Function Point

Pros

Depth of information and availability of data. The amount of information can be intimidating to a new user, but with experience, the ability to not simply keep track of projects, but to be able to monitor the health of your agency is essential. Function Point's robust reporting tools make that possible.

Cons

Lack of ability to customize and support workflow options that are outside of established understandings within the system. Additional client portal functionality for example.

Pros

The company pages in Function Point provide us with all the information we need because we're able to customize them to our needs. We can include the client information, but we also have team information so one page tells everyone who is involved with that client's projects. The customizable dashboard also allows each person to view things that they feel are important to them.

Cons

I find Function Point to not be as "functional" as its name might suggest. It is often laggy when you click on links. Getting to pages that you want to be on takes many clicks instead of just one (for example, it seems strange to me that clicking on the name of a "schedule" within a company takes me to a jumbled list of tasks rather than the actual schedule page where I can see things laid out in order). There isn't a good calendar view that allows a person to drag and drop tasks (and since I manage our company's design calendar, it would be great if I could do this since it's basically like putting together a giant puzzle).

The customization seems to have stopped with the "dashboard" type of views of the main page and schedule pages. If you want to view, for instance, the time allotted to people within the company for a day, you might visit the Work Planning View, which overall is a great view (shows tasks assigned and a total number of hours allotted to each person). The downside is it always only shows everyone in the company, which isn't ever what I need. Being able to choose who I see in this view (and others like it) would improve the functionality a lot.

There are also too many different ways to view things. There are at least three different ways to see how many hours of work a person has scheduled for the day. There are a couple of different views for tasks within a certain project. It can be overwhelming.

Pros

It's really great for projects. The structure for setting up estimates and Jobs and Tasks works great when you're focusing on individual projects.

And creating Tasks are straightforward, we love that you can pass tasks back-and-forth between team members.

We can pretty easily communicate new tasks and jobs/projects to people who don't work in the office. Between Job description, Tasks descriptions and comments on tasks, Notes and comments on notes, and the ability to upload files, there's a lot of power there. Nice to have a track record of things.

And when you're billing for an individual project, the billing function is great.

Cons

Billing for retainer clients is not simple or easy. Integrated billing was a big reason we went with Function Point, and it works great for individual projects, but I think the retainer function was added on as an after thought, and is very clunky. To the point that we're thinking about only using the FP billing feature for projects, and just billing Retainer clients straight out of QuickBooks.

Also, the Reports are fairly worthless. They are so complicated to interpret, and confusing to create. Most of the reports don't pull up in the browser, they are automatic downloads to an .XML file. And some of the files names are completely different from what they are called in Function Point. I once spent half a day trying to recreate a report I had made a few months ago, but could not find the report listed anywhere in the Report section. It took a support ticket for me to find out that even thought the file name that had downloaded with the report was called "Cost Recovery Rate Report By Client", the report I had to run was called "Billable Hours Recovered By Staff".

And the Jobs are pretty great, but it is annoying that you have to create and Estimate every time you create a new job. With Retainer clients, we don't always have to get an estimate approved before we start on a job, so it's just an annoying step. And it's another level of settings you have to go through to get things in the Job right.

Pros

I like that I can access it anywhere and on whatever device I happen to be using. I rely on the weekly timesheet for most of my time entry stuff. The TAB through interface makes it really simple.

Cons

My biggest complaint is that when you make a mistake or key something that needs clarification, a dialog box requiring an action comes up nowhere near where you're currently working on the page. And you have to click the OK button to close it. It won't accept the return key or tab key.

Say you're looking up a job. You type in a few letters, hit TAB and a list comes up. That list is at the bottom of the page and you have to mouse over your selection and click it in order to move on. Even if you don't see the job you're looking for in the list, you still have to mouse over and click OK.

It's a small thing, but compared to all the other software I use each day, this is a pretty clunky issue for me.

Pros

I like that I have all our client's estimates and jobs at my fingertips when I need them, in a organized manner. I can see the overall health of a project at any given time - which helps us stay on budget. I also like being able to move employee's time around to different projects in an efficient manner - just a couple of simple clicks and the time is moved to the right place!

Cons

I wish there was a way to generate a master budget for all estimates related to a specific project. Our clients are always wanting a grand total for what a project, that has multiple jobs involved, is going to cost them. We end of up having to figure this separately and if would save time and resources if this type of feature was added.