ActiveCollab Reviews & Product Details

Ability to customize the interface to adapt to the company needs. We needed the ability to have events with target dates (and assign the targets to specific people) and also be able to associate instructors/presenters with those events.

The workaround for creating an instructor/presenter record is a bit kludgy. We would like an option to be able to create a dedicated section for instructors versus lumping them into notes. it works but we can see where it could work better. Would also like to be able to create an annual calendar of just events.

Keeping track of multiple training events and all of the moving parts associated with the (contracts, schedules, etc).

I use ActiveCollab as a member of the research group for the management of my ongoing projects. It is a very convenient tool, that allows me showing the other member of the group my progress, intermediate results, final manuscripts.

Overall I am happy with this tool. It could be a bit complicated for the first time, there is why we had an introductory lecture on ActiveCollab.

Ongoing research project management, file exchange, and file storage.

I like the ease of use with email response into a thread. I also like how you can set up private threads and public with clients.

When loading files, sometimes it gets hung-up and it takes longer than necessary.

I use active collab while managing creative projects between different creative team members and the client.

Easy to customize for the unique needs of our organization

I'd like to see better integration into Git

Internal process and communication, engineer and gatekeeper ticket routing/management

I like the look. It's very modern and clean.

There are so many bugs. From time allocations not loading in workload view (which they took forever to roll out). When searching for a project, old and completed projects clog up the autofill results so it's hard to find what you're looking for quickly. Most recently, we have tasks acting like they have dependencies when they in fact, do not.

We're scheduling work to our various employees but also using it to track the progress of client projects and work. We can go back and reference when things were created and completed.

We use ActiveCollab primarily for time tracking. I like that you can assign a task as non-billable or billable by default. It's also easy to see what hours you've tracked and where those hours were tracked to.

A lot of my job involves quoting future projects, and I like to look at past project time reports to help with this. I find that really difficult to do in ActiveCollab's new interface. I sometimes need to pull a particularly old project, possibly several years old, from a list of hundreds of projects. I may not know the exact name of it. From there, I need a list of the time entries. I use the legacy time report to do this, but it's not easy. I also wish that ActiveCollab supported assigning different billing rates at the project level. For example, I have an internal project that runs at a discounted billing rate. I bill as a web designer. I wish that the web designer rate could change on that project instead of remembering to bill a different rate every time. Or, if a project could have a default billing rate set, that would be easier too.

We're able to integrate ActiveCollab with a custom billing system, including pulling time tracking numbers for billing on a schedule. This has helped remove a lot of manual work.

ActiveCollab helped us track time as an agency and keep track of the scope of multiple projects & clients. We tracked profitability partly with this app.

The tasks feature was not helpful for our use case

We tracked scope and profitability using the time tracking feature of activecollab.

ActiveCollab is about the only high quality workflow product that doesn't charge per user. It has a clean no-nonsense UI that is easy to stare at and use. Project, to-do's, and team management are intuitive and flexible enough to mend to all types of products and team organizations. It has customer facing views/logins, a time-tracking app, and an ever increasing amount of other integrations like Slack or Quickbooks. It is the best bang for the buck as far as workflows and project management is concerned and if you're willing to deal with a few of its fundamental quirks, you can shed a number of other apps you may be using.

ActiveCollab seems a little confused as far as being an all inclusive software that fundamentally lacks features other project management (or time management) softwares have. I wish ActiveCollab had a chat feature (although it does interact with Slack) and the time management only allows a user to time track on to-do's that they're assigned (although in the backend in the software, anyone can add a time entry to any task). Likewise there's no simple way to look at all of your projects and see them labeled by client (you have have to click a drop down tab and sort everything you'll ever need to see in a more focussed view). Reporting works similarly- there's not an easy way to create your own report (although you can save certain parameters within pre-determined reports). Some info on the reports are only viewable by downloading .csv, not in the actual app. There seems to be a few easy intuitive features like those that were dropped, or were half thought through when implemented.

We have solved the yearn for an inclusive project management system that stores time entries, allows multiple contractors and clients access, has some sort of customizable reporting, and on top of all of that looks good. It's pretty much in a league and price range of its own, and I think with a few minor additions could be the best project and workflow management software out there. It has allowed us to easily track projects, rates, budgets, and time entries in one place for us and our clients to see. I'm always surprised ActiveCollab isn't much much bigger than it is.

Easy to navigate and assign tasks but no way to do recurring tasks by day

Layout is not easily formatted and colors clash

It gives access to everything and has a lot of storage capabilities. Helps us manage accounts and set up daily, weekly, and monthly assignments. Easy to tag other team members

Visually it is a great tool to see all of your ongoing project (Projects Tab) at a high level.

If your projects don't follow a repeatable plan, the tasks tab can be tough to manage/interact with.

Better organization on our projects. Ability to share status and project notes across multiple teams.

In it's old form, Active Collab offered our team the transparency into every project that we desperately needed. It allowed various members of the team to see what was going on at different stages of the project. I loved that it came with a desktop timer that made it really easy to track time to a certain project.

The new update did not have anything that we needed and essentially changed the entire way the system functioned. After the 2015 update, our team had to switch service because Active Collab no longer worked the way we needed it to.

We wanted to be more open with the creative team and business teams. Active Collab was able to help us do that at one point.

This software, when fully functional, is awesome for client relations. We are able to upload files, google docs, and more, all into one platform. Additionally, we can send messages, create and complete tasks, and even run time reports for what we need to do. Although it has issues, it is a good software, and there is nothing out there like it.

IT IS NEVER FULLY FUNCTIONAL. There is never a day (use it daily) that Active Collab fully works. The entire thing will be down, we won't be able to upload files, and reports can all be down at different times throughout the week. It sucks because it is so great, and we rely on it to work.

Client communications, internal communications, to obtain information about past projects, and more. We have realized that the software is fabulous, but it is SO HARD to rely on it because of the inconsistencies and poor management.

Easy to get started with, but if you're used to more robust systems for complex teams and processes, this feels archaic.

Tasks can be assigned to only one person (though you can add watchers/subscribers). If you need to delegate subtasks, these cannot be given separate due dates, so the main task needs to be re-assigned with a different due date to the next person working on their part of the task. There's a lot of manual processes that make this system way more cumbersome than project management should be.

Keeping track of client projects & deliverables within a complex team