The best time & project tracking system for our consulting business

Over 20 years, we've gone from Excel-based time reports to one or two other systems in our office. They all were not that great but got the job done. Then we tried Intervals and it was like a breath of fresh air. It is an easy to use (once you get used to it and go through the training), logically laid out system, that is reliable and has good support. Our whole firm has used it for over 5 years. It has evolved nicely during that time. The company that makes it seems to be led by good people. I've introduced several other firms to it and they have been happy with it also.

Pros

First, we've been a user for 5+ years and Intervals has been rock-solid. No disasters, no corrupted data, etc.
Second, the system is very logical in how you work with it
Third, Time entry is a breeze, which makes billable time tracking across a group of 30 people much easier to do, because we get good participation from our team members
Fourth, the ability to export any report to Excel, PDF, etc. is fantastic. Every app should provide consistent output format in various file formats, if that makes sense. No matter which export format you choose, it looks like it should when it is displayed, printed or emailed, etc.
Fifth, I think their support is great, although we don't need to use it much given how easy it is (once you get used to it)
Sixth, these guys don't rest on their laurels and instead, continually improve the software

Cons

It has needed a mobile app for a long time. We've been waiting for it for a couple years. I've heard it is coming soon, I'm guessing early 2019. We'll see.
It absolutely needs one more access level for managers, project managers and executives. It kind of has two of the three, as well as a couple others, but this has been needed for a while.

RidgeRun Engineering Review

The tool is excellent for cross / site, global task management, time tracking and invoicing for time billed on an hourly basis. We also sell software and had to work around some issues to reflect invoices for software sales in the system. We are really looking for request tracking, estimating and resource planning in the same intuitive, simple method as the other features. Intervals folks are fantastic at customer support.. Great rating for the features that exist!

Pros

Simple task management and time management in a great web based tools. Intuitive, not over featured which is the plague of many tools. Good reporting, fantastic customer support

Cons

We really would like a simple customer inquiry, estimating and resource planning front-end with the same simple interface, not over featured, but covering the 80% of common requests. Invoicing should have an ability to have non-labor invoices kept out from the labor reporting. Payments made on non-labor items seem to subtract from the outstanding balance report which is what is used to determine which customers have outstanding labor items to bill. This has lead to some time against customers projects to not get billed. We have worked around it in a clunky way by creating "For billing purposes only" projects. All these extra projects take from the number of active projects which drives our license cost, but is necessary to avoid missing billing for labor spent on projects

Very Pleased

I purchased Intervals for my small business to make it easier to track and assign tasks. We previously had a system that no one (including me) used because it was not at all intuitive and was a poor fit with what we needed. I looked at a lot of other systems, including BaseCamp, Asana and a few others that are commonly recommended. Intervals was the best fit for what we were seeking.

Pros

The biggest 'pro' is that everyone (!) who works at my business uses it and finds that it is very intuitive. Everyone agrees that it makes our work easier and is a pleasure to use. It is very affordable for the features it offers and the numbers of projects/tasks that you can create a big selling point for me was that I could get everything that I needed for about $50 or so per month, without worrying about immediately outgrowing the system. Intervals is very forgiving when errors are made it warns you when you are about to leave a page without saving, for instance, but doesn't bombard you with alerts that aren't needed. It has plenty of room for saving documents and allows comments to be made in Intervals via any email address. It stood out from some other software in that it is also more customizable. Their customer service is excellent, and you can tell that they actually use the software and have thought through and learned what works and what doesn't. A fully-functional timer / timesheet system is another big plus.

Cons

Intervals introduces new features every quarter or so one of the latest is adding files through drag and drop. The lack of drag and drop used to be the biggest con for me, since I upload files often. So, no longer a con. That system could be a little more streamlined, and there are some file management features that I'd like to see improvements on (and which I've recommended to Intervals staff  I love that you can do that and that they actually listen!), such as the ability to organize files into folders (each task sort of acts like a folder, so this is not a big issue in most cases sometimes we have 50 files attached to a task so we have to scroll a bit). Also, the interface design is a little less contemporary than some others. However, these are all very minor, picky issues in comparison to what you get with Intervals software that more than does its job and offers more bang for the buck than its competitors.

Rock solid - powerful - affordable - Project management tool

We have been using Intervals for 6 years and it is still the perfect tool for our engineering company. We trust this tool as our central (and only) hours worked database. We use it to bill our customers, to pay our employees and to follow the progress of of our projects too! It has performed flawlessly for 6 years and it is simply fantastic!!!

Pros

- Cloud-based. A must for us as our employees can work from where ever they are
- Reliable - never lost data or obtained a bad report
- Powerful - The data in the database can be analyzed in many different ways as provided by the built-in reports. Easy export to external processing tools if necessary.
- PERFECT for project-based companies. Perfect!

Cons

Not much. Some may find it more complicated than simpler tools, but that is the price to pay to enjoy a professional grade tool...

The Best Project Management software available.

We spent 2 months researching all the available software programs and none could meet all our requirements with the exception of Intervals. This software is so simple that our entire company use sit. We set it up in a day and it was operational 2 days latter. The training was simple so all the users felt comfortable in learning it and then advancing to the more powerful features of the software. It was become the base of communication for the company and drives efficiency in reducing non value added activities. Whenever I have a question on a feature or our data, I usually get an answer within an hour. Very fast response.

Pros

It is so simple and yet so powerful. I love the reporting and the communication updating.
Costs. Their costing model work very well for us.
Project updating. Its real time and I am always up to speed with the latest updates on the projects.
Timesheets. The method of tracking progress using timesheets is an extremely powerful tool.

Cons

I hope this software lasts forever. I cant ever image life without it.

Downloading of large data can be better but I can manage

Great all around Product! Highly recommend!

We began using Intervals several years ago when our In-house Creative Services team outgrew the Excel Spreadsheet. We were inputing data, tracking project, etc. through Excel and then time tracking through Harvest. It was very redundant with an excessive amount of data entry for each task that came in. We were looking for a simple solution, easy input, and time tracking. Intervals had all of the feature that we needed. It's worked very well.

Pros

I like most the external request queue. I will often send emails to this as a reminder and has made tracking projects and submitting projects very easy. No complicated forms to fill out. I like the ability to run times and input data at a later date. The reports have been very helpful for performance review and project audits.

Cons

I would like it to be more adaptable to forms and collaboration with online users. It is hard to get everyone to always change statuses and track time - but I think that is a people training issue. We don't invoice so it would be nice to maybe turn off some of the functionality that we don't use. Would love to get some training or webinars on how to better use this software.

Single most important decision to enhance my business

Since I use the the time management of intervals customer satisfaction has greatly increased due to better delivery timing. Moreover I was able to adjust pricing and project cost calculations neatly, having great statistics and overviews of previous projects at hand. I would recommend this tool to everyone who offers services to customers and works on his/her own account. I reckon to have increased my income by more than 30% due to this valuable software.

Pros

Timers at the bottom of the page counting every single second needed for a certain task.
Task management with calendar.
"Summary" and "Break it down" reports with possibility to create a nice and customisable pdf-version for customers.

Cons

Total rates inside projects are always calculated based on time and hourly rate. It could be interesting to be able to assign a total cost independently.

Get as granular as you want

We've been using Intervals since we were a 3 person studio and find it a solid, reliable way to keep track of project time and tasks. The team finds it easy to learn and use, and i like the variety and options of running reports. Only recently did we start using the "subtasks" checklist to group items together and not drive ourselves crazy - a great move. We will set up templates using this method, to give each new similar project a good head start on what needs to be done, in what order, and in what time period. I appreciate being able to set time estimates so the producers know how they are tracking against budgeted time. The new dashboard helps us get a big picture of the budget. I hope the next evolution of this tool will allow for improved PPM (Project Portfolio Management) so the project managers can see where we have gaps in our schedule and an opportunity to shift work around or accept more.

Pros

Reliable up time, easy to learn, variety of reports available

Cons

Can't really manage the portfolio of projects (seeing across team members and tasks to understand where we have capacity).