BigTime Reviews

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

BigTime time and expense entry for specific job/tasks is easy for users. Invoice creation using the time and expenses entered is seamless, yet flexible. Once invoices have been emailed to my clients I can easily track my client's activity to ensure that the invoice has been viewed. If my email transmission has failed I get a notification.There are plenty of webinars available to use for self-guided learning. Also, there are live webinars for new users to gain knowledge about BigTime. Reading the blog posts is helpful too.BigTime support has been very helpful if I reach out with any issues. I recently worked with [sensitive content hidden] for over an hour to solve an issue. He was very patient and was determined to solve my problem during our call.

Cons

There are a few hiccups with taxation for Canadian users. BigTime has been working on improving these features.I would like to see more options for invoice PDF templates so that the invoices are better looking.I really struggle with customizing BigTime reports when any of the standard reports don't meet my needs.There are a few issues with syncing to QBO, but BigTime support staff have been helpful in trying to resolve these issues.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

It performs a significant amount of the project management and time tracking tasks that we need. Support is always a quick chat away.

Cons

I wish we could see our billing rate schedule in one place rather than having to go through individual staff data tabs.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud Express and monday.com

Reasons for Choosing BigTime

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

Switched From

Productive

Reasons for Switching to 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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

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

Tract Time/Billing/invoicing. It is wonderful to be able to invoice so easy and worry free.

Cons

when the sync button will not work with QB.

Pros

New user of Big Time and immediately found the ease of working through the portal. User friendly - easy to use and navigate

Cons

No major concern so far - as a new user I dont expect to have any issue

Pros

The onboarding process and support has been seamless so far and we expect to be fully converted in 60 days total.

Cons

Always room for improvement, but we haven't had any with BigTime yet. We need to sort out some details in our Quickbooks Desktop projects to align when integrating.

Alternatives Considered

Deltek Vantagepoint

Reasons for Choosing BigTime

Ajera is not intuitive for making regular changes to project schedules, staffing and resources. Reports are traditional and the entire platform is not HTML, very antiquated in how it operates.

Switched From

Deltek Ajera

Reasons for Switching to BigTime

Initial Cost, ongoing training and costs to implement custom tools and reports, and implementation timeline was significantly higher in comparison. The smaller size of our company (20) was not a good fit as Deltek requires a full time person in addition to PM's/bookkeeping/accounting to manage.

Pros

This system was very easy to implement, gives live view into project health and support is amazing.

Cons

Needs more dashboard options, scheduling is a bit basic and Quickbooks integration has been a bit buggy

Alternatives Considered

Buildertrend

Reasons for Choosing BigTime

Dynamics was too complex, expensive and difficult to implement. BT is more in depth out of the box for a small company and implementation was easy.

Switched From

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Switching to BigTime

Buildertrend charges per project(we have as many as 40 on at once) and does not truly integrate with Quickbooks.

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

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

I think the software is very user friendly, however, there are parts of it that I have never used and not sure how to use it.

Cons

I think the software is very easy to use, but I would like to know more about how to use the features I don't use.

Pros

Simple interface, fairly user friendly, and customer support!

Cons

The behind the scene formulas are not always intuitive - negatives mean positives and vice versa. There isn't a ton of flexibility with customizing the workflow as it relates to the process in our studio. For instance, we had to set up our tasks as labor codes and each timesheet entry that has a different labor code needs a new line. There is often a lot of back and forth to understand workarounds. Also trying to understand how to display something the way we want to see it is challenging and without the support we would have been lost.

Pros

One of our projects is in support stage.
Team of 15 people is still there on all lines of support.
The deal is that requests from our clients are coming at random moment of time and require from 1 hour to several days to handle.
I feel with BigTime it came to more order. Now we can form kind of backlog of client requests and also track time people spend for their processing. For clients that have series of similar requests, we are able to find past communication history and get all required stakeholders together to sort out things once and forever. From other side, some of clients have paid support contract with us. As they see how each of their requests is priced at the realtime they also prioritize their requests in more smart way.

Cons

I am unable to view most of reports on my mobile phone.
Also there's no way to create shortcuts for the most useful functions that sometimes are hidden deep inside the app.

Pros

This product is easy to track time with. When features work, the dashboards and reports are helpful for analysis.

Cons

It is difficult to use reporting because it breaks frequently. This seems to have occurred more often over the last several months than earlier in our time using the product. Customer support acknowledges bugs, but development is slow to correct key features, such as the loss of the ability to export simple reports to Excel. The product seems to over promise and underdeliver a lot of the time. We recently upgraded one of the modules based on meetings with the sales team. Shortly after purchasing, key dashboards suddenly stopped working. Communication could be improved. Customer service has acknowledged being aware of a bug before we reported it, but never let us know. I would value communication regarding the health of the product to help with our planning, rather than the frequent marketing notices.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

The bosses and staff enjoys working with BigTime because the support is so wonderful. They are friendly and very knowledgeable, If I have questions and concerns with various issues the BigTime staff has been amazing. Several times I have had representative. as a support technician and if I cant seems to explain myself she will make extra effort to verify what the issue is.

Cons

So many options it can become overwhelming.

Pros

User friendly Dashboards however set up is much more than originally thought

Cons

More difficult to integrate with Quickbooks that originally told.

Alternatives Considered

Deltek Ajera

Reasons for Choosing BigTime

Improve Project management

Switched From

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Pros

The simple and straight forward interface, information structure and ease to operate.

Cons

There isn´t anything I don´t like. The only issue I had so far was exporting reports to Excel 365 on a Windows 10 laptop.

Pros

The web interface works well and is very intuitive to use. Since it is cloud based you can aceess it from any web browser.

Cons

I would like to be able to have more than one timer running concurrently, but I understand wht this is not allowed.