-friendly as others, it's sometimes hard to find certain projects and organize data in order to track effectively. I would often need to download/export reports.
Sometimes a project would accidentally be created twice and hours billed to two separate projects for the same thing. Which made tracking and billing increasingly difficult.
Little to no organization of projects for billing and finance purposes, which makes it hard when we conduct billing as there is not a clear way to know if a project is complete, ongoing, rejected etc.
Excel offers collaboration features that allow multiple users to work on the same spreadsheet, but managing changes made by different users can be challenging. Excel could improve its features by offering more granular control, better tracking of changes, and more robust conflict resolution tools.
Itcan be a barrier to productivity when importing and exporting data from other applications or file formats. To improve its features, it should offer better support for standard file formats and more robust error handling and reporting tools.
Excel can be challenging for finance students and working professionals, but it can be improved by offering more robust tutorials, better documentation, and more user communities and support forums.
All of my employees are used to it and introducing a new software to them requires them to get trained again increasing the costs. TimeFox is an easy to use and understand software. Another advantage of TimeFox is that is an online software and I can access it whenever I want to.
Excel remains the industry standard for spreadsheets and has maintained simple and straight-forward formula writing methods. Although there is a learning curve to do more complex calculations, there are countless help sites and videos on the Internet for almost any need.
It's a good tool for tracking hours and overall budget. It does not give you insight into why there are those hours, or what part of the project has over burned. The tool is also tough to export reports and find the correct information throughout. Not only this, but I also have a hard time changing project details - there's no real easy way to and there's a larger room for error
I'm giving it a 7 because it is my go to. But the fact other prefer Google Sheets when working with a team does get irritating. I've used the online version of Microsoft Excel that other teams can get into and it still seems behind Google Sheets. It's a little clanky and slow? If that's even a term.
I haven't used FunctionFox for a lot of support requests. On the times that i've been having issues I've had the issue resolved within a day, most questions I have had i've been able to source answers online or from a colleague. From what I have experienced the support team seems great.
Unsure on implementation of FunctionFox - was before my time at the company. Everyone at the company had a good understanding of the product and how to use it by the time I joined. My understanding is we implemented ourselves with a few training sessions for the creative team and adding hours as well as training for the account team to add projects
When we were looking for software we tested several, and FunctionFox was hands down the best value. While there are other options, and each company is different, nothing could come close to filling our needs the way FunctionFox has. The money we spend has been returned several times over.
Out of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, IBM SPSS, and Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel is by far the most common tool used for anything data-related across organizations. Accordingly, our organization has also implemented Microsoft Excel as a first-step tool. We recently adopted Microsoft Power BI (the free version), and use it occasionally (mostly for creating dashboards), but it is less commonly understood by stakeholders across our organization and by our clients. Accordingly, Microsoft Excel is more user-friendly and because of its popularity, we can easily look up how to do things in the program online. Google Sheets is a comparable alternative to Microsoft Excel, but because it's cloud-based and we have sensitive data that needs to be protected, we chose against using this software. Finally, a few users (including myself) have access to and utilize IBM's SPSS. For my role, it's a helpful tool to do more rigorous analyses. However, because of its cost and limited functionality as a simple spreadsheet, we only use it for more complex analyses.
Each user can use it to whatever level of expertise they have. It remains the same so users can contribute to another's work regardless of whether they have more or less expertise
FunctionFox pays for itself just about every month in terms of how much more I am able to bill than before I started using the software, and how much less time I need to spend on non-billable admin tasks. I used to create invoices based mostly on what sounded fair, rather than on accurate time & cost records. I'm sure my clients loved it, but it wasn't healthy for my business. Now I base invoices on actual time and expense records, and end up with more money in my pocket.
It's not tangible, but FunctionFox has improved my ability to communicate with clients, and with freelance partners when I'm involved in a collaborative project. I can anticipate and discuss potential budget or delivery deadline overruns before they occur. The goodwill this builds has had a tremendously positive impact on client and partnership relations.
I fell into freelancing without a lot of experience running a business. FunctionFox has been a great teacher, helping me think through many issues that I wouldn't have even recognized as important. It is simple to use, with a UI that is neither intimidating nor overwhelming, and it has been super flexible in terms of molding it to suit the way I work.
