BigTime

Pros

Simple to use, huge value for price, highly rated within team

Cons

Had some issues enrolling / on-boarding some colleagues, with slow customer service response

Pros

Customization of reports, ease of setting up projects and invoicing. Getting data out of the system for analysis and firm health is very accessible.

Cons

I really wish the Dashboards were more customizable. At this point they aren't giving us the snapshot we need for our firm.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing BigTime

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to BigTime

Pros

Price - this is why we were fooled into using this company's product instead of the market leader. The saying "you get what you pay for" rings true.

Cons

There are too many “gotchas” that surface when we tried to assimilate BigTime into our company. Some of the major issues, but note that this list is not comprehensive because there are many others, are as follows:

1. We thought BigTime would integrate with Hubspot, but it turns out that most of the fields we use in Hubspot (custom fields) do not synchronize. This limits the advantage we thought BigTime would provide when they told us they integrate with Hubspot - it's only a few default fields that they integrate with.

2. We thought the planning function in BigTime and Foresight would be useful for estimating jobs and creating proposals, but it does not have that capability. If you enter the hourly fee for a task and the number of hours the task will take, BigTime doesn't auto-populate the cost field by automatically calculating fee/hour x hours. How any software programmer could release that kind of product to market is beyond me, but we figured we'd get around it by importing spreadsheets or text files that we create in other programs. Wrong! See #3 below.

3. There is no capacity to import spreadsheets. Almost all data needs to be manually entered into BigTime after it already exists in spreadsheets or other formats. Data entry in BigTime is clumsy compared to a spreadsheet, so it would need to provide a significant advantage to make up for that clumsiness and it doesn't.

4. The platform is “buggy” and almost every time we meet with tech support to resolve one issue, a new issue comes up that stalls our integration. For example, we input a holiday schedule for our company that does not include MLK Day. As we were inputting one of our jobs that had people working on MLK Day, BigTime wouldn’t schedule the work. It took tech support, who we consider an expert on the platform, several iterations to understand what was happening. If we mandate this platform in our company, I can’t imagine how much time will be spent trying to figure out gotchas like that.

5. The BigTime and Foresight platforms don’t have the capability to synchronize some important data between themselves. For example, if a task on a job has a 4-hour duration, then assigning that task to a person in the company will not automatically budget 4-hours for the task in Foresight. We have to re-input the 4-hour task duration in Foresight; otherwise, the task duration defaults to 8-hours.

Pros

Online billing and subscription service, proofing and adding due dates on projects and Tasks. Reliable and efficient EMPSA, online PM, and Exclusive QuickBooks integration.

Cons

Nothing to raise in this section, it has it all we needed.

Pros

Ease to use and ease of getting reports and valuable information from BigTime that we need to make timely business decisions.

Cons

I have no Cons. We have not done very good on integrating Bigtime with Quickbooks but that is more of a Con for our Accounting team and not a reflection on the Bigtime product

Pros

You'll be able to teach your coworkers how to use BigTime in no time at all thanks to its straightforward design and user-friendliness. In addition, they sent us materials that taught us how to use the program.

Cons

It's possible to spend a lot of money on BigTime. Since the plan we could afford for BigTime didn't include most of the capabilities we required, we had to cancel certain low-priority projects in order to use BigTime to its full potential.

Pros

BigTime makes keeping track of time and money very easy.It provides smooth interaction with QuickBooks Online.With BigTime, it's easy to organize your day and keep track of your projects.

Cons

The developer has adopted the idea that fixing all known operational faults will boost business productivity and open the door to future modifications.

Pros

Not much, it’s a pain to set up and recording time is not intuitive. It does have a lot of customizable features

Cons

When you enter time it duplicates rose, making timesheets with hundreds of rows and it is very difficult for managers to approve

Pros

It was a robust system with alot of different features

Cons

The notification system did not work properly and the system required alot of setup.

Pros

It is good for people on the road frequently to capture time and expenses real time. H

Cons

It seems to cater to IPhone users for mobile application. As an Android user (Fold 5), the upgrade app does not work. After months of back and forth via emails no solution reached. There is no in-person telephone support to obtain a solution.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to BigTime

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

What I liked the most is the ability to track detailed time spent on each project. This has greatly helped me to have precise control over my activities and to maximize my productivity.

Cons

So far, I haven't found much to complain about. However, one of the aspects that I think can be improved is the integration with other tools and software that I use in my business.

Pros

[sensitive content hidden] is very helpful. When I call to discuss areas, I am in need of help in he has taken time to make sure I have my issue addressed and that I understand how to correctly move forward.

Cons

Training guide for staff would be mice. The admin training portal is nice but only available for admins. I want to see my staff complete training and track their progress.

Pros

BigTime offers a comprehensive set of features for our business, including time tracking, project management, expense tracking, billing and invoicing, and reporting and analytics. They provide excellent customer support, with a dedicated team of experts.

Cons

The mobile app version of BigTime has fewer features than the desktop version. They have a lot of integration but customization options for reports are limited.

Pros

My customer support rep, [sensitive content hidden], was very responsive and helpful in getting my issue resolved. when we werent getting anywhere through the chat, he offered to jump on a call with me and helped me step by step

Cons

there seems to be some redundancies in the platform that make it difficult to figure out where certain issues are stemming from/how to resolve them

Pros

Implentation process is amazing. Best I have ever seen. Like a team member.

Cons

didn't quite live up to the sales pitch. Still need spreadsheets for some things.

Pros

The product is useful for tracking time by client and project. Also, the invoicing and syncing with QuickBooks is great and saves me time.

Cons

Designing custom reports is a bit tricky and I would like to learn how to better do this.

Pros

A software that is easy to master and allows you to know more about the management of your business projects, with a perfect customization and also BigTime allows you to send invoices. The integration with Quickbooks is very useful for us

Cons

But the problem little to find at the level of the invoices because it does not work totally as it should

Pros

With BigTime we never miss a thing, we attend meetings on time because of its powerful time tracking feature. The support team was very helpful while deploying the software.

Cons

The software offers limited billing options and some of our billing needs are not met. I hope in the future this software will be updated.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

Best software that facilitates payment processing and its easy to use and user friendly.

Cons

I think this software is cheap. But it is not bad

Pros

The best thing is that it is a centralized software with many features which covers almost everything needed in project.

Cons

Its User Interface is not user-friendly but It provides many functionalities which can help to manage the projects very easily.

Pros

BigTime saved us from doing biologs, logging out and also the need of us to keep track by ourselves the time we spent for a single project. It is an online application where you can input how many hours did you consume just to create or to lead a single project versus the other projects that you are doing.

BigTime saved me more time in logging in and logging out, and also keeping track with how many hours of work I did for the day.

Cons

What I don't like about BigTime is that sometimes when you submit your timesheet, it creates duplicates times. So instead of just sending 40 hours of work in a week sometimes it gets doubled or tripled.

Pros

The ease of the timesheets is huge! Staff don't find it cumbersome. Then we use the timesheet detail report to show work done for the week on projects. This helps the President see where time is spent and then he advises what projects are ready for billing. The invoicing process is smooth as BT already has time spent allocated for the job and we in put and subcontractors and expenses. So all the information is in one place. The invoice can be approved right in BT and then sent to the client. Payments are logged right into BT and the BEST thing is that client/project information, invoices AND payments are ALL synced into Quickbooks. That was the selling feature for us.

Cons

We have just added BigTime Wallet - a feature allowing clients to pay invoices with a credit card or ACH just by using a link. We are just beginning to use it. Today we had some help from [SENSITIVE CONTENT] in figuring it out. I do wish the sales department had gotten us set up with technical support from the get-go. But we are making quick progress, again thanks to [SENSITIVE CONTENT].