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Praesto AE Software
 | 9 Reviews (4.3/5) |
Developed specifically for Architecture and Engineering firms, Praesto AE is a complete, fully integrated system that integrates with existing applications to maximize office and administrative efficiencies, improve client relations and increase revenue.
Praeso AE offers a rock solid core platform to store and maintain all critical business information, providing team members and managers with access to real-time data, as well as ensuring clients remain abreast of project milestones and other key status updates. It is cross platform compatible, running seamlessly on Macs, Windows and iOS devices.
The Praesto AE interface is sleek and intuitive, designed to maximize user efficiency. We really like the dashboard, which provides at-a-glance visibility into key data - tasks, assigned projects, contacts and integrated time tracking. With the system's unique Tracking Fields, firms have the ability to create as many fields necessary to organize projects, each with its own list of defined values. Users can keep notes on each project sheet of events or conversations that are time stamped and searchable, as well as access a company-wide address book that is always up to date.
Praesto AE makes tracking easy. From time slips to project hours, proposals to invoices, consultants to vendors, Praeto AE provides the tools necessary to ensure billing and payments are accurate and timely. These fees, labor costs, billings and receivable are tracked in Praesto and then integrated into QuickBooks for full financial functionality.
For Architecture and Engineering firms seeking a comprehensive solution designed specifically for their industry, Praesto AE is a user-friendly, cost-effective option to consider.
9 Reviews of Praesto AE
Overall rating
We are a one-person design office that receives a mountain of email and phone calls each day on many projects. Praesto AE allows us to record, manage, and keep on top of all the information. Nothing gets "lost"! Apart from information storage, we now have control over our time, costs, fees and profitability. Having a thorough centralized record of our projects means we also satisfy our PI insurer with our record keeping procedures. Start-up and implementation went smoothly. It took us about a month to work out what we needed and how to do it. Customer Support has been excellent. We are in Australia, and we either get an immediate email or phone call to our requests, or it is there the next morning.
Overall rating
We are a mechanical engineering firm and are an original user of Praesto AE, maybe even the first one! It solved a lot of our project organization woes, and assembled all of the data, both project and billing, in a single, easy to use format. Promotional material and job history is easier than ever to compile, and we don't forget relevant projects anymore. We have over 1,000 projects on our database now, with easy access to any information on them. I highly recommend Praesto AE as a simple to use, cost-effective database tool to manage a business. We still use Quickbooks for tax and accounting purposes, but Praesto AE does everything else! Call me for a reference anytime.
Overall rating
I have been using the program for over a year. Admittedly, I do not have an accounting background, but it has taken me this long to feel like I am starting to understand how the program works. There are no contextual help notes; you just have to figure things out on your own as you go. For example, you just have to know somehow that you have to add and refresh any new billable rates and/or staff to each job; why should you have to do that in the first place? Seems like that database would be available automatically.
It would be great to have some cancel buttons when you start to set up a job, or an invoice. If you change your mind, you have to delete it, or allow it to be created and then go back and delete it. I almost always get a quick response when I e-mail a question. Doug has been great to get on-line and show us how things work. Some training videos would be nice. We have devoted many, many hours to get the Proposal and Invoice modules to work pretty well, but we still have to remember to check every box, fill in every line, etc., or we get unpredictable results.
It would be great to have some cancel buttons when you start to set up a job, or an invoice. If you change your mind, you have to delete it, or allow it to be created and then go back and delete it. I almost always get a quick response when I e-mail a question. Doug has been great to get on-line and show us how things work. Some training videos would be nice. We have devoted many, many hours to get the Proposal and Invoice modules to work pretty well, but we still have to remember to check every box, fill in every line, etc., or we get unpredictable results.
Overall rating
I am more of the technical support person in our office, I installed Praesto AE, do the updates, and trouble shoot. For the most part we really like the system and when we have questions or concerns, Doug himself usually addresses them right away. That is probably the biggest advantage over our previous software; we had a very hard time getting answers or things fixed. We have been running Praesto AE about 2 years.
Overall rating
When we started our structural engineering business we knew we would need software that would track our projects, expenses, payments, hours, and everything else that is involved in having a business. It took us a few months to find Base Builders, and since then we have been very happy with it. We are able to track everything we need and transfer it all to our QuickBooks. The customer support with Base Builders is awesome. When first learning how to use the program, I had a lot of questions. All of my questions were answered with patience until I understood what I needed to do. And still when I have questions, the support is there. Base Builders has been great and continues to provide all that we need to allow our business to be successful.
Overall rating
I work for a Civil-Site Engineering consulting firm with about 12 people. We were looking for software that would track our projects from inception to completion, including billing and time/task capabilities. We currently use an old DOS based database to track our projects and do our billing by hand. We have been very pleased with the customer support and help in getting all of our existing information transferred over. It took a little longer than we expected, but we didn't exactly have the template. We are still in the process of fully integrating the office to this system, but so far it has been very intuitive to use.
Overall rating
As a small engineering firm we handled all of our accounting through QuickBooks but needed something to help our Project Managers manage their project budgets, schedules, and office manpower. We found Praesto AE and after learning more decided Praesto looked like it was written for us. We now use Praesto timesheets for all of our time entry, which allows us to see real time staff utilization, monitor project budgets, easy invoicing, proposal tracking, etc. Praesto has been easy to learn and use. The customer support has by far been the best I have ever seen from any company in my career. Praesto AE has greatly benefited our firm and all of our project managers. Each manager can quickly and easily check budgets so they can spend more time focused on clients and projects.
Overall rating
Preasto AE is the replacement for another Filemaker based accounting and management system our design firm had used for years. As we were already familiar with Filemaker, the transition was easy. The Preasto team has been very diligent in helping move all our data to the new system and extremely helpful in showing us the myriad of new accounting and management tools at our disposal. We look forward to populating the central database with past and future project data to help identify project costing; in the past it was scattered throughout office computers. Also, from an accounting standpoint, being able to push all entries directly into Quickbooks from Praesto AE will eliminate duplicate entries.
Overall rating
We have been using Project Management software on the Macintosh for the last twelve years and this is simply the program "You Must Have" if you are in the A/E community. Not only is this a robust solution to Digital Project Management, but it also runs on the Macintosh by using Filemaker as the database. We have been working with BaseBuilders for over a year now and have watched this program blossom into a very robust solution that covers every aspect of a project's life from proposal to closeout.
Implementation was straightforward. We where running ArchiOffice and the data generated from that program was easily transferred to the new system. BaseBuilders to this day have always been simply a phone call away and the Owner actually calls you to help you resolve problems. The program allows you to develop proposals, track time and cost and then convert that proposal into a live project. Forecasting of cash flow and the project tracking of payables and receivables has been an invaluable tool for our firm. We recently installed the latest upgrade and where happy to see a few of the upgrades we had requested from BaseBuilders to handle administrative duties during construction.
Simply stated, software is only as good as the customer support behind it, and everyone writing and selling software should take a lesson or two from these guys.
Implementation was straightforward. We where running ArchiOffice and the data generated from that program was easily transferred to the new system. BaseBuilders to this day have always been simply a phone call away and the Owner actually calls you to help you resolve problems. The program allows you to develop proposals, track time and cost and then convert that proposal into a live project. Forecasting of cash flow and the project tracking of payables and receivables has been an invaluable tool for our firm. We recently installed the latest upgrade and where happy to see a few of the upgrades we had requested from BaseBuilders to handle administrative duties during construction.
Simply stated, software is only as good as the customer support behind it, and everyone writing and selling software should take a lesson or two from these guys.
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