Apricot - Great but can be Greater
Updated May 11, 2021
Apricot - Great but can be Greater
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Apricot by Social Solutions
We currently use Apricot for our grant management system. It is only being utilized by one department within our organization. This allows us to have a paperless grant process and it is portable.
- The system is fairly simple.
- The tech support does a great job. They usually have a 24 hour response and are very accurate and easy to work with.
- It does a good job with security for how grant applicants view information and what information is available to our reviewers.
- The one thing that I could like to see is in the drop down user badge for administrator use. We provide both applicants and volunteer access. They all appear in one list and there is not a way to have them organized. I would like to be able to have these organized so I don't have to scroll through all of the users to find the one that I am looking for.
- The form linking feature is difficult to use. When the system updates it seems that another portion isn't working correctly.
- It would also be helpful to only be able to pull out certain information out of the reports instead of it pulling all of the data that has been entered.
- At the time we purchased Apricot it was better than the last software we used
This software makes it easy to pull data from reports and export them into Excel. It doesn't have the ability to pull a range of data you have to manually pull it out. It is also lacking in the easy to pull impact data from our grants.
We are using this system as a grant intake application system.
Prior to using Apricot we used the CTK software. I like it much better overall. We selected Apricot as CTK was not being used any longer and we needed to upgrade to the Apricot software. I have not used any other software by Social Solutions in order to compare the differences in the products.
Community Engagement
Our grant recipients are asked to complete a report, we pull information from reports. However the reporting section of Apricot does not allow the ability to select a range of data and pulls all of the data on the form and the user has to filter it out.
The past year and a half our grant process has been virtual. Our business is not a direct service provider.
We have pulled date from Apricot to include in applying for grants.
We do not provide case management.
Using Apricot by Social Solutions
3 - The department that I work in provide grants to other nonprofits. We use apricot as our application and review platform. Each year we open up the grant process and allow organizations to apply for grants, these grants are then reviewed by staff and volunteers. If a organization receives a grant the agency submits a biannual report on the Apricot platform as well, which is also reviewed by staff and volunteers. This way we can use it to capture measurements and results.
2 - The two of us do not have a IT background and have been able to make changes and build what we needed in the program. There are prebuilt templates that can be used or you can build your own. The forms use drag and drop to insert fields and is easy to use. Apricot also provides support through email and offers a chat feature. They are quick to respond and very helpful.
- Grant Application Submission
- Biannual Report Submission
- Tracking of indicators/program measurements
- Quickly run or create reports to gather needed data
- It is cloud based software that can be accessed anywhere
- Build different grant applications into it
- Track volunteer information
Evaluating Apricot by Social Solutions and Competitors
Yes - It replaced CTK.
This was the new product of CTK and it was no longer going to be supportive.
We would take a better look at needs and functionality.
Apricot by Social Solutions Implementation
- integration of data
Apricot by Social Solutions Training
- Online training
I am glad there is a online library to use for this software.
Configuring Apricot by Social Solutions
No - there is no facility to customize the interface
No - the product does not support adding custom code
Apricot by Social Solutions Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | Need to explain problems multiple times |
More often than not their customer service team provides excellent support.
Using Apricot by Social Solutions
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Consistent | Do not like to use Unnecessarily complex Not well integrated Cumbersome |
- form builder is easy to use
- linking documents
- building processes
Apricot by Social Solutions Reliability
Integrating Apricot by Social Solutions
- File import/export
We have not used any