BigTime Erfahrungen

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

BigTime is the program we use for tracking time, managing expenses, and sending out invoices. Using QuickBooks as our primary accounting software has its advantages, and one of those is that BigTime can sync up with QuickBooks during the day to make sure that the two are always up to date.

Nachteile

The approval screen does not currently allow for invoices to be filtered by Team Lead, so all Team Leads have access to all invoices rather than just their own. It's not easy to modify your own report, therefore we typically have to contact support for assistance.

Vorteile

BigTime has all the features we need to track time and expenses and automate billing. Forecasting and utilization tools are also great features which allow us to better manage staffer availability so clients are covered and staffer's aren't over worked. Reporting and analytics are very good, though there are some reporting features that could be improved

Nachteile

There are some idiosyncrasies that can get tiresome; date ranges disappear constantly when drafting invoices; there are features that have an adverse effect on rate population if not used properly, some internal functions clash if entered (or not entered) in multiple places, online tutorials could be better, live chat can take a very long time - i have noticed that upgrading to Premier has helped - the wait is now no more than a few minutes.

Vorteile

BigTime has the potential to be very user friendly, however, there is a learning process. Not everything is the same. For example, when I run one budget report, submitted time is not included, while in another report it is.

Nachteile

The data does not always auto populate and the software should be able to generate numbers and percents on its own... I should not have to go in and manually input % complete, it should be done on it's on as the team moves forward within the project.

Vorteile

ease of use and integration with QBO, invoicing and WIP tracking, easy to train for staff input of TS

Nachteile

slow to add some features that would be helpful for payments. Adding feature to charge client service fees for ACH and credit card payments, allowing us to edit payment post if entered incorrect or if Client over pays to track credits.

Vorteile

The customization and the ability to track just about anything you want for project management, profitability and invoicing. And the integration with Quickbooks.

Nachteile

I wish more fields were customizable. The handful that they allow you to rename are great, but more would be better! I wish there was a 45 day training session to ask questions that arise after using for a bit.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud Express und monday.com

Warum BigTime gewählt wurde

Productive was very limited, and the budgeting side was terribly difficult to navigate especially with our high volume of monthly retainers

Zuvor genutzte Software

Productive

Gründe für den Wechsel zu BigTime

I was not part of the research that was done. I was given the final choice to test and work with the sale rep to ensure that it performed the way we needed it to. If I was not happy we would have gone back to the drawing board. But, I know one of our main objectives is to track project profitability and this is so far doing what we needed it to do.

Vorteile

Easy to use, easy to configure, brandable and great support

Nachteile

Wish the documentation for the custom invoices was stronger.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

SAP Concur

Gründe für den Wechsel zu BigTime

Better, faster, more affordable and easier to use and setup.

Vorteile

Prior to BigTime, my organization used a hodgepodge of systems to track time, track expenses, and invoice. Having all three of those in one spot has saved us 40+ man-hours a month. The customer service is also fantastic. Our implementation specialist, [SENSITIVE CONTENT ] is very easy to work with and really knows his stuff.

Nachteile

Coming from a mess of different tools and consolidating into one simple, easy to use tool, it is really hard for me to say what can be improved at this point.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

NetSuite

Gründe für den Wechsel zu BigTime

The cost was a large driving factor, but simplicity was really the reason.

Vorteile

Tracking time and being able to in real time look at where we stand on each project from a billing standpoint.

Nachteile

We are in the early implementation stages of BigTime, everything currently is an improvement over how we previously operated. No known "cons" at this time.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

monday.com und Monograph

Gründe für den Wechsel zu BigTime

QuickBooks Desktop Integration, cost, features, etc.

Vorteile

One of the things I liked most about BigTime was its comprehensive project management features. It offered a wide range of tools and functionalities that allowed me to effectively plan, track, and manage my projects. The ability to set up project timelines, allocate resources, track time and expenses, and generate detailed reports all in one platform was incredibly convenient and efficient. It helped streamline my project workflows and improve overall productivity.

Nachteile

While I found BigTime to be a powerful project management solution, one thing I liked least was the learning curve associated with its advanced features. Some of the more complex functionalities required a bit of time and effort to fully grasp and utilize effectively. Although the platform provided helpful documentation and support resources, I felt that a more intuitive and user-friendly interface could have made the initial learning process smoother.

Vorteile

Ease of timekeeping and expense module.

Nachteile

There are lots of different options to set things up and you need to fine tune what works best for your organization and the other softwares you implement into. Still fine tuning 2 years later to find the best ways to set up projects and tasks for quality reporting. Would like to see white labeling and SSO integrations in the future.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

The ease of use and setup, management and flawless connection to QuickBooks to post information and allow us to invoice clients, print and pay expense reports and collect project information in an easy to use project database. Time tracking is a breeze and built in reports allow us to view important information with a few clicks.

Nachteile

That the BigTime monitor is not a service but it requires an account to be always signed in in order to run. I hope it can be converted to a service that we don't have to worry about.

Vorteile

I like the intuitive interface that generally does not confuse me. I also like that if I have a specific question, I can typically get it answered quickly through the support team.

Nachteile

1. I would love to have access to timesheet and expense review through the app on my phone
2. I would love a more hands on 'onboarding' process where someone really walked through the interface with Quickbooks for us as business owners

Vorteile

BigTime allowed us to optimize how we track project dollars and hours. In the past we would manually enter the data multiple times to different forms and systems - it was always out of date static information. Now, we enter the data once and have real-time access to project costs and hours. The data flows to invoices, reimbursements, and reports.

Nachteile

Overall, the software is solid. There are a few navigation workflows that can be improved. BigTime is aware of some click stream patterns that result in getting too deep into a project where you need to click back out to the "home" screen to restart a navigation into a project. This happens more on the administration side - the time and expense entry process is simple.

Vorteile

Ability to easily add staff, create projects and budgets
Report generation and ability to export reports to excel for pivot table analysis
Fast online server responses

Nachteile

No ability to import project files from other applications, excel / MSProject
Limited number of levels for sub-tasks

Vorteile

Bigtime gives us the ability to manage our projects time and expenses more efficiently and work together cohesively as a team.

Nachteile

Although I love the ease of reporting, it is a little messy. Granted I have too many... but I would love to see them identified better somehow in the list. bullet points maybe?

Vorteile

ease of use, sync with Lacerte, cloud, layout and features

Nachteile

Implementation person assigned to us ([SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]) lacked good knowledge on the software and was vague and unclear on best practices of the software, did not have a full understanding of features, import capabilities, etc. We purchase the data import package and that process was bad, the numbers did not match ours, he just told us the import was done and provided not reports to show the numbers matched. Also the WIP import time was not able to be billed and he pushed us to support.

Vorteile

Easy to understand for the end user and easy to administer. Sync function works as designed and interface has improved with phone app and new version.

Nachteile

Missing one feature - Let the admins setup and apply Holiday defaults to employee timesheets. This would eliminate a lot of issues that come up every pay period that includes a Holiday .
For example, employees inadvertantly use a regular work code for a Holiday or they manage to use the Holiday code for the entire work week. If it defaulted on the sheets that would eliminate most of this distraction.

Vorteile

that it keeps the entries from last week so that we don't have to completely start over each week. It is easy to login to system.

Nachteile

That there are no short cuts for the comments. You can't create custom reports unless you are an administrator - it is hard to find stuff that you entered months ago

Vorteile

That it sync with our Quickbooks account, makes tracking time and expenses easy and accessible to our employees who work in the field, and the support team is always prompt and helpful.

Nachteile

The mobile app can be glitching. I recommend to our staff to enter time and expenses on the app, but to review and submit them through the desktop version.

Vorteile

Software is very user-friendly and easy to learn. Someone is always available to help with questions.

Nachteile

Reporting could use some enhancing. Some numbers come out as dates.

Vorteile

The chat feature. Customer support are awesome and always help you work through the issues

Nachteile

Some of the screens are not conducive to all the changes we would like. But BigTime took our thoughts down and hopefully in newer versions they will be available.

Vorteile

Ease of use; convenient smart phone integration - especially camera-phone for ER receipts.

Nachteile

Don't know if BT will handle 1.5x, 2x, overtime premium labor hour situations.