Accelo Reviews

Pros
Ease of use, completely customizable, thoughtful and useful features!

Cons
I wish I would have found it so much earlier than I did!

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I loved the analytics of this product. I was demoing several products for a client that was looking for a PM software that handled a lot of their issues. This software fit the bill. They let me demo it for over 2 months, as I also had a full time job at the time that interfered with my daily testing/playing time with it.

Cons
I pick up new software fairly easy. I did have a major learning curve with this software. But once I got over that it was smooth sailing from there on out.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Rating breakdown

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
This software is feature rich but more specifically, this is a software that has helped us manage our entire sales cycle from managing contacts, Lead tracking, project planning and automated billing. But the most impressive is there is a client portal feature for our clients to collaborate on projects, accept quotes and view invoices.

Cons
I hate that one has to pay for customer support.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
It's easy to find the projects I'm working on, keep a track of my time and provide report about my billing time. Really useful to coordinate time with my team.

Cons
Maybe the only thing I didn't like much, is that I can change some info on my daily reports and I need to open them on a separate tab to do so.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
We are able to fully process our business with the detailed project plans, scheduling and capacity tracking which gives us very detailed and accurate forecasting for capacities. The whole business now trusts the reliability of the system and the data in it so much that we report daily on the state of play with task management and capacities to move resources around which helps us deliver work quicker for our clients. We are forecasting for hiring new resources based on the system data, conducting price reviews and making lots and lots of continuous process tweaks with the confidence that Accelo is our living process documentation via the templates. Also, with the detail in the project plans is something we are able to leverage in the sales process to show prospects we have robust processes that will ensure the best quality content creation.

Cons
There are still some more features we would love to see in the future which would help us automate more and reduce admin but the revamp on the community ideas page gives great confidence to everyone at Digital 22 that if it will benefit enough people then there is a good chance we will see these and more great updates in the near future.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
1. It Supports a comprehensive variety of activities in an enterprise including CRM, Sales, Projects, Tickets & Requests, Contracts & Retainers, Tasks & Activities (Operations) 2. There are good API’s for integration with other systems. 3. It seems that they have published their API code in GitHub, so programmers can join and improve their API Code. 4. There is good integration with Google including google contact and google calendar 5. Very good Setting for “Module Titles” so a variety of users can customize the application based on their own industry and literature 6. Supporting the concepts of “Default Billable Rate” and “Default Cost Rate” for any user is really nice for having a costing system and evaluate the profitability of every customer. 7. A task can be against so many concepts including Project, Period, Ticket, Sales, which provide great flexibility for software. 8. The Idea of Task Board is really nice and this is a very good tool for monitoring tasks and keep them in mind 9. Mentioning about their blog is good for creating loyalty

Cons
1. They tried to have a good responsive web application, but they were not fully successful in this case. Some of the icons on the upper toolbar will not accessible when the size of browser is in its minimum width. Alternatively, when the “List of Activities” is open and I change the width of browser, some of the texts will be override on each other. 2. Defining tasks is not very user friendly. For example when we want to define a new task and we don’t enter anything in the textbox of “Search Accelo for Company or Work” the Error Message is “Against field is required” this is right that the empty field is marked by a red box, but it is not very clear and user cannot guess which is the “Against Field”; because even there is no tooltip for it. 3. Some of the Help Videos are not updated based on the last version of the application. For example, a Video about timesheet just shows Weekly Timesheet and not Daily Timesheet which it seems that this menu has been added recently. 4. Application Setting is really complicated and full of different options for everything. Learning this comprehensive setting is difficult. It was better; there would be a “Search” to find whatever an administrator is looking for it. 5. A task can be assigned just to one person. It means that there is no common task for team members.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 4/10

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I love that I don't have to teach my team to use Accelo, they get their login and they are away. The scheduling tool appears really powerful to streamline the use of studio production. Love the task management and budget flow, it really is the most comprehensive platform I've used and I've tried quite a few before investing in Accelo.

Cons
The charge per user, when some of my users are just timesheeting and not much else. For a monthly cost, it can build quite quickly with part timers and freelancers involved in the business. I find the PDF of templates a bit clunky, whilst they can look great on the screen, they don't always PDF accurately. Biggest bug bear is the inflexibility with proposals to show a weekly cost, one off cost, monthly cost or annual cost. It seems to calculate and bundle as one. This would be a good game changer to have these options sorted out.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
The stream tracks past info so nothing is lost- I can always go back and see where we were and who said what - awesome! We have substantially cut down on our quoting process/time and it is much more consistent for us now. Instead of using Project Templates I'm using milestone templates and it has been fantastic. I build a quote and then customize it perfectly. And the release of POs was a game changer for us. We don't use them in the traditional sense-we send them to our consultants to verify what they will be paid as subcontractor, but it is working well for the most part.

Cons
1)- Please bring Rich Texting into the body of the quotes FAST and to the emails when we are sending the quotes out to the clients. 2)- Navigation in the "configuration" backend is not user friendly - feels like it needs a "do-over". I find it overwhelming and frustrating. Whenever I have to update or fix something I'm spending WAY TOO much time in my day back there. Time I should be using making more money with clients.... mostly trying to find where I should be. 3)- My Executive Director is finding the reporting function to be challenging when it is time to pull info for the board of directors as well...... OH! and...4)- when using the POs 1 out 10 times the PDF does not populate.... it's like there is a glitch in the system?? I have to delete the entire thing and start over.... ??

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It is easy to create new projects in minutes with saved project templates. The gant chart view makes it easy to adjust timelines and due dates. You can alert teammates when their task is ready to start, and the task dashboard makes it easy for you to view your tasks for the day/week.

Cons
The schedule view is not useful as is. Currently the schedule view will show how many hours of work you have for a given day. 1) You need to have a time set for the task in order to see this properly listed in the schedule view, 2) If you have a task that takes 3 hours, but you have it spread over 3 days it allocates 1 hour per day on the schedule view. If it's day 3, and that task had not been identified as started and no time logged it should show 3 hours of work on that day - but instead it still shows the 1 hour. If that logic were set properly it would make this schedule view much more useful. There is also a major issue with setting project schedules, you need to be sure to lock-in the dates otherwise your project dates keep adjusting until you start. It can really screw things up if you don't have that set right away.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10

Pros
Before we used Accelo, time spent on work was gathered via a rather ugly Outlook task list workaround, which was neither practical nor scaleable. Accelo's project and retainer scheduling functionality allows us to book-in large projects much more easily than before, and also ensures that time is tracked more accurately, allowing senior management to find true profitability of projects and marketing services.

Cons
Of course there are a few elements of Accelo that could be improved, but one of the benefits of working with Accelo is that they listen to their clients. I am constantly in touch with Geoff and the team to offer ideas and help with beta testing, which makes me feel like a valued customer.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Accelo does a good job helping our marketing agency setup and manage retainers for clients and manage the budget of time they have available. In addition, Accelo allows us to manage website design and development projects down to the minute and helps us ensure projects are on-time and on-budget. If needed, we can produce an audit trail of work performed for a client in a moment's notice. Our website management team also uses Accelo to manage the hundreds of tickets that are received from clients needing changes to their websites.

Cons
Although Accelo includes a CRM component, this is perhaps the weakest part of their platform at this time.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Having all of our leads and project management in one place allows us to follow through relationships with prospective and current clients, right from the initial contact to project delivery and follow up.

Cons
The learning curve is quite high and on boarding new employees takes some time. This just needs the procedures set up but it does take resources in a small company.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I love how comprehensive Accelo is. There's a really thoughtful approach in that you can track all comms and the history for each client in one place. Accelo has re-defined how our agency works as it takes a lot of the manual organization work out of the equation.

Cons
The price? My company recently went through a merger with eight other companies (globally, but still within the South Pacific) and the cost to use Accelo company wide was too high. At the moment, our higher ups are looking for replacement tools, but everything is independent of each other. Some apps integrate with others, but it's no where near as sophisticated as Accelo. Our smaller team has made a case for our continual use, but I fear it's a matter of time before we'll be required to use something else for day to day ops management.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10