Accelo Reviews

Pros

I like that Accelo combines almost all facets of my business in one application. Not only do I get CRM & sales capability, I also get job/task tracking, project management, support ticketing, and billing! There is integration with key third party apps so I rarely have to go anywhere else to run the business.
I also like the user community engagement and level of communication to keep informed on product development.

Cons

It is hard to dislike anything given all the recent improvements, but next I'd like to see a payroll feature, so either I can export timesheet data to a third party application or run a payroll process within Accelo.

Pros

I appreciate how flexible it is, since we are able to make changes to things like invoicing, branding, reports, and marketing campaign templates. It offers a full invoicing section where we can make our own invoices and modify existing ones, as well as invoice online and connect to Xero. The Gantt chart allows us to see the status of each work and the amount of time it takes in real time, and it makes it easy to create, assign, and track tasks for team members.

Cons

All of the software's modules have received glowing recommendations from the many departments that have used them. This is because the software is user-friendly and straightforward, easily adjusting to the specific requirements of each business and each project.

Pros

The UI is actually not so bad; it's bright and modern, and menu options are well-placed. (That is, most items are located exactly where you'd think they should be.) This is extremely helpful when building complex projects within the platform. Even novices are comfortable using Accelo after about a week, in most cases.

Cons

The sync with QuickBooks Online is awesome in theory, as my company requires that connection for invoices that are attached to projects within Accelo. However, that sync tends to break more often than it should. This is typically an issue when modifying ledger items and our chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online... Which, we HAVE to make the changes in QBO first, rather than the other way around. As a company with MANY products and services offerings that are updated around the beginning of every year, this is generally a nightmare.

Pros

One of the nicest features is the ability to attach email threads to specific clients or projects inside a company. In our previous program, we had to duplicate task lists and pray we didn't mess anything up by not being able to create project templates.

Cons

To have a good overview of the billing dashboard, you presently have to rely on the usage of filters, which isn't enough. At a glance, I'd want to know if an invoice has been delivered, received, and paid. The mobile app comes in second, but it falls well short of the online version in terms of functionality and is in desperate need of some love and care.

Pros

Accelo provides a CRM, sales funnel, statements of work (quoting), active work (projects and ongoing), time tracking and invoicing -- all in one fully integrated platform. The tool is quite user-friendly if set up properly for your business.

Cons

The integration with QuickBooks Online needs some additional features.

Pros

I love how easy it is to understand. Completely customizable and very organized on a whole. Tracking transactions with previous customers is super easy.

Cons

The ease for booking leaves is actually not so easy. It seems to be very complicated. Also I have having to do so many tasks manually.

Pros

I love working with Accelo because it is a very accessible service for my company, its high performance allows us to manage projects with high performance and my team loves it because of how convenient it is, the tool is available to access from Windows and Android. One factor that makes this software ideal for anyone even without technical knowledge is that it has excellent training available for inexperienced people, its high customization and its wide interface make an excellent experience that motivates people to want to work with this software every day at all times.

Cons

The software has constant updates which is an advantage and disadvantage at the same time to work, the main advantage is that it keeps all your system updated to the most innovative technology and the disadvantage is that for people to adapt to the software makes this very challenging because of the constant changes that are seen.

Pros

- we loved the idea of a fully integrated professional service system. TImesheeting, project management, and business development (prospecting) follow-up, and project cost tracking were essential for us.
- we use everything in Accelo except 'ticketing'.
- we were initially attracted as well by the invoicing and the project profitability features.
- time sheeting, project cost tracking, business development (opportunity funnel) and basic project management work very well for us. The team - including external contractors - use the system externally, and it greatly streamlines our weekly All Hands review meetings.

- We have consultants with extensie experience with Salesforce and Work, and they comment this is much better suited to our 'professional services' application.

Cons

- the proposal/ quoting functionality has been a disappointment. We wish there was better functionality to impot text, 'view' andedit and modigy layout, due to the nature of professional services work. The quoting/ prosposal module is probably fine if you are quoting 'canned' services like web design packaging, or system configuration / maintenance, but not for much else.

Pros

It kind of changed a whole lot of my teams work ethic, and system. Helper us immensely with unique set of features, especially, syncing schedules, result tracking.

Cons

Nothing much really. Just that the pricing is on the higher side. Not a deal breaker though.

Pros

Excellent platform with advanced features and easy to use. Accelo is part of the facilitation of operations within the company.
Excellent quality ratio of the different functionalities and price of the monthly subscription.

Cons

Accelo can take enough time to master all the services offered.

Pros

We transitioned away from an Excel Spreadsheet to Accelo and the transition was amazing. Just forcing us to cleanup our accounts in order to transition saved us thousands in internal errors, missed billing etc.
Accelo keeps you organized and has a wealth of options that you can take advantage of depending on the package you select with them.
For us the most useful things were 2 way integration with QuickBooks Online - and being able to track time on tickets and tasks in Accelo then fairly easily filter and convert those completed tickets into invoices within QuickBooks.
We liked how easy it was to enter time on a ticket and we loved being able to filter on staff for customized time periods in order to see hours worked by project for billing purposes.
Overall this is a robust CRM software that helps you keep track of your clients all in one place, make detailed notes on your relationship with them, track your historical conversations with them and integrate with your Accounting software.

Cons

Our biggest issues with Accelo were integration and Price:
At first everything worked fine but after a provincial PST increase we had to create a new Combined tax rate in QBO and it stopped working with Accelo. Customer Service chased this down for months but we never got a reolution - just updates that they were working with QBO on this. After several months of not being able to push invoices through - it became clear we needed another solution.
Secondly was the price. That was just too high for us in the end. We found other software that was not as robust, but fit our needs better, integrated with QBO more reliably and charged us a flat rate rather than a per employee rate - which makes MUCH more sense for us.
One last thing we didn't like that they may have already updated was that filters were not able to be saved. We'd have a staff meeting and load up a page with 3 or more filtering specifications then click something and the results of the filter were lost. We'd have to go through all the steps to get back there again. Same thing next week. It would be nice to be able to customize your filter selections and save them so you can run the same evaluations or reports repeatedly and easily.

Pros

The email integration is fantastic, allowing for automatic email capture from all of our team, customers, and suppliers while simultaneously addressing the need for privacy controls in that solution. Most other solutions require the team to manually interact to add those interactions and, well, that just doesn't happen. I don't think Accelo touts that functionality nearly as much as they should.

The ability to automate our business processes is a tremendous value as well. Consistency, minimizing mistakes, and reducing training time of new employees are critical factors for our success and this type of automation has proven to be worth the effort it takes to set it up correctly.

Cons

The target market for Accelo is primarily agencies/service-based companies that invoice time and materials. We are an Electronics Manufacturing company and as such, there are many aspects of Accelo that aren't highly applicable in our environment (though we've been surprised on how we've been able to tailor it suit our needs!). With that, there are many features that just don't apply.

Pros

Accelo is a truly effective platform for planning, executing and delivering jobs on time, as it takes care of undoing all those manual tools that hinder overall growth, boasting extremely robust features for project planning, team scheduling, task management and client registration, among other things, it is a platform that boasts excellent customer service and an impressive price-performance ratio

Cons

Within the main features that I dislike about Accelo is that it has few integrations with common tools, just as it needs to improve customization options to achieve adjust the needs that any company needs

Pros

At the same time this online tool comes out of the box ready to run and play, it also allows you and your business to customize the workflows and projects skeletons to shape to your business... Zero Programing with Coding.. everything is very intuitive, visual and helps you manage and delegate the entire process since the moment the client/customer knocks the door to approving and billing. It's helping my business grow and helping create accountability across our teams and employees.

Cons

needs improvement in mobile app. need to provide better training on setting up when starting from scratch, even after paying for the full initial setup package.. still needed to invest internal time to personalize the tool to our requirements

Pros

The ability to create an opportunity, quote, and then close it into a project where we can assign resources and log time is very convenient.

Cons

Reporting capabilities are severely lacking. I have to try many different ways to pull out data into excel and further manipulate it to do the type of analysis I need to do as the leader of a team. When I filter data, it doesn't always make sense and it doesn't leave me confident that the data is accurate.

Pros

I love how organized you can be as a whole within the company. Everything seems to transfer well between coworkers and keeps us extremely organized.

Cons

There are things I feel like are more difficult to understand but I also feel like that is mostly user error. When it comes to creating PO's I think the process could be easier inside of that to go ahead and create an expense.

Pros

We used it as a helpdesk ticket taking platform - it functioned. Time tracking was a great feature Accelo did well.

Cons

Frequent outages and unexplained slowness plagued their environment when we used it. Things were on their roadmap indefinitely, metrics and analytics were nearly non existent. One of their devs even got snarky with me on a public forum when I pointed out some areas for improvement. We as an organization have since moved to another platform and have not looked back.

Pros

This is one of the few tools out there that has been extremely helpful in managing retainer work. Our team appreciate the tool's ability to track time and tasks within projects. I also really like the triggers for alerts on budget/usage %, this automation has been very helpful.

Cons

There is a lot of rigidness about the system, with lots of work arounds, but still some aspects of it do not have the flexibility you want it to. Task are more difficult to manage and assign than just a task management/checklist type system.

Pros

Integration with Gmail makes creating tasks from emails very easy. The ability to create projects by client makes keeping tasks organized and logging time a breeze.

Cons

Accelo can definitely seem intimidating at first as there are a ton of menus that can take time to familiarize yourself with.

Pros

Centralizes client retainers and billing into simple views that are easy to manage. Ability to view retainers/projects/sales verticals at a high-level while easily able to drill into specific client views is awesome.

Cons

The ticketing system is not the greatest. It is VERY easy for tickets to get lost in the shuffle for users who manage a mix of ticket and task items.

Pros

I love the quoting function and Customer Tracking/ticketing. This product allows you to track about anything you want. It syncs to your Gmail so you can get a notification on scheduling and different projects.

Cons

In the beginning this product is hard to use. Once you use it daily and spend the time to learn it. It is a great product

Pros

The first thing that comes to mind is the Client Portal. As part of our management services, we actively serve 100+ properties and systems. The Accelo Client Portal allows us to receive, prioritize, and track customer tickets and requests all in one place. This feature is mission-critical for us to continue to scale our business.

Cons

Honestly, the only frustration I have with the platform is the fact that we haven't allocated enough time internally (yet) to complete the implementation. With that said, we will slowly but surely work to wake up this real beast of a CRM over the next few weeks!

Pros

We are using this for a company size of about 75 people for sales tracking where each consultant can track their hours and expenses to the projects and tasks that are created. Works to keep everything neatly in place.

Cons

When someone is done / removed from the system --- they are removed entirely. They no longer show up as having worked on those efforts.

Pros

fully fledged CRM to manage leads effectively through the quotation process. Good way to monitor time and activity at work to understand and prioritize product time. Very well integrates with email, voip and salesforce to allow for good handle on information flow across system and give a consolidated view.

Cons

nothing much that i can think of which needs to change.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Accelo

more focused on enterprise servops