Karbon Reviews

I love the system in general. The personal training for team members was amazing. Additionally, it is wonderful to work with a company that really listens to feedback and suggestions. There are constant improvements and upgrades that the development team rolls out based on customer needs. All of the above combined with the basic features have made the product addictive! I truly cannot imagine my workday without Karbon.

It's a big investment for a small firm. I wish that the cost would come down a bit. However, if used properly this product can increase efficiency assisting to create capacity within a firm. It was also difficult to get full team "buy-in". There is a lot of initial set-up required to create full usability; however, once the time is invested it pays HUGE dividends by way of efficiency and standardized processes.

Easy to set up and use. Great tool for collaboration with colleagues and clients. One central location for all work, communication, and demographic data.

There are always things that could be improved in any software, but I don't feel like there are currently any holes in Karbon, just things that could be better. The "to-do" and "insights" section are two that I feel could be improved to increase their usefulness.

Email tracking and assigning to clients and their monthly projects

The workflow was harder to use and the learning curve much longer than I wanted to spend

Client communication is so simple yet secure. Automation works very well. It integrates with other products that I use.

Lack of control over sorting of work items in kanban so it's hard to practice first-in first-out workflow. Lack of flexibility in the templates so it's hard to do A/B testing and continuous improvement.

Allows me to have a wholistic view of our company through tools like My Week. Very useful to be able to manage and allocate work at the beginning of the week through the my week tool. Triage and the ability to assign/tasks/emails/mentions to employees, clients or client specific work. There is also an integration coming with suit files that will be very useful for practices i.e. some features that will come are document signing client portal integrations, and document management. This will help us automate a lot more. Auto-maters are definitely very useful, partially the ability to automatically change job statuses and assign tasks/work to colleges according where the job is in the process.

Definitely not being able to independently bulk update tasks without having to pay. Bulk update features are very important but not available (unless you pay the $999 build fee package, which might to expensive for some). The lack of integrations are (most notably, not integrating with Xero or XPM). The best option is if you already have Ignition (this allows content to flow from XPM to Ignition than to Karbon). No integrations into CRM systems. Automated do not have an "IF" functionality where if i.e. the client doesn't need to have more documents requested while the work is completed there should be the ability to tick a box that automatically triggers a different work flow.

I can manage my entire practice with Karbon, from email communication to time tracking to creating and documenting workflows to planning my capacity. They are always rolling out new features, improving the product, and they provide some of the best customer service I've ever experienced both in B2B and B2C settings.

There are a couple small inconveniences, like when highlighting text or searching for work within the platform, but they're minor compared to the benefits of working with Karbon.

The transparency of tasks, work, emails, etc across the team is amazing

It is quite expensive without many options to reduce fees

The lost of tasks and ticking off as I go is great. It was of exceptional value when o had staff.

I find the weekly section confusing. I would also prefer a “cleaner” screen for emails.

Karbon is the answer to all our problems. We have struggled with other software in the past. We have always found we needed to change the way that we do things to fit the system, rather than the system suit the way we do things. With Karbon we don't need to change anything. It suits the way we work. It has a huge amount of flexibility without being so flexible you don't know where to start. You just get started and go from there. There is no huge learning curve and even if you do need help the Support is fantastic.

None. There is nothing to say other than positive things. Even if there were some the Karbon team are very approachable about new features or tweaks.

The links sent to clients to upload docs and the automatic reminders that are sent to them.

This may be because I haven't done any of the training, but the format of the "My week" section could be improved upon to show what is coming due.

My Motto for every day is "How can I help you today" and Karbon is my best asset For helping others. When the accountants in our office need a report or need to know if something has been done and they are too busy to check I can filter All Work in KARBON and bring it down to the file they are looking for in a very short time. I can have their answer back to them quickly and in a manner, they can...

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Until you learn that the secret key to Karbon is FILTER - FILTER - FILTER then it is almost too big a program and under-utilized by a number of people. One of our senior partners summed it up like this "Imagine the only way you have to communicate to the office is through the KANBAN view in KARBON" this view teaches you to make notes, share emails, FILTER All Work and generally get as upclose to the file as you can so all the participants can work on any file in the company confidently knowing that they are working with the latest information. The only true Con is the magnitude of the learning curve. But with the seminars and help articles, you can feel supported and know you are not alone. There are many people who can help you out. There are WAY more pros than cons - really.

It's completely streamlined our business, increased profitability and reduced time wasted on looking for things, or duplicating tasks. It's really easy to setup and maintain and you don't need an administrator to manage it for you. We have much more control over our emails now, assigning them to work and colleagues and setting up work such as on-boarding, system setup, or IAS and BAS is a breeze using templates. Client tasks help us receive information from clients in a more timely manner. There are too many features to list! But I'd pretty much tried everything on the market prior to Karbon and this - well it just ticks ALL the boxes and does what it's meant to do!

I'd love to be able to pin a note to the top of the work timelime. But that's not really a con, it's just a feature request!!!

Sorting works and then individual tasks are great. Also, the auto-remind option is a huge time saver for our firm! I also really like the internal and external comments functions.

The analytics are a bit clunky to set up. It'd be really nice to be able to see projected budgeting, etc... but unless you have fixed prices for everything, it doesn't work and takes a long time to set up.

Triage has eased the pain of dealing with the ever growing problem and distractions of managing emails. Digital communication with the customer and team members is smooth and easy. Workflow management and process templates has been a real game changer!

Can’t think of any Cons… I feel this is a good thing. 😉

Features and ability to customize your workflow are close to perfect for accounting firms.

Difficult to do capacity planning without add-on for Practice Intelligence, and I'm having issue with Practice Intelligence.

The software is so simple but yet so amazingly powerful. You don't have to spend hours and hours getting it set up. You can just jump right in and use it and then add more as you get familiar with the software. So many times I have to invest tens of hours to get an application set up only to be frustrated that it is not functional weeks after purchase. With Karbon you can just jump right in and start using it and refine it as you learn and use the software. The onboarding team is amazing and very responsive. Customer support is the best I have ever experienced. Available 24/7 and immediately responsive. This experience will be the one I measure all others by, from now on everyone must meet the Karbon Standard.

No cons were added to this review

I like that the app looks great, it has really great potential to be the perfect project management software in the future. I use it as a checklist for all my work items. The client task option is also great for reminding our clients of outstanding items we need from them.

It's slow to load your work and sometimes work gets lost in the To-do's if they aren't assigned correctly by your colleagues (which is common when we are really busy). Karbon is willing to take our comments and ideas into consideration and always have great customer service.

I've been looking for a solution like Karbon for a few years. I'm a sole trader right in the middle of 52 different financial year end client jobs (I am juggling 52 clients in a 10 day window right now). I am normally out of control at this time of year, but I have found time write this. Each job is scheduled, I know who is waiting for who, how many hours I need and importantly the dollars to flow...

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I am looking forward to ongoing product development. I've seen great new features in the first 3 months already.

Well where do we start - how we are now more productive with e-mails, the work flow tasks, the dashboards and now Insights!

Budgets, time and fees are the main things that are lacking as is the issue with the inflexibility of deadlines but hopefully we might have found a workaround.

Most of our team already used their email inbox as a todo list, Karbon takes this functionality so much further and incorporates other workflows, CRM and team management. Client Tasks allow automation of regular information requests from clients helping our team focus on the actual work. The fortnightly release sprints are one of our favourite things about Karbon. When we on boarded the Karbon team promised lots of features and everyone has materialised.

Karbon is still missing some basic email functions that can prove frustrating and mean you still need to occasionally switch back to Gmail to get something setup.

We love that all emails are shared with the entire team and that at any one time we can also view the status of any piece of work. The checklists for both our team and our clients are also revolutionary in terms of the way we work.

The reporting functionality is lacking. No calendar view of tasks.

Shared workflows fully integrated with our email system. Good privacy control recently introduced, Communications with team members that avoids the use of email, I could go on and on but best you see for yourself

No mobile app yet. Integration with Xero contacts would be nice but basically an excellent system though there are always more things we as users would want, we are never satisfied!

Being able to send automated emails and checklists to clients with reminders is absolutely brilliant You can also create you own templates and roll them out with different timing for each task i.e. after creating the task another task can be due 2 days after which is great

Hard to see a contact task list as the screen is locked about half way down and when you have recurring tasks these are created for about a month so if you say had a daily task and others it’s hard to distinguish between them

Easy to use Great team transparency Reduce emails

A bit of a mindset shift, but if implemented correctly with a positive team it’s fine

I love the support Karbon has to offer. I love the work templates that allow our work flow to be consistent among clients. And, I love focusing on work instead of email.

It takes a while to get used to focusing on task management instead of your email. However, it's worth it because you become more focused.