Comments on: Autotask, ConnectWise: Very Different, Both Growing

By: Jack Taugher

Jack Taugher — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:48:54 +0000

Shane – I would agree, we switched to IT Pro Dashboard (ITPD), after growing beyond the capacities of AutoTask and their staff indicated they could not meet our requirements. Now, our whole staff enjoys the use of ITPD as our resource for in-the-field ticket-entry, contract management and effective billing integration with QuickBooks.

We have eliminated 20+ hours of manual manipulation imposed by AutoTask’s weakness in recurring contracts that have dynamic quantities and bundling – now we have a solution that meets our every need. And as our needs evolve, the Karisoft staff helps evolve our system.

Additional impressive features that ITPD provided that hurried out switch of systems was:

1. quick-ticket entry – to allow for 1-minute time-entries from a single pop-up screen
2. quick-parts entry – to provide for a method to bill parts where time where there is no time component
3. quick-service entry – to provide a billing method for one-time flat-rate service entries
4. Quickbooks job and time-cost integration for more flexible billing
5. both a browser-based system and one with an application for faster entry, searching and usage

We evaluated other products such as Blue Service, CoreConnex and Connectwise and even considered developing our own. Finally we selected Karisoft.

Karisoft’s willingness to listen and work with us to make necessary customization for our needs was key to our final decision. We appreciated their push back and ideas during the customization process (which was at no charge to us). The support of the product around OUR business workflow sealed the deal! Karisoft’s hosted model comes with an installable web-based thin client interface, a browser based client portal and PDA interface and bi-directional link to QuickBooks. This provided us with an integrated platform which satisfied all our business needs.

If you’re looking for a business service automation tool, realize that either you will need to fit into someone else’s business mindset, or have someone fit into yours. With ITPD we turned nearly 25 hours of preparing our monthly invoicing into 3 hours, and have been able to remove the processes that duplicated much of our administrative work. We highly recommend IT Pro Dashboard.

Check it out at http://www.karisoft.com – there are no user fees!

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:33:12 +0000

Shane: Fair points. Generally speaking I think it’s fair to say that both Autotask and ConnectWise have been pushing beyond Internet Explorer to ultimately support Firefox on Mac, etc. But you should check in with them directly for details.

Thanks for reading.
-jp

By: Shane

Shane — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:16:41 +0000

They both might be growing which is Fantastic, but I can say one thing – while they grow I hope they do not let their marketing and sales get ahead of the reality of their service or someone will come along and take customers rather quickly. I think they both offer amazing products….but the “after the sale” is what is more important these days.

On a side note, and more importantly, I am absolutely dismayed that Autotask Go can’t even support my mac-based business. Uhm…guys…MS doesn’t rule the world anymore.

By: Vlad Mazek

Vlad Mazek — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:21:07 +0000

Having visited both companies HQ’s in the past month or so I can assure you that:
1) Both are growing
2) Both have construction going on
3) Neither had staff hiding under the desk

For those of us in the “ownership” crowd, growth is a very exciting thing all by itself.

-Vlad