BigTime

Avantages

Overall, we have been very happy with BigTime and its use in support of our field consultants. Our production implementation went smoothly and their staff provided helpful training and support to assist us with our launch. In addition, we have been very pleased with the configurability of the platform - just about every time we wanted to do something a certain way, for example how we wanted to display the form for our field's timesheet data entry, there was a way to configure the system to our liking.

Also, we have been very impressed with the speed of the system and the design of the user interface. It's very responsive, easy to use, and everything is laid out intuitively. Also, the Reporting module is very comprehensive and it provides a way to pull data just about any which way one could want. BigTime has also been responsive and helpful in helping to support us when certain custom reports were required and we needed some guidance.

Special thanks to both CSRs for their support with our implementation.

Inconvénients

We have no outstanding support tickets currently and we have only seen a few small glitches but once we bring them to the vendors attention there is usually a way to correct it or some type of acceptable workaround. As far as suggested areas we think they can improve upon, one would be having the ability to set up to send specific invoices to multiple customer contacts on the To: line. Another area for improvement is sometimes the bill rate isn’t pulled into the invoicing module consistently so we have to re-enter all the rates in that particular project code.

As far as platform enhancements to make BigTime even better, we have suggested the ability to enhance the Allocations module so a manager can forecast a resource across multiple projects within the same or multiple accounts from the same screen/grid. Today this must be done via clicking into each project in the Project List section which is time consuming and a little clunky. This would be huge for us since we have a number of consultants who work on multiple projects across a given week/month/etc. Another enhancement would be to provide easy-to-pull reports that show a consultants profitability (revenue generated minus cost) across a given date range. This is not currently doable with the platform, but all the data is there since the system maintains both bill rate and cost-level information. We are hoping these items make their way onto the product roadmap here in the relative near future.

Avantages

The ability to communicate in detail with QBD and QBO. FYI to all who job cost... You CANNOT job cost in QBO. It is not a limitation of BigTime, it is a limitation of QBO. Which is what i mean by my partial experience answer above... (allow more text there).. if onboarding is completed with a premeeting checklist about the firms existing workflow and time management and by someone intimately familiar with the industry that is using BigTime the cons below could be addressed upfront. The team at BigTime were difficult to get a hold of but once they were aware they worked like crazy to get us setup and working in the time frame we had. We moved our QBO file back to QBD (we had to do the testing on our own because the team at BT didn't know why job costing wasn't working in QBO) Once we moved back to QBD the job costing, invoicing, payroll work like a charm inside QBD. Hands down, it is the best integration with QBD of any practice management software out there... We had 2 people who spent 8 months testing many software solutions... most were lacking at least 1 "critical" requirement... Big Time was not. As we become aware and work through things like "terminology" we are becoming more and more confident in the workflow and keeping track of what is due when and who has what and what state the work is in. This is key as we go into tax season but also something we cannot live without on a day to day basis as 95% of our work is recurring on various time schedules. Thank yo

Inconvénients

The wide range of terminology used in the software is confusing and causes errors to be made during implementation. Examples: Start Date and End Date... without these terms being defined you would think that start date is the day the work should begin and that End Date is the DUE DATE. Not so within Big Time. For recurring tasks, Start Date means Due Date in Big Time language. Another example: Completed vs Archived. Completed in most software solutions means that the job is finished or done; and archived means done and sent to storage with no recurrence nor future work is expected. In Big Time the term Archive means Completed or Finished or Done and removes the task from the workflow list and generates the next task in the reccurence. In BigTime the term Completed means something different... still unsure what it means because even when you update a task/project status to "completed" the task remains on the workflow list.

Avantages

BigTime allows users from a variety of backgrounds to connect to the software from various platforms (desktop, laptop, smart phone) to track time per project, to track expenses on a daily basis with electronic submission of receipts, to run reports on time spent, to connect with external accounting software seamlessly.

Inconvénients

the software has some limits on "naming" items that do not always correspond directly to our external software and do not fit within our company culture. (For example: In BigTime, billable means charged to the project, may invoiced or may not invoice. In our company culture, billable means an invoice will be sent for payment to the client.

Avantages

Straight forward navigation on all tabs makes all operations easy. I like that all of the administrator functions are kept fairly simple; there are a lot of great ways to customize almost everything, without being overwhelming to learn. Most customizations are nice since you really only need to set them up once, then make small tweaks until everything is just right. The software will be very easy to train new employees to use. I love that it links to Quickbooks; I have so much less leg work than my previous software when it comes to data entry. So far a fairly smooth transition from the previous software.

Inconvénients

While there are a lot of ways to customize the appearance of pages for employees, the invoices are still fairly restrictive. I find it odd that I can't change little things like: justifications (Overall message stuck in the center of the page and I can't indent it lower), and the job name is right justified and continues long names to the next line mid word sometimes; the color or boldness of each text line (ex. I would like the job name bold or larger font and some lines to be in color). I know these changes can be made as a word doc, but then it won't change my template in Big Time.. Second, creating a report to my liking has been very challenging. I need a monthly report for each project manager with an individual detailed overview of each project every month. However, when I have tried to tailor existing reports or make my own I always get an error that my report can't be created. Third, our billing cycle falls mid month and it would be preferable if timesheets and billing could be broken up by custom billing cycle rather than monthly. It's hard to track the cycle with just a weekly timesheet view. It's a change we can work with, but it requires a lot of extra work for the admin to constantly filter in invoicing. Lastly, the character limit on job titles is painfully small. We have a hard time getting all crucial information to fit. It would help dramatically if the job info screen had a place to record the address of the job.

Avantages

We support many different kinds of projects and contracts. We have T&M, Fixed Fee, Recurring and some Fixed Fee with a T&M Element. We like BigTime because it is easy to set up a project with tasks (line items) that match our contracting terms. Also, it is possible to set Cost and Bill rates at the Company, Project or even Task Level. This kind of flexibility makes it easy for us to produce invoices that match our contract setup. We also needed something with fairly tight QuickBooks Online integration. BigTime deliveres here also. Lastly, the reporting facility in BigTime is very usuable.

Inconvénients

There is not really anything that I find I don't like. From time to time, I have a feature request for the BigTime team. They communicate very well regarding their roadmap.