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Karbon

Score9.4 out of 10

21 Reviews and Ratings

What is Karbon?

Karbon is presented as a collaborative practice management solution for accounting firms. It includes communication and workflow tools to streamline practice operations, with task automation for common processes, and scheduling data collection. Its features encompass:

  • Client Management - tracking the relationship with all the firm's customers.
  • Knowledge Centralization - A single source of truth for job tracking.
  • Business Analytics - Insights to guide firm decisioning.
  • Workflow Automation - To eliminate low-value, time-consuming tasks.
  • Project Management - For team goal alignment.
  • Team Collaboration - Providing one place for task collaboration.
  • Email Management - Email is embedded into workflows to avoid siloing of information.
  • Document Management - Files can be organized, shared, and saved directly from Karbon.
  • Calendar integration - Connects to Google or Outlook calendars to support planning.
  • Client Portal - To engage clients while securely sharing sensitive information and correspondences.

Categories & Use Cases

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Who Buys & Uses Karbon

Karbon Reviews

What users are saying about Karbon.
View all Karbon reviews

Pros

  • Centralized workflow and task management
  • Integrated email management for client communication
  • Efficient time tracking linked directly to work items

Cons

  • Limited and inconsistent AI capabilities
  • Cumbersome reporting with slow loading times and difficult data extraction
  • Steep learning curve for initial setup and ongoing process management

All in One Client & Task Management Tool

Incentivized
Carisa MullerView profile
Accounting Director in Finance and Accounting at Fusion Financial (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Karbon for our task and client management. We also use it as an all encompassing system so we do our time tracking, our invoicing, and our engagements in the system as well.

Pros

  • Assign Emails to a Client Profile to make correspondence available to whole team
  • Helps streamline all client communication, internal and external, into one place
  • Time tracking is easy to use and connects to work items - no more time unrelated to a client or work item

Cons

  • Engagements is very clunky - we want to use the full system as much as possible but they still have a ways to go with making this an easy to use process
  • AI - This was said to be released soon but as of right now there is minimal AI in the system and the AI that is there is not very helpful for daily use
  • There are just some features that exist in one spot but not another - same as other tools - but just waiting for some updates to make ease of use
  • Strong learning curve! The system is not intuitive, we are on our 3rd reset up of the tool now that we have a better knowledge on how it all works.
  • Support is slow to respond.

Return on Investment

  • Made Emails more connected to the Daily Work
  • Time tracking directly tied to clients and work has saved time in the tracking and billing
  • Made client renewals easier to track because all of the time and correspondence is kept on a client timeline
  • Improved the process of getting documentation from clients by using Karbon for Clients

Usability

Alternatives Considered

ClickUp, Trello, Asana and Harvest

Other Software Used

QuickBooks Online, Ramp, Anthropic Claude

The operational backbone of our bookkeeping business

Incentivized
Sarah SteinView profile
Head of Bookkeeping in Professional Services at Blackwood Bookkeeping Solutions Pty Ltd (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Karbon as our central workflow management system for our bookkeeping team. It manages our recurring client work (bookkeeping, payroll, end of month) and other items such as human resources, leadership and sales items. The main problem it solves is visibility and consistency. As a remote team, we need everyone to know what needs to be done, who is responsible, when things are due, and where work items are up to in the process. We use standard workflow templates and checklists to make our processes repeating and scalable. We try to use as much of the workflow features as possible including automations, client tasks, approvals, embedded emails, and embedded signatures. Wherever we need to go outside of Karbon (ie. online documents or templates stored elsewhere), they're included in the Karbon workflow. From a resource perspective, it gives visibility of the scope of work assigned to different team members. It is also very useful for when team members are on leave and work items can easily and efficiently be reallocated to other team members. From a management perspective, Karbon gives us a clear view of work in progress, upcoming deadlines, overdue tasks and bottlenecks. We consider it the operational backbone of how we deliver bookkeeping services consistently across our client basek.

Pros

  • Resource management: Ability to view workloads of team members and reallocate easily in the event a team member is on leave.
  • Workflow management: Repeating workflows allows consistency of work and visibility of where work is up to.
  • Communication: As a remote team, communication is vital. We use tagging and assigning to ensure relevant team members are across the information they need to be. The client portal is handy for keeping sensitive information off email.

Cons

  • Time integration with XPM: We use fixed fee billing through Ignition, with invoices flowing through to XPM where we manage WIP against time. At the moment, time recorded in Karbon needs to be manually entered into XPM. A direct integration that automatically pushes Karbon time into XPM would remove this duplication and improve accuracy. Alternatively, if Karbon could pull the relevant Ignition billing information through in a way that supported WIP management, that could remove the need to maintain time separately in XPM.
  • Intelligence and reporting: I find the Intelligence area quite clunky for the management reporting we need. It can be slow to load, includes former team members who are difficult to exclude, and it is not easy to quickly produce a clean report with the key information required to manage the business.
  • I would like simpler, faster reporting around measures such as team productivity, revenue compared to payroll costs, utilisation and other operational performance metrics. Ideally, these reports would be included in the current subscription model, easy to filter and export for use for management decisions. The current experience has not provided enough value for us, and as a result I cancelled the Intelligence section of our subscription this year.
  • Bulk workflow updates: Making changes across a large number of recurring client workflows can be time consuming because many updates need to be made individually. While Karbon allows bulk updates using standard work templates, applying these can overwrite or remove client specific customisation, so it is not always practical for established workflows. It would be useful to be able to add a new task section to existing recurring workflows in bulk, while leaving all existing client specific tasks, settings and customisations intact. This would make it easier to roll out process improvements across the client base without having to manually update every workflow.

Return on Investment

  • Capacity planning: Karbon has improved our ability to see team capacity and make better resourcing decisions. We can identify when someone is overloaded, when another team member has capacity, and reallocate work before deadlines become a problem. This has helped us manage a remote team more proactively and reduced the reliance on individual team members telling us when they are too busy.
  • Workflow management: Karbon has created much greater consistency and visibility across our client work. Standardised recurring workflows, clear responsibilities, due dates and automations mean we can see where work is up to and reduce the risk of tasks and deadlines being missed. It also makes it easier to onboard new team members, hand work between team members, and scale the client base without relying on individual knowledge or memory.

Usability

Other Software Used

Xero, Ignition

Much More Than A Powerful Practice Management Tool

Incentivized
Michael EckView profile
Accountant in Finance and Accounting at CRC CPAs (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Karbon as a practice management tool for our local CPA firm. The product allows our team members to easily collaborate with each other, manage their emails in a single place and associate with work items. The product also allows members to create and manage work, time & budgets. Management uses the product to manage engagements, billing and efficiencies in real time.

Pros

  • Email management
  • Client billing
  • Time management
  • Work time and revenue budgets

Cons

  • Management reporting is limited unless additional subscription
  • Client tasks are difficult for some clients to navigate

Return on Investment

  • Overall time savings of 25%
  • Overall workflow visibility for team members and managers increased by 50%
  • The ability to catch out of scope time and scope increase has reduced overall free work to 10% or less
  • Upfront costs is quite high
  • Learning curve for new users is about 3 to 6 months to feel confident

Usability

Other Software Used

Progress ShareFile, Double, Intuit Lacerte, GoTo Connect, QuickBooks Online

Great for Productivity and Transparency

Incentivized
Nishit ChaudharyView profile
External Auditor in Finance and Accounting at RSD Audit (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Karbon for our timesheets, keep a checklist of tasks in our audit process, keep track of budget on clients.
Also as a work tracker using the my week function.

Karbon is also integrated with our outlook and automatically copies the emails to relevant clients which is massively helpful for everyone to be involved without CCing.

Pros

  • Timesheets - automatically prompts what you worked on
  • Tracking budgets and remaining budgets
  • Work Prioritisation using due dates
  • Tracking Tasks

Cons

  • My week can have less clutter
  • Communication with the client if used for client documents
  • Timesheets coding - should remember what code was used previously for a task

Return on Investment

  • Helps save time
  • Transparent budget tracking has helped improve budgets
  • Timer is massively helpful for more accurate timesheets

Usability

Other Software Used

Xero, MYOB, CaseWare, PDFgear

Love Karbon

Incentivized
Kristie LoweView profile
CPA in Finance and Accounting at Dennis & Blish CPA Inc (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My firm uses Karbon daily for project management and client communications. Karbon is extremely comprehensive and is consistently updating and improving the platform. They seriously consider feedback and we often find that our suggestions are implemented according to our needs and wishes for the platform. We love it and highly recommend it to other firms.

Pros

  • Project Management
  • Document storage & sharing
  • Client Communication
  • Flexible reports with customization
  • Time tracking

Cons

  • I would love to see them bring back the 'recently visited' in the sidebar
  • Customizable color scheme would be nice
  • I would love to see as 'suggested time entries' any client I have clicked on during that day

Return on Investment

  • I think Karbon has increased my personal efficiency
  • I know our firm as a whole feels the increased efficiency on a team level
  • Being able to see everyone's worklist is very helpful in assigning work
  • Capacity planning is a very useful tool when used

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Wolters Kluwer CCH ProSystem fx

Other Software Used

QuickBooks Online, Quickbooks Workforce, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

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