Small business owners have a lot on their plate and as such, need apps that can accomplish many activities all in one solution. That is where AceProject comes in handy.  AceProject is a comprehensive online project management software that offers small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) the ability to manage and collaborate on multiple projects as well as capture employees’ time, expenses and much more.

The Basics:  What does it look like

AceProject is one of the more thorough online project management software I have seen of late.  When you sign up you will receive your own dashboard chalk full of tools and features.  I will admit that it can be a bit overwhelming at first, however, with a bit of patience and practice on AceProject, it becomes more intuitive.

The dashboard includes a number of options to create a project and add tasks; add employees to the project so they can manage their time and progress; add roles and rights to each employee; ask employees to record their time in AceProject’s time sheet recording tool; implement discussion boards and email notifications.

Features:

Admin:

Before you begin a project on AceProject, you need to take a trip over to the Admin section where you can add in your employees and clients to the system.  The Admin tab can be found on the top ribbon and once there, there is a menu bar to your left with a number of options.

This is where some of the set-up work takes place so that when you start creating projects and tasks, you can cherry pick which employees and clients you want assigned to your project or projects as the case may be.  For example, some employees (and clients) may be assigned a role of “reviewer” with the ability to approve documents, time sheets and expenses.  Some team members will not have all those capabilities but will have the right to log on to record their time, view project documents and more.

But before you assign such roles, their information needs to be in the system.   In addition to users and clients information, the Admin tab offers many other features to customize your projects and this is where AceProject becomes very granular — which is a good thing as it makes the software applicable to different types of industries.  For example, you have the option to add in what kind of time  you will allow your team to bill:  regular, training and overtime.

Once you add in that information, you can then assign hours for each to various employees.

In addition, the Admin tab allows you to create Expense “Types” on  billable items such as travel/meals, material purchasing and more.

You can also brand your user interface with your company logos so that when your team signs on the look and feel of it is familiar to them.

Create a Project:

The heart of AceProject is its project management tool.  I found that it took a bit of practice and searching around the interface to master how to create a project.  However, once you get a sense of what AceProject can do, it is fairly straightforward.  There are  many ways to customize a project, but my recommendation is to use their template first and get used to the program.

When adding in a project, you can add users, clients, tasks, start date and end date.  In addition, you can estimate costs and the amount of time it will take your employees or team to complete the project.

Within each project, you can add in multiple tasks and assign those tasks to certain team members.  Each task can also be assigned a status such as “in progress” or “completed.”

Email Notifications:

You can send out notifications to your teams’ email in-boxes to keep colleagues informed on the project’s ongoing activity.  You also have the choice to send these emails automatically (or not).  You can use the tool to let people know they have been assigned a task, the status of the project, when your team can start on a project and bill to a client and more.

Time Sheets:

These days there are many timesheet apps out there that will record employee time.  Many of these solutions have a feature that allows you to virtually “clock in” and when you are done with the project for the day,  you  can “clock out.”  These tools automatically capture your time and enable you to deliver real-time results to your project manager or clients.  AceProject has this feature and allows your team the choice to use the “clock in and clock” out feature and marry the time reports to a specific project.  You also have the option to add in your time manually.

AceProject also allows you to create time sheet reports for management or clients to capture how the team spent their time.

Expenses:

Another feature of AceProject is the ability to record expenses so you can more accurately estimate and report on the budget for a certain project.  Like the time sheets, AceProject allows you or your team to record their expenses and link it to a specific project.  You can assign Reviewers to approve the expense reports so nothing gets recorded and sent to managment or clients without permission.

Calendars

AceProject has many other features to manage your project such as three types of calendars incluing the following:

• The project calendar – all tasks are displayed for a specific project.
• The administration calendar – all tasks for all projects are displayed.
• The portfolio calendar – all tasks for a user’s assigned projects are displayed.

Is it for You?

AceProject is the perfect solution for small to mid-sized businesses to manage multiple projects, collaborate with employees and clients as well as capture accurate time and expenses.  Small business models that have client-based projects like public relations and marketing firms, software IT shops and others should find AceProject very useful.  I liked the fact that the solution is flexible allowing SMBs to create their own templates and control access and email notifications.  I was impressed with its time sheet cloud application as well.  Overall, AceProject is a comprehensive and very useful tool.