Office Tools has streamlined our office, we now only use 1 program where we used to use three.

Everything is in one place. I can track the progress of projects that co workers are doing, so when someone calls and can tell quicker where we are on there return or other accounting service.

Pros

Can add To Do's in program for reminders to do several things. Keep track of appointments easily. Documents are easy to find. Can add notes about clients. Can track status of projects and set due dates. Can send documents out for esignatures securely and its easy for clients to sign and return.

Cons

Wip and A/R balances don't match from end of month to beginning of next month. When adding Wip to invoices, system writes off balance to zero instead of showing profit if billed amount is still over the amount of WIP on bill. Documents for business clients is harder to sort, employees like to have folders.

Office Tools "was" the next best thing. Honest review: I have "loves" and "hates"

The portals are easier for my customers to use than my old portal product. Customer service: none unless they can sell you more product or $$. Often times unresponsive. Billing flexibility definitely better than my old product but recurring monthly or quarterly not as automated as I would like. We found the dashboard to be very confusing and counter productive as far as tasks, appointments and to-do items, my staff was still keeping spreadsheets of their projects for clarity. Too many extra steps required to completely clear something from your view of things to do. free-flow document management took a bit to get used to over windows folder structure, but very manageable. We have actually now split into two different products as we wanted beefier document management tools. Calendar connecting with exchange was a hot mess.

Pros

There are a lot of things I love about this software and it was a vast improvement 3 years ago over what I was using. Love: Project tracking, although not as complete as we would like - we have actually left for one that has a more Kan Ban style visual approach, with the ability to tag colored status tags on a project as it moves through the process. Love: Billing: select all time entries related to a project to mark up and bill, or bill all out marked up for a monthly subscription client. Love: ability to link charge card processing both to portal and to invoice. Love - time reports for easy payroll processing. My clients love the portals.

Cons

Hate: document management presentation - must specifically look for emails or notes related to a project: have since moved to a product that has a chat-style interface perfect for a remote workforce. Hate: could never get project reports to print everything I needed. Matter of filters. I will give them the benefit and say perhaps I didn't learn that part well enough. Hate: tech support used to be terrible before they were bought out, has improved but still not great. I may now be really spoiled by the product I moved to - response sometimes within minutes. Hate: BEWARE: their contract has auto renewal without positive confirmation from user. I left them because I spent countless hours with their tech support, and many many $$ in tech support, and by their own admission, it was an issue they were aware of, and nothing to be done about . Now they want to charge me for the entire year and not let me out of it, unless I spend countless more time and $$ to try to resolve the issue that they already know they could not resolve. We have been receiving an error message when logging in for months. They know about it. Yes, you can just click through it and log in, but it is another annoyance that they are aware of yet still want to charge me for an entire year when I have limped through the last several like a dedicated customer. The ability to link my calendar in exchange to that in Office Tools was a deal maker/breaker for me.

Fantastic Software

I think the interactivity of this program makes it a winner and puts it at the forefront of innovating in its industry.

Pros

All client information is available to each member of the team, and viewing the progress of the tasks being completed is very easy. In a virtual environment it has become more important to be able to monitor one another on a team without “micromanaging” and constantly having status meetings, so this is fabulous.

Cons

Sometimes the video tutorials are a bit confusing, so I prefer speaking to someone through the phone support. Reading the articles isn’t as self explanatory as it is made out to be, but this can be different based on who is using this software.

Could be a good product but no customer service to help you realize its potential.

Trying to get answers to specific questions is futile. There is no attempt to identify a problem. They are dismissive if they have never seen it before . As you show them, on your screen, what the problem is and ask for a solution you get - "you need the newest update, that will get rid of the problem" or "it is your fault" or my personal favourite - "that doesn't happen" as they watch it happening on the screen.

Pros

Love the time feature. It is easy to record the time you spend on a file. You can have multiple timers going to track clients that you have stopped working on while you answer the phone, or wait for info from them. Our billings went up 20 % immediately because we were keeping track of our time better. The project management is great as long as everyone is vigilant about tracking their files. It is a constant challenge to get employees to record the movement of a project but constant vigilance and discussion gets the point across to new staff quickly.

Cons

There is no follow up on queries, compliments or complaints. They only call if they want to sell you more. It could be a great product if the customer service was there. Someone that will look at the problems and discuss possible solutions or a work around. But that doesn't happen so thank you Capterra for giving us alternatives to look into.

Great productivity tool but has some issues

It streamlined our business and made every step clear for each team member. The projects flow nicely from one person to next. Especially while we work remotely because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it allows us to work efficiently without missing a beat.

Pros

OfficeTools creators have thought of every aspect of the business and that's what we loved. Any questions that we had "can we do this or can we do that" the answer was yes. You can create projects, assignments, To Do and have it set-up anyway that works for your team. You can use it for marketing emails with groups, etc. Very well designed.

Cons

It has glitches and it takes some time to learn how to use it. For instance, I don't need to use Lacerte, but I had to have it installed so I could use OfficeTools, otherwise, I kept getting error messages. And then, you have to make sure you are logged in to Lacerte every morning or the program won't work properly and the only way you realize that is when you are looking for an assignment or a document and you don't see it - then you inquire from your team and they say "Oh, it's there, I can see it..." then you realize you need to log back in for the software to refresh and show you everything. It doesn't notify you that Lacerte has been logged off. Also, the training module and how it works was a bit confusing for us.