Avaliações do OfficeTools

Quick and easy entering new contacts. Many ways to classify and group contacts. I'm also a big fan of the "bill to contact" feature. It's easy to focus on the clients you need to contact.

Only one email can be utilized per contact. Not easily managed when contact name has to change and they often do in cases of marriage, divorce, death of one of a couple or sale of company etc.

The days it works without data loss or speed issues. More often than not, it is extremely slow and non-responsive. We have an amazing cloud environment with more than adequate resources for this basic application. Office Tools is the only program that is slow or non-responsive on a daily basis.

There are many many little glitches that we have not brought to supports attention because we were told by your support team: "glitches must have been previously identified to exist". Your engineers told my IT consultant that we were not using the software properly, which resulted in the DATA LOSS we were experiencing. This is complete crap, as I witnessed the issue with my own eyes and know that Office Tools has a critical engineering issue that can result in lost data. I have also experienced the data loss issue across two separate companies (and IT environments) and have experienced this issue as far back as 2014. But that's not important, right?

The ABOVE MENTIONED ISSUE IS PROJECT ASSIGNMENTS CAN REVERT TO PREVIOUSLY ASSIGNED ASSIGNMENT WITHOUT ANY PROOF THE NEW ASSIGNMENT WAS EVER CREATED.

THE PROFILE SYNC DOESN'T WORK. THE CEO ACKNOWLEDGED THIS AS A KNOWN ISSUE YET THE COMPANY IS STILL SELLING IT AS IF IT WORKS.

ACCOUNTS WITH THE SAME PRIMARY CONTACT MAY HAVE THEIR FILE NAME CHANGED BY OFFICE TOOLS WITHOUT THE ABILITY TO CHANGE IT BACK TO THE PROPER NAME.

THE SIN (CANADA) NUMBER DOESNT SHOW PERIODICALLY UNLESS YOU HIT THE EDIT BUTTON, THEN IT MAGICALLY APPEARS.

Overall the software is not reliable and the company culture is disappointing. I brought the data integrity issue to the CEO and he brushed it off as a non issue, despite it being mission critical for his customers. Never will we recommend this software to anyone. It sounds better than it is.

We have been using the software since 2007. It runs our office. All client information is under one hood. We use it to track projects as they move thru the office,capturing time , archiving documents and processing our billing as we move thru the month. We schedule our appointments, track phone calls. We use the client portal as a secure way to deliver and receive documents. I highly recommend this software to all accounting firms. You will no longer miss project deadlines. You will capture more billable time and become more efficient in your daily operations.
Feel free to contact me for more user perspective

The software has most of the workflow functions centralized. Time & Billing, Client Database, a watered down document management, and calendar.

We have used it for 4 years now. The basic functions work well, unless they push an update and it breaks something. (2018.059)

Lots of functions in the software are of zero use to us -
Integration with Lacerte (We use Proseries)
Integration with QB for billing/collections (We are cash basis in QB)
Canon Scanners (We use large multifunction Ricohs)
Portal (No better than our website portal)
Cost - Abacus took over, gave us no communication, and a month before busy season help us hostage and doubled our cost. Here we are a year later and have doubled our cost again. ZERO improvement in the software since they took over and increased cost.
The latest update Abacus pushed out literally broke the software. Printing reports and collecting payments now take extra steps.
Doubling the cost twice with zero improvement to the product is how you lose business.
We are actively looking for a replacement. Even if it costs the same as Office Tools, having communication, customer service, and trust is worth more. They completely fumbled this merger.

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.

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.

easy integration with various programs, easy to use portal and effective DMS system. Add to the easy of setting up the annual engagements and you have a great system.

Least is the cost and required training. further, the program is not yet Cloud-ready. also, the server-based DMS does not provide for security of the data files

Office Tools was very good at client tracking, recording activities and histories.

There is no project management and their customer service is by far the worst I've ever been in contact with. Our renewal was up in 45 days and I sent them an email to let them know that we had fewer employees now and needed fewer licenses. They said I needed to send them notice via certified mail 60 days before my renewal date and they went ahead and renewed us at our higher seat count for another year. I tried calling and emailing to no avail - buyer beware!

The numerous reports and ways in which to cater a report to our specific needs. For example, I can create a WIP which shows work by date, or work by employeee, or work by code. These options have all been useful for different needs.
The contact lists are also versatile which helps with birthdays, phone lists, contact type lists.
Form letters is useful and we have created several this past year catered to contact type.

There have been issues with the document signature feature; months went by with giant red lettering appearing on the documents, so we could not use that feature; when the feature was fixed with a new upgrade, we were not informed of the upgrade.

The email link from Outlook is not reliable and keeps stopping on two of our computers. This feature would save time and keep records straight with our clients, however, we cannot keep it connected.

I'm a long time Office Tools user who was MAD when I got my renewal quote. The quote included 2 more users than our small firm has, and I misunderstood it to mean that you only offered the program with a minimum of 5 users.  The initial quote represented a 162% increase over the prior year and I was informed that the Office Tools user agreement, we would lose access to our data once the subscription expired.

I immediately went shopping for alternatives.  Long story short, he was willing to work with me despite my very vocal displeasure. He was very professional and took the time to answer all my questions thoroughly, as result he helped you retain a long time customer.

FYI, I'm very happy to learn that under Abacus's user agreement, we'll retain read-only access after the expiration of our subscription.

I do not feel there are any cons worth mentioning at this time, or things I like the least about the software

Projects allow us to ensure that Corporate info, Bookkeeping info and Personal Tax info gets properly sorted. Our use of Outlook Sync also ensures that our Office365 Inbox and Sent folders are captured to client's communication. Many shared documents are quickly categorized allowing for a quick, specific search of information.

Invoicing module currently only links to Quickbooks desktop for bookkeeping and we've been using Quickbooks Online for past 4 years. Support Team doesn't always comprehend our "real-life" situations and how we need to operate - thus leaving us not able to use OfficeTools to its full potential.

Ease of use is the plus, but they have re-engineered their layout with the latest update.

Integration with Lacerte and Quickbooks isn't what it used to be. Lacerte 2018 security issues have made the integration cumbersome (in all fairness it's not OTPs fault) because the sync is not a push of the button that it used to be. QB sync is also not working which is completely frustrating.
Support is horrible. You call and stay on hold only to be told 10 min later to submit a ticket online. You submit a ticket online and NEVER get a call. I've gone through this three times!
I can't recommend this product at this time.

I'm a sole practitioner. I've used the product for over 8 years. I mainly use the billing, due date monitoring and portal. Office Tools makes my billing process easy. I have set up standard paragraphs and just insert to complete the invoices. Due date monitoring keeps me aware of due dates and will roll forward projects when completed. I have Thomson Reuters Practice included in a subscription package for essentially no cost, but choose to continue using Office Tools as it is a straight forward robust product.

I really don't have any "Cons" per se. On rare occasions, the software will freeze and I'll have to restart.

The software is very user friendly software, very customizable, very reasonably priced. The customer support is amazing and they are open to feature enhancements. The features I enjoy most are the syncing with QuickBooks, the excel import feature, timers and entering time with ease, activity list keep you organized, project workflow is amazing. Very excited about the web based version coming out at the end of 2017.

Needs to link to other tax software other than just Lacerte.
Number of reports could be improved but not bad.

I like the way it allows the user to drag source documents into the data management program. Emails are also easy to drag into. Most documents are easily dragged into the software program with ease. It also allows to keep track of projects and their progress. Nice feature.

I wish they had a better way to store the information. Yes there are the filters to bring up certain years and data. However, it would be a better software if the data were stored in folders. Where the folders were named and there reside the documents. They would be out of sight until one needs to search for certain information.

I love the convenience of having my contact information, billing history, client data and records all within the same program. It definitely helps maintain a smooth workflow.

This software still has many limits. Multi-tasking is very difficult because you have to constantly change contacts and screens. The report functions are not very robust. I would really like to see Crystal Reports built into OT so that I could truly customize my reports, letters, and invoices.

the information is very accessible. the program is pretty easy to use. has reports that are very helpful and I don't think I use the program to its fullest potential

when an update goes through we seem to have a glitch and when we go into the program it says we are already logged in so we aren't allowed. We have to go in on another user and switch something to be allowed access.

I like the monthly schedule because I can take a look at one page and see what I have coming up for the week. The only complaint is, I am now entering as appointments and in the past I was able to enter as "to do's" Also, am impressed with the customer service when I had problems with resetting my password.

It will take some time to learn all of the possible uses, but like what I have used to date. Do wish there were more training options. We have the assignments set up and I like being able to see what needs to be done but can be overwhelming if you get behind.

Project tracking and shared calenders

Users must have admin control over calendars to view them. It seems users need admin control to do just about anything if it involves other users. We sometimes hire temps. We need them to view the calendar and contacts but we don't trust them to edit them. We have had a number of appointments moved by mistake. We aren't notified about updated until we call in with a problem and are then told they will send us the update. Why aren't the updates pushed out?

The comprehensive design is delightful. It really does give CRM, time and billing, document management, project tracking, calendar and scheduling, and more that I don't even use yet. Nothing else I have looked at for myself or clients compares.

The portal service is a bit cumbersome for our clients sporadic use since the forget their passwords and lose the log in info.