1. Home
  2. Professional Services Automation Software
  3. Certinia PS Cloud Reviews
  4. User Review of Certinia PS Cloud
FinancialForce PSA - Is it right for you?
Updated October 30, 2014

FinancialForce PSA - Is it right for you?

Luke Fitzwater | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Summer '13 SP1

Modules Used

  • PS Enterprise

Overall Satisfaction

  • The biggest strength of FinancialForce PSA is that it's built upon the force.com platform, which means it is very easily customizable to our business needs.
  • Projects are easily created, as well as milestones and assignments.
  • "Actuals" (dollars and hours) are calculated automatically, and are easily reported on.
  • Resources are easily managed by using the Resource Planner
  • FinancialForce PSA support is outstanding!
  • Scheduling can be tricky. Assigning a resource to the Project is easy, but when viewing the Resource Planner, the resource shows as being scheduled from the Start to End of the Project. If a resource is working on many projects, then the resource planner becomes convoluted.
  • Our Project Managers (PMs) use MS Project to maintain the Project Timelines. There is an import tool w/in PSA, but it is not a two-way feed. PSA only imports the project plan from MS Project. It does not update the Project Plan in MS Project, nor is the Project Plan exportable in PSA, once it has been imported. This causes our PMs to update the Project details and timeline in two systems.
  • The Project Planner tool only shows Project Tasks, it does not show Milestones (which are what we use to track project completeness). We do not use Project Tasks because you cannot assign resources to the Tasks.
  • There are some limitations to Reporting from FinancialForce PSA
  • "Out of the box", FinancialForce PSA was an improvement over our previous project management system (Projector) due to it being cloud based. Our users could access it from anywhere with an internet connection. Our previous software required a LAN or a VPN connection to access.
  • With much customization, system improvements, and training, we have seen a steady increase in user adoption and efficiency
  • FinancialForce PSA is no long just a day to day system. It is now being included in our Strategic Planning
There is another PSA software program that we have been looking into (DreamFactory) that could potentially replace FinancialForce PSA in our organization. Like FinancialForce PSA, it is cloud based on the force.com platform. Licensing is slightly less than FinancialForce PSA, and the Resource Management tool is far superior to FinancialForce PSA. With that said, our renewal falls in Q4 2014 and I don't foresee us implementing a new system this fiscal year.
It would seem to be well suited for an organization that has standard products/customer requirements. Our organization, however, creates customized solutions for our clients, which can be difficult to track using FinancialForce PSA. We have had to perform many customizations to FinancialForce PSA in order to be able to capture the correct data and report on that data.

Product Usage

220 - All of the employees in our organization use FinancialForce PSA. Usage ranges from basic Time & Expense Entry, to Resource Management, Project Management, and Project Accounting. We have multiple employees in each of these functions, with the majority of our employees only using the basic time and expense entry functionality.
3 - At a minimum, you should have someone on your staff who has Salesforce.com experience. Salesforce.com experience is a necessity for navigating around FinancialForce PSA successfully. Being knowledgeable of the force.com platform will give your admin a huge head start over other IT application support people. Application support experience and limited database experience are also good skills to have to support FinancialForce PSA.
  • After an Opportunity is Closed-Won, we create a new FinancialForce PSA Project.
  • The Resource Manager will staff the Project with resources, initially, as well as add resources as needed after the Project is established.
  • Our Project Accountants will generate billing events based on Milestone completion, which will create invoices to be sent to the Client.
  • Using FinancialForce PSA, many customizations within FinancialForce PSA, and a third party reporting tool, we have created a Project Health Report which captures our top-10 key Project Metrics, and displays them graphically.
  • We're currently working on new (customized) functionality to help us with capacity planning.
  • We are constantly looking at new ways to help us better manage our resources.

Support

Every time I submit a new help request, whether it's an actual help request or just a question about FinancialForce PSA, I always feel that I'm receiving world class support. The support we receive from FinancialForce PSA is always very detailed and professional. There are some requests that take longer than other for the initial response, which is why I did not give a full 10.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Difficult to get immediate help
Yes - We have reported a couple bugs in the past year. Luckily for us, the bugs were set to be fixed with the next FinancialForce PSA release. In one situation, the time between reporting the bug to it actually being resolved was rather lengthy. We needed to create a work-around while the bug was being fixed.
We had a situation where we were trying to mass assign resources to a Project Milestone, but the Milestone selection wasn't showing on the Mass Assignment page. I contacted FinancialForce PSA support and their representative walked me through turning this feature on. Turning the functionality on took about 2 minutes and was exactly what we needed.

Usability

From my standpoint, FinancialForce PSA is relatively easy to use. As a System Administrator, I am able to maneuver around the software with ease. As a user of FinancialForce PSA, I am able to input my timecards and expense reports without any issues. I have received very positive and very negative feedback about using FinancialForce PSA, however, from users in other functional roles in my organization.
ProsCons
Like to use
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
None
  • Creating New Projects
  • Setting up Milestones on Projects
  • Expense Reporting
  • Time Reporting, especially if a resource is assigned to many projects or milestones on many projects.
  • Resource Management
  • Working with "managed" code or objects as an administrator can be difficult and frustrating, many times, leading to customizations.
Yes - FinancialForce PSA has two mobile apps. One for Time entry, and one for Expense Entry. I am not a fan of the Expense app because you cannot create expense reports using the app, but rather the expense report must already exist and you simply add expense lines to it. When you attach receipts via the mobile interface, they attach to each individual expense line instead of the Expense Report. The time entry app is functionally sound and works appropriately, with the exception of the situation where you have many similarly named assignments. It can be impossible to select the correct assignment from the list if you have many assignments with similar names because after so many characters, the results are truncated.