It does what it says on the tin. Work-Flow-MAX

I am the director of Right Brain Insights, and CFO for a company called T3 Group – T3 Facility Services Pty Ltd. I help SMEs use data to clarify their strategic direction and boost their business performance. In the case of T3 Group, that’s what we’ve been able to do with WorkflowMax. Eleven months ago, the only thing that could be vaguely understood was total sales to a client. However, in order to understand the cost base and truly drive profit, and link it back to our goals, we needed to be able to break down jobs, and their cost, as well as give the guys one site and the guys in the office something that could allow them to be far more efficient and far more effective at what they needed to do. We looked at WorkflowMax, GeoOp and Connect2Field. WorkflowMax is just a standout, across these in terms of its reporting, its connection with Xero, and its detail. We needed to have really good insights over our cash flow going forward. We use WorkflowMax to strip out a pipeline, so we can see cashflow into the future based on job activity. Our target used to be $50,000 a month, it’s now $325,000 minimum and rising. We would not have been able to hit that growth without WorkflowMax. There used to be a fairly substantial lag in invoicing. It used to be around a 14-day delay from the end of a job to actually invoicing it. That’s come down to basically 24, at most 48 hours. We pretty much invoice as soon as the job’s finished. That’s been a really, really tight process and something that’s really cool when you link WorkflowMax to Xero. In January our accounts receivable days was roughly 65 and our accounts payable was roughly 40. We’ve now switched that where our accounts receivable, on average, is about 45 days and our payable is about 48. So being able to switch that and stay on top of it has had a really, really powerful impact. We’re just becoming more organised. So we are doing things far more efficiently. We are, through a system like this, becoming more account

Pros

- Customised reporting & data fields - Real-time tracking - Xero connection - Pricing (so much cheaper than GeoOp & Connect 2 Field at the time we researched) - Backed by Xero

Cons

- Dashboard design. Could be cleaner, maybe customisable - Not life or death, but stronger connection on the cost side. i.e. 'spend money' type transactions linking to Xero.

WorkFlowMax review

Reasonably happy with the experiences

Pros

The ability to calculate and manage task time automatically without having people try to manually work out their hours is very helpful.

Cons

Planning for longer than a month is tricky if you only link jobs to projects that have been approved.

Dont use if quoting is important

Pros

It's OK for tracking jobs once the quote is accepted, and links with Xero quite well. If you have a simple business it'll probably be OK

Cons

Despite repeated requests, WFM is not interested in improving this side of the product. WFM cannot handle multi-line itemised quotes, is slow to use and has very limited functionality. While you can add profiles, and append them to orders it insists on blending all the profiles in together, making itemising a messy, manual process. The cost is OK, again if you have a simple business. Don't try to imagine that these costs are anything like inventory. It is basically a free text field. Tasks can't be combined with costs, so you can't organize complex jobs at the quote stage. I believe you can do more in jobs, but this is handling the data twice. I am searching for an alternative and will be gone as soon as possible. The biggest thing keeping me using it is that I spend 40+ hours doing 20 hours worth of quoting and run out of time to search!

Great for project management

Overall very happy with the product. I am able to allocate different tasks to my projects based on need and then track progress and budget against these individual tasks which is great because it provides an additional layer of granularity in terms of maintaining overview of things.

Pros

We use WFM for project management and timesheet management. It's easy to use and for managing small projects, it is a great product. I am not an administrative user, but from I understand it integrates well with various other products you might be using within the organisation.

Cons

As an end user, it does all that I need it to. No complaints. I don't use any of the reporting capabilities but as a project manager, it allows me track progress and the budget of my projects.

Now Xero Practice Manager - the de facto project management software for your Xero client

Despite the interface being "crowded", the software is still good at what it does. It helps you manage clients well. If you have an accounting practice, especially in New Zealand, you will realize the benefits that it provides in terms of tax filing for your clients.

Pros

WorkflowMax (now XPM) provides most of the project management's functionality that you need in for your Xero client. From adding the client in Xero, assigning jobs to staff, budgeting hours, etc. It has all your needs.

Cons

The software's interface is a bit crowded. There's a lot going on at each screen. It really takes time to master the software. What I find also confusing is that you can add returns for individuals under the company account where they are owners or shareholders.