BigTime Pricing Overview

Big Time gives us the ability to do multiple things inside one application. I work in finance at a nonprofit and the same issue pops up at each organization....accounting information is not available to the team without requesting it piecemeal from the accounting staff. Nonprofits usually have limited staff, so providing this information constantly is a drain on resources. Big Time was able to do several things for us and save time and resources. First, we set up all of our budget areas. We use the customer/job set up and added each of our departments and sub budgets. Then we added our programs and each funder. We set up the budget timeline or the contract timeline. Add the detail, tag the staff assigned and get going. We've done some customization also to track a checklist of items for grants/contracts as well (budget, signed contract, due dates, etc.). We also use time tracking and ask our staff to track all of their time to their contracts, or their general department. Next, we use the expense tracking for ALL of our expenses. Then we use the data to populate Big Time. So, staff are doing the input (for charges they incur...including vendor expenses, staff reimbursements and credit card charges) and then we use that data to import. The data allows staff to see live updates to their total costs based on the information they input. They can run budget to actuals, and see the detail for those numbers. Then we don't have to run reports. We can also use their time to bill contracts if we want to. Very easily. We haven't used the project management side as much as I would like, but that is the next step.

I wish there were more customizable fields like: Checkoff when something has been paid Add a check number to a expense Ability to store documents (contracts, etc.) linked to customer/job Module for deposits so we can add detailed income if we want Sub level for contracts (multi year where you can say year one is $50k and year 2 is $25k and track separately A way to upload information into the program that is not complicated Price has tripled since 2011 and not much different. If they came down on price, they might get more nonprofits using it, but a lot cannot afford. We are really struggling on the price. It would be great to see team pricing, or offered on Tech Soup for groups that can't afford it.

Saves us a ton of time running reports, general reporting to departments. It's basically a budget to actual for all departments and contracts/grants. Real time information. We also add payroll in summary so they get the full information.

The ability to have many different projects, connected to timesheets, expenses and invoices. The integration with QuickBooks is a good feature, but we do have some issues with uploading expense reports. Support staff are good, Leah G. and Tyler were both helpful today.

We don't like how you are charged per person, even if they are inactive but log in once to update an expense, for example. We do shift work and seasonal work so this is difficult. We have encountered some bugs as we continue to grow and use the software. It has cost us some time in having awkward formatting of invoices, in having to redo them and send them back to clients when they are not easy to add up the expenses and taxes. There was also some rounding issues, and some issues with being able to download reports in certain formats. Overall you can tell this is a newer software, but they are working with us to solve the problems. However, at one point we did have a meeting lined up to discuss our concerns, and they were a no-show.

It helps to have time, expenses and invoicing all integrated, and connected to QuickBooks. In theory, when we get some of the issues sorted out, this will be streamlining our processes and saving us time.

The platform is cloud-based, integrates with Quickbooks Online smoothly, and the interface is generally clean and easy to use. The reporting feature is super robust too.

Some features aren't intuitive/you have to know where to click. There are only a few things like that, though. The other funky thing is that once you invoice for a task in full, you can't add expenses or time to it, which makes it challenging for tasks where you receive expenses after the client has been invoiced. There's a workaround though.

Our main problem before BigTime was that QBO didn't give us the depth of reporting we needed to understand our profitability on a project-by-project level. BigTime lays on top of Quickbooks perfectly to give us the information we need to understand where we need to manage costs or adjust our fees. BigTime's expense and time tracking features have also replaced our expense management software, our bill processing software, and time tracking software. I'm confident BigTime will allow us to capture revenue we were likely missing because we weren't accurately tracking hours or expenses.

BigTime has made it much easier for our small team to log time and expenses against projects and invoice our clients. It integrates well with QuickBooks (with some exceptions) and makes it easy to monitor the work in progress (WIP). There are a lot of good and necessary features, such as assigning staff hourly charge out and cost rates that allow for flexibility when creating different types of projects and budgets. It also offers several different invoicing methods. There are many customizable ways to generate reports and I have been happy with how I can customize the reports based on my needs. The timesheet and expense submission interfaces are intuitive and easy to use, so it was easy to train staff.

There are a few shortcoming that I hope BigTime can address. First, it is not able to track overtime, in excess of certain number of hours per staff each week. Therefore, its ability to integrate with a payroll system is limited. This has been the main reason we have not been able to use BigTime on a greater scale. Second, the integration with QuickBooks is great, but not perfect. Unlike vendor expenses, which can be imported easily, we have not been able to import other personal expenses from QuickBooks into BigTime. The invoicing feature is nice, but it has some minor glitches. The tax amount is often not claculated automatically and has to be applied everytime. All in all, BigTime on its own is a great tool, but there are areas for imporvement, particularly when intergation with other accounting or payroll platforms is required. Customer service is friendly, but when running into system issues, the problem normally has to be referred to the developer team and it may take several weeks to resolve, and it may not be an easy fix, depending on the issue.

BigTime has been helping us to link efforts (labour and expenses) directly to invoicing, which helps us in managing project budgets and resources, and makes it easy to invoice our clients for our efforts.

The best part of big time is the clean look of the system and how user friendly it is. There are multiple functions of this system to help achieve what your company needs. The reporting function is a really nice feature that allows you to customize reports to your company's need. Also, Big Time has a unique budget feature to help track actual expenses/time to your budget. This is a nice feature that I believe my company will be able to use in the future. Lastly, Big Time has a user friendly mobile app available for Apple and Android users, which is nice for our employees to be able to enter time and expenses on the go with ease. Also, so far the communication with Big Time representatives has been great. The options of doing online chat is also a nice feature besides having to call or send an e-mail. Not only can the administrator contact support, the individual users can as well if help is needed.

Just specific to my company needs, I dislike that the system doesn't really have a feature to enter vendor bills to bill out to clients. Also, there really is no feature to create a contract for our clients with various charges that occur monthly but could change if updates are made to the contract terms. There is a workaround for this but no specific feature to handle this.

Once the system is fully implemented, we hope to reduce the time of billing and manually keying items into our system. We hope to be able to export data from Big Time and be able to import it into our accounting system. This could relieve a lot of time for us. Also, with the user friendly customized report options we hope to utilize to help pull data that is needed. Lastly, with the mobile app, this will help users stay organized and will prevent them from not entering time or expenses late. In the mobile app users can take pictures of their receipts right away to store in their account to later enter an expense which will prevent losing/misplacing receipts.

Some of the reporting features and capabilities are very good if somewhat confusing. The ability to enter time in either a grid or a per entry format is a nice feature. The invoice WIP feature is pretty good

The QB\job methodology vs the BT\Project is often confusing in how it handles QB clients who don't have jobs to start out. It would be nice to see the ability to give indicators when projects are going over budget and where there is project data, consumed hours totals would be helpful rather than just dollars. Many project participants aren't privy to rates and or don't care. It would be nice if there was a no charge option that showed up on the invoice vs a do not bill option; while we have created a work around, it is still confusing for some staff as they interpret that to mean "no charge", not "do not bill" While BigTime is time & expense focused, it would be helpful to have at least a rudimentary items sales feature. Customer terms should pull from QB and while an individual invoice or project may have unique terms that differ from the QB default, each invoice run should default back to the QB terms which BT doesn't pull (I have complained reported this) The invoice WIP has a shortcoming if an staff member puts their entries under the wrong customer or project, correcting this issue is buried in the company staff member time tab. Service contract management is very difficult in BT

BigTime was supposed to help streamline out billing and expense management process; over time, our methodology for working with the product, billing delays have been reduced although initially, it added a day to the process. Expenses were never really embraced and are used only for adding line items to customer billing rather than consultant expense tracking as intended.

Training - The training provided by Brannon was very beneficial. It obvious they know the system in and out and were able to provide customization for my firm. Operational - Invoices are created from the inputs of users without the administrative task of compiling time and expense for by the billing department.

I would like to see cost of service have the ability to be a percentage instead of a fixed cost. For example, our consultants receive a commission percentage of their hours multiplied by their billing rates....and billing rates vary depending on the client.

Removing paper time and expense sheets and increasing efficiency from creating bills from the system's compilation of time and expense versus a a group of people compiling time and expenses.

Big Time is a robust project management software. It's best features are time tracking, budget oversight and task assignments. The seamless payroll integration with Quickbooks is awesome.

There are a couple of areas where Big Time's software could be improved. The expense tracking could have better integration with Quickbooks. For businesses with expenses that are primarily employee based, such as travel, Big Time's expense tracking is great. For businesses with in house expenses, such as subcontractor bills that need to be applied towards a project, it is a bit clunky, and could be improved. The invoice templates and the ability to create/modify invoice templates could be a bit more robust. Difficult to get exactly what you want out of the invoice templates. We have resorted to exporting the invoices templates to word, tweaking, and then PDFing to the clients. Not the biggest deal, just takes more time to get what we want for a final product.

Switching from paper time sheets, paper expense reports and paper job cost records have saved hours and hours of admin time. And many trees.