OfficeTools by CARET Reviews & Product Details

The project tracking workflow part of the application would have been nice if it had not been so slow.

Client manager allows you to link all entities related to one client. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- VERY VERY SLOW!! Painfully SLOW!

- Not user friendly; cumbersome

- Reports did not provide the information we were promised

- Functionality was not what was promised

- Emails would not sync as promised.

- Support and training was grossly inadequate. One would think they would want to provide as much support as needed to ensure customer success. However, they are all about the sale because they lock you into a contract that they refuse to let you out of. They don't need to give you support because they continue taking your money.

- Application is archaic and has changed very little since I used it at another firm in 2010.

- Trying to make this application work for us cost our firm much more money and time than it should have. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Time entry and billing are quick and easy Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Assigning tasks, client contact management Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Whole Office suite, which must have software package for everyone Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Microsoft did a remarkable job by offering this complete package Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ability to control workflow is very strong. As an operations manager, procedures, policies, and workflow are very important. Today, in this time of COVID-19, many employees are working from home. It would be extremely difficult to accurately run the office without Office Tools. Using Office Tools, we can track all projects regardless of where our employees are working from.

Update: Unfortunately Abacus decided to introduce a new payment system, APX, to the software. We BETA tested the software and it did not work well, yet they rolled it out and essentially broke the software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Support has declined. There are long wait times since Abacus took over, and I find that many of the support staff are less familiar with the software than I am. There is some strong support staff such as Oscar Diaz. He should be the model of what their support staff should follow.

Update: Just about Everything

1. APX System

a. The Pay Now links and portal Payments do not work correctly. We can no longer trust any of the information on our AR reports. We are dealing with missing payments, payments made that do not post to invoices, payments posting to invoices that were not actually paid, customers being charged multiple times but no record as to where the

extra payments have gone, and Payment links just not working. Statements are incorrect as the payments are not posted correctly.

2. QuickBooks Online sync no longer works. We decided to give up on APX and go back to QBO but most of the sync features no longer work. Essentially trapping us to work with a damaging payment system.

3. Lacerte Sync is slow, and also inaccurate,

4. Office Tools is slow and buggy, many times you can click on various tabs but the screen doesn't change.

5. If we try to send statements it crashes and the "Last time sent" column no longer lets us know where it stopped. This causes clients to get duplicates, triplicates, and more of their statements.

6. The services are constantly getting hung up. We even switched servers and they still get hung up.

7. Conversations with the APX team are very difficult. I spent a half-hour with high-level persons and the conversations focused on how I expect the payment system to work when I just need it to work.

8. We have a large number of Tickets (20 or so) that have not been resolved since September 21.

Overall very very disappointing, with no solutions in sight. We have begun the search for replacement software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

the time tracker and project management system worked great. we were more able to track our time in projects as well as track down any to-do or task in projects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Besides the time track and the projects I always had issues with office tools. I was unable to run accurate reports. the billing section was a mess. Sometimes when I look for clients nothing will populate it was a complete mess filled with bugs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Billed as an all-in-one solution for practice management. Practice in a box concept is attractive in principle. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It doesn't do any single function particularly well and runs horribly slow. The interface is outdated and clunky. Customer support is poor - slow to respond, quick to pass the buck and blame the hardware (which was also provided by Abacus, don't get me started on that disaster). Doesn't actually address the systemic issues even after multiple, multiple tickets submitted over a 4 month period. Eventually gave up and stopped trying to use it. Stuck in multi-year contract so obligated to continue paying for it even though I am no longer using it.

Lacerte integration was broken at the time we were using OT and was not fixed by the time we moved on. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Our firm was given the opportunity to evaluate office tools as an alternative to the major vendors that are in the marketplace. We enjoyed the ability to use the applications seamlessly for documents and presentations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The biggest challenge for our organization is that some of the functionalities built into office tools are not compatible with the major vendors requiring our staff to learn new shortcuts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's usefulness in providing the ability to track time, billing, invoicing, contacts, projects, and documents in one place, while integrating with other key business tools. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is not much to dislike about this software, but it's interface needs a little upgrade. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like it's ability to integrate project time/management and billing. I like all the information that is able to be kept in Office Tools for a client. The support team is great also. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes it took longer than expected to run certain reports (i.e. YTD Staff Utilization).

I wish there was more automatic/improved integration with Quickbooks and other payment processing programs. And then if something that has already been synched needs to be corrected, I feel there are a lot of issues and hurdles to resolve something like that. For example, exporting invoices to Quickbooks is fine and invoice numbers are the same. Somehow it can't be done the other way around because Office Tools will then assign a NEW invoice number that is different from the invoice IF it is created in Quickbooks.

I wish notes can be move obvious with regard to a client. I also wish that more than one contact (like a CC for an email can be kept for a client).

The write up/down part of the WIP is also very sensitive and also affects the invoice when you don't mean for it to do so. I also wish it could tellus if Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.