BigTime

What differentiates BigTime from other similar products?

We needed a system that allowed for monthly allocation of budgeted time and to be able to differentiate between types of services and costs so I could forecast time and cost by month, for different employees, by project. I did not find another software capable of doing that.

What is your favorite aspect of this product?

The allocation functionality

What do you dislike most about this product?

Right now, a feature that was supposed to work (having different services priced differently) is not working with the Quickbooks integration making that integration useless, and subsequently most of the program useless for us until it's fixed.

What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?

Be very clear that the sales person shows you the functionality you are looking for, not just tells you it exists and works. I made the mistake of assuming that some basic functions that were promised were part of what I was paying for (allocations, the only reason I went with this program was an additional feature that had to get added on after I signed my agreement) or not functional (the ability to send correct contractor invoices to quickbooks).

What differentiates BigTime from other similar products?

BigTime LOOKS like a great product. I was super-psyched to be able to get the Work In Process, To Be Billed, Average Bill Rate and Labor Utilization Rates for my team of accountants. Theoretically, it was a perfect fit. And this is a huge differentiation.... if you can actually make it work.

What is your favorite aspect of this product?

The time cards are easy to use, and there is plenty of time-card reporting available. But the management dashboard (with the metrics mentioned above, like Utilization Rate) would have been a game changer.... if we could have made it work.

What do you dislike most about this product?

Complexity. To make the dashboards work, you've got to be willing to invest a great deal of time. You may also have to change your processes in order to match up their client billing methods to yours, and to utilize the invoicing feature. (Which we never did make work with QuickBooks Online). But the chief complaint is still the lack of help from BT staff.... it was non-existant. I actually wondered whether they had any staff at all.

What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?

DONT WALK...RUN! Unless you have a clear use case, and a template for making this work, I'm predicting that you will never roll this out successfully. It will do your time keeping just fine... but all the bells and whistles will simply make you mad. And sadly, no amount of calls or emails to customer support resulted in any help. We literally never completed the promised 3-call "onboarding" process, and what help we did get (at the very beginning) was generic and worth less than simply reading the help files.

What differentiates BigTime from other similar products?

We needed tools that allow us to forecast revenue and workflows. We also needed to know where we are on project budgets so we can adjust our level of effort or staffing. We now have the ability to analyze the time sheet for profit margins, time utilization, business projects, easy billing with the ability to move time, do time sheets on the fly.

What is your favorite aspect of this product?

Time usage tracking and user interface simplicity. BigTime provides the functionality you need for project management, time tracking, and billing in an easy-to-use cloud-based application. The ability to customize is very convenient, the ability to sync with QuickBooks is essential. BigTime published for later replay provides useful live webins throughout the year on specific short and informative topics and answers questions from listeners. You can also get the same information from technical support via the site's chat feature.

What do you dislike most about this product?

Before you can complete sales tax information, you must first integrate with QuickBooks. Some of the terminologies used in the training were also difficult to understand because my sector employs different language. We haven't been able to adjust multiple different invoice templates to reflect exactly what our various clients need, therefore there is some manual effort necessary when we produce invoices. However, this was also true in the prior Oracle-based system we utilized. I'd like the BigTime and ADP systems to be able to connect so that we can create paychecks and cost reimbursements more automatically.

What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?

Reps are prepared to set up your free trial using your Quickbooks data, which seems like a wonderful opportunity to test it out and see whether it's a suitable fit for you. If your company does not use QB Online, it may be a bit of a bother because it will involve manual coding on the back end to obtain information such as tax rates, etc. BigTime also crashes in different browsers and doesn't let us pick date ranges. However, there are workarounds, and I now use Edge just to bill and pick date ranges.