It takes a lot to run your business. You don’t need to waste time keeping track of disconnected paper trails due to unnecessary manual work.
Software tools can help make your job and your team’s work more efficient, but there are so many on the market — each with a unique specialization or mix of features. The search and evaluation process can be overwhelming.
We provide software lists like this one to help you learn about new platforms or review strengths and weaknesses of the ones you’ve already been considering.
While business owners in different industries seek slightly different features and experiences when shopping for new software, there’s one element everyone should consider: cost. Knowing your monthly software budget is helpful, but identifying the value you hope to get for said cost is more important.
Before you commit to any subscription-based platform that seems to fit your needs, go beyond a high-level overview and find out:
We’re helping you begin the process of evaluating a wide range of business management tools by covering their notable features, pros, cons and pricing.
We’ll look at software platforms for:
In our experience, service businesses need to be able to manage as many functions in one place as possible. And we built a platform to help them do just that. Before you review the more limited platforms in the upcoming sections, learn what Accelo could help you accomplish.
Accelo is a cloud-based client work management platform designed to help professional services firms, including agencies, consulting firms and MSPs, manage client relationships from prospecting and projects through to payments and retainers. The platform can handle complex projects, as it contains a wide range of project templates and auto-assigns tasks based on quoted work.
No matter your industry, you can customize Accelo to expand internal visibility, improve collaboration and increase profits.
Create custom retainers to easily manage all types of recurring work
Starting at $50 per product per user per month, your cost will depend on your needs. You pay only for the licenses you’ll use for each product: Sales, Projects, Tickets, Retainers, Billing and Reports.*
In each section below, discover what real users say about specific facets of Accelo.
When client work is your focus, you need targeted tools for achieving maximum productivity with daily tasks. Accelo is the ultimate choice for managing unlimited projects while keeping track of project time, client billing, retainers and more in one centralized platform.
What Accelo Users Say: Measurable Boosts in Productivity“From everyone’s point of view, all the information you need to know is right there in Accelo. It’s having that single system with all the information that just makes it so efficient.” - Stuart Watson, LeapIT, whose business achieved a 50% increase in productivity in two years
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Want to check out other options? Here are three more project management platforms to consider.
Hive is a productivity tool that helps teams manage projects and processes with flexible project layouts, native email, resourcing, group messaging and file sharing. Built with hybrid and remote teams in mind, the platform supports collaborative work with communication tools like video chats and shareable notes.
Hive offers a 14-day free trial and three pricing tiers:*
READ MORE: Accelo vs. Hive
Teamwork is a project management solution built for client-based businesses. The software encourages internal and external collaboration with various task organization views and unlimited client access. It offers time tracking and schedule forecasting to help professional services teams balance their workload, plus budget management and profitability tracking tools. Add-ons are available for help desk, video chat, CRM and document management.
Teamwork offers a “Free Forever” plan for up to five users. However, client-based teams that need access to billing and invoicing, team chat, custom reports and sufficient project templates will need to sign up for the more costly Grow or Scale tier.*
Each paid tier has a five-seat minimum.
READ MORE: Accelo vs. Teamwork
Wrike is a work management tool that consolidates internal and external communication for teams of all sizes. The interface provides at-a-glance project progress and tracks goal progress for multiple teams within an organization.
Wrike offers a 14-day free trial and five pricing plans:*
Tracking time accurately is a building block for many other client work functions — and a driver behind potentially critical decisions. If your team doesn’t yet have a reliable time-tracking solution, preferably one that automatically attaches logs to tasks, projects, invoices and more, it’s time to consider Accelo.
What Accelo Users Say: Accurately Tracking Billable Time“We’re more accurate with our time logging now because there’s the function of being able to press ‘play’ when you start a piece of work. Now, every minute is being captured.” - Beccy Soderlund, Fitzgerald HR, on the value of intuitive time tracking
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For comparison, here’s a rundown of three additional time-tracking tools.
Clockify is a free time-tracking app that helps teams and individuals log time spent on tasks and projects using a combination of automatic timers and manual entry. The option to create teams can help project managers oversee the total time on a project. Clockify can be used to calculate payroll and billable hours.
Clockify has a free plan with limited features, plus four additional tiers:*
Harvest is a time-tracking software that offers flexible timesheets and the ability to invoice clients and accept payments directly through the platform. Its range of reports goes beyond simple time logs to display team capacity, project costs and more in a variety of visual formats.
Harvest offers two pricing tiers and a 30-day free trial of its Pro tier:*
Toggl Track is a time-tracking tool with timesheets, billable time reports and budgeting features. Users can solely use timers or customize them with details like tags to categorize segments of time. Toggl Track can also be used to calculate payroll for both employees and contractors.
All new users get a 30-day free trial of Toggl Track Premium, and there are four tiers to choose from:*
Once you have time-tracking methods in place, the next step is to use your data to improve resource planning. With a scheduling dashboard like Accelo’s, professional services teams are able to engage in accurate capacity planning and resource forecasting.
What Accelo Users Say: The Power to Project Revenue“We can go into the system and I know where people are working today. I can tell you where they’re going to work tomorrow. I can actually tell you where they’re going to work for the next four to six weeks now. And because I know that, I can project revenue.” - Nathan Thomas, Tambla, on the impact of resource forecasting
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Want to explore other platforms, too? See three options below.
Hubstaff is a time-tracking and employee-monitoring software with productivity features meant to help businesses gain improved insights into employee workload. The app tracks time through manual and automated tools, sets employee time limits and collects data for detailed timesheets and time reports.
Hubstaff offers a 14-day free trial and four pricing tiers:*
Kantata, formerly Mavenlink and Kimble, offers project management, business intelligence, operations management, resource management and task management features. The newly merged platform touts its suite of integrations as a customizable solution for professional services firms.
Proprietary integration platform
Budget change requests and approvals
Lacks some essential capabilities to support the full client journey
Kantata SX requires a Salesforce subscription for CRM
Kantata offers four subscription levels:*
READ MORE: Accelo vs. Kantata
Mosaic is a resource and workforce management software featuring AI-powered tools for scheduling, team building and more. The platform makes project planning and resource capacity planning simpler and more efficient. Mosaic also features budget, time tracking and project management tools and reporting dashboards.
Mosaic has a 30-day free trial and three pricing tiers:*
Managed allocation of resources needs to be paired with good financial practices. A major component of profitability is accuracy. One significant benefit of using Accelo is being able to automatically generate accurate invoices and bill clients in bulk. You can even use the platform to stay on top of ongoing work with automated retainer management. Accelo also integrates with top accounting platforms for easy syncing.
What Accelo Users Say: Connected Billing“Task and email management are built into the ecosystem, with seamless time logging and billing. I haven't seen this offered anywhere else. Rather than just integrate with your email, you can work from within the program, all the while recording your time and billing rate for each task automatically.” - Joshua K., G2 User, on the value of integrating billing with project management
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Check out three more billing and accounting software options below.
Sage Intacct is a cloud-based accounting software with planning and automation tools to streamline your business processes. The platform helps businesses manage projects, resources and budgets and increase visibility. It can function as an ERP software connecting multiple entities.
Sage Intacct requires custom quotes.*
Xero is versatile accounting software that can also be used for task management, with functions ranging from bookkeeping to payroll to data reporting. Its main purpose is business accounting, and it’s designed to automate and simplify repetitive tasks required to keep track of your business finances.
Xero offers 75% off all plans for the first three months.*
Zoho Invoice is online invoicing software that helps users manage invoices, track expenses and accept online payments. The platform can be customized to meet the needs of multiple industries and offers project billing, time tracking, reporting and a client portal.
Zoho Invoice is a free platform.*
Generating detailed reports is essential for feeling confident about data-driven decisions. You need a platform that uses all of your project progress and task completion data, plus time logs, budgets and more to automatically create a real-time picture of your business performance. Accelo’s reports are powerful and intuitive.
What Accelo Users Say: Saving Time and Frustration“The number of reports I used to pull — it was such a waste of time. Now, any team member can generate live lists without guidance and save them easily without having to export over and over and replace files.” - Laura Macauley, HeimLantz CPAs and Advisors, on the ease of real-time reports
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Explore three additional platforms with robust reporting.
AgencyAnalytics is a reporting platform built to help marketing agencies complete client reporting automatically. Its 70+ integrations and customizable widgets help agency owners pull clients’ key data into white-labeled dashboards.
AgencyAnalytics offers a 14-day free trial and three pricing tiers:*
Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence software that helps teams model and visualize data. Users can monitor KPIs, collaborate on dashboards and share reporting with external stakeholders. Power BI offers multiple products in their suite, including Power BI Desktop and Power BI Embedded, so teams have flexibility on how the platform fits into their existing tech stack.
Power BI has one option for individual Pro pricing and two options for Premium:*
Tableau is a visual analytics platform that helps organizations of all types and sizes transform the way they use their data to make informed business decisions. The platform supports the analytics journey, from data preparation, to real-time analysis, to sharing insights with teammates and other stakeholders.
When you adopt software with one isolated feature or function and then connect them all, you spend more time and money. Your efficiency and client work delivery may suffer, which ultimately cuts into your profitability.
A simple solution that’s built for service businesses can prevent you from committing to disjointed platforms that don’t function well for your industry.
One Accelo user in IT loves how intuitive it is:
It feels like a natural product because it’s designed for people.
Daniel McNaught, Fluidity
See what all the hype is about: Start your free trial or schedule a demo.