LASSO's Crew Management delivers a platform used to schedule, communicate, onboard, time track, travel, payroll, and book labor.
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QuickBooks Online
Score 8.1 out of 10
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QuickBooks Online is a SaaS version of the QuickBooks product. It contains all of the features found in the local version. Higher-priced plans include greater automation, payment management, inventory and time tracking, and analytics features.
Transition to LASSO Crew was a real bear, but once we had all the pieces and parts in place and staff new how to use it, it solved the majority of our staffing headaches. We work on events across NYC and often have several events going on at the same time. Prior to LASSO Crew it was not uncommon for a supervisor to show up to a call with only a limited understanding of who was booked on the job, or for an employee to not be sure who or where they needed to report to that day. LASSO Crew-facing app and supervisor-facing website have entirely eliminated these headaches. Our staffing process is more streamlined than before, our rates and scheduling more transparent. Once you get past the initial hurdles of crew/team buy-in and implementation, the upsides are enormous.
I appreciate the ability to auto-generate invoices for recurring transactions, which saves time, as well as the option to set up auto-generated transactions. The report option is super helpful when reviewing information, as you can click to view the details in the report without having to go back and forth.
Workflows for accounts payable invoice review are terrific.
Bill payment allows you to pay vendors online via ACH or check without having to write a physical check, which reduces admin time.
The cloud based login lends well to a remote or hybrid work environment for staff.
QuickBooks Online allows you to pre-configure vendors' general ledger expense accounts. This helps with general ledger coding accuracy and consistency.
QuickBooks Online integrates with Rippling HRIS, Coast, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, etc., which lends well to an efficient month-end closing and reduced administrative time.
Some of the page layouts are clunky, especially the crew list page
LASSO Crew has a calendar feed that can link to gcal, iCal, etc but it’s very limited and doesn’t reliably update the calendar when the schedule changes.
I would like it to push automated clock-in/clock out alerts to my team. I can set these up manually by scheduling messages but it is a very cumbersome process.
The upsells have gotten worse over time and are on every screen in the most awkward positions. I don't need a constant reminder to upgrade, especially on a very old account that's paid thousands over the years.
The interface has never been especially intuitive, but I was an old Quicken user and it was somewhat familiar. Over time, it's gotten worse, and in the last 2 years, the program seems to move things more often than I would expect.
The software constantly adds features that I don't want and want to turn off, but the interface is so difficult to use that I find myself skipping it. Imagine seeing a message that the system recognized invoices that hadn't been paid so it prepared reminder notices for you that can be sent at the click of a button. Who thinks using canned reminders that you've never seen is a good thing?
A lot of functionality seems to derive from connecting your bank accounts to QBO. I don't want Intuit to have an always-on connection to any bank accounts, even checking.
It like the product 'right out of the box' and I trust Intuit will continually improve it over the years based on my experience with their desktop products. The large providers of Apps makes customizing the entire package relatively easy and seamless for a wide variety of business types.
The app is perfectly useable, if a bit limited in its functionality. The website, which functions as the "back end" of the app, takes awhile to learn. I carve out at least an hour of training on it for every new supervisor and fully expect to spend the first several weeks they use it to send them little reminders about how and when to do things. I have a few (older) supervisors who just out-and-out refuse to engage with LASSO Crew, but I think that has more to do with their aversion to change than it does the overall usability of the website.
I had very little trouble setting up the program and migrating from our old accounting system. The daily usage is also very intuitive and easy. Anytime we run into minor trouble with the program, there are always tons of help available on YouTube, so we don't even look up the online manual anymore.
LASSO Crew takes customer support very seriously. My dedicated account rep responds to any issues directly, usually within one business day. When a crew member has an in-app problem they can't resolve the technical support team responds very quickly to any issue, usually with clear instructions about how to resolve the issue.
In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.
The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations
We explored using IntelliEvent for crew management but their platform just wasn't as robust and they didn't seem to have timekeeping and payroll partners in place to support the back end. Other than that, I haven't found another platform or software that does what LASSO Crew does, it was built for the event industry, by the event industry, and that focus on audience really shows through.
As a freelance bookkeeper, the Desktop version of QuickBooks Online doesn't allow for ease of access from any device. Having to be on a computer with the software downloaded creates additional work to gain access to all required filings etc. Also, I personally find the linking functionality on the Online version to be much more streamlined and user friendly.
As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere
We've had some complaints from crew members that the communications they receive through the LASSO Crew system feel less personal than when we used to handle everything through direct emails and text messages.
LASSO Crew branding is super prominent on every communication we send from the platform, I wish they would center the client/employer a bit more and not make the LASSO Crew logo and color scheme the most identifiable thing on the page/email/message.
QuickBooks has given us a useful portal by which to get an overview of our financials.
QuickBooks has given us a relatively easy way to send out invoices quickly and efficiently.
Due to the customization limitations on QuickBooks, we've had to get creative in third-party implementations to better represent our brand and to track financials.
