Deltek's Ajera is an integrated project management and accounting suite for architectural and engineering (A & E) companies that includes light payroll functionality and also can integrate with third-party payroll providers (ADP, Paychex, Quickbooks, etc.). The product was acquired with original developer Axium in June 2014. CRM functionality can also be added via integration with the Deltek Ajera CRM.
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Replicon Project Time Tracking
Score 9.9 out of 10
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Replicon's Project Time Tracking suite of applications allows users to track billable time, manage project hours and cost, track project expenses, as well as manage paid time off.
For small to medium engineering and architecture firms, Ajera appears to be the right size. Beyond the engineering software, Deltek Ajera has all the features a small to medium firm will need for smooth operation. AR, AP, Payroll, reporting, project management are all in one package. We chose to self-host because the licensing was more cost effective for us, but cloud hosting is also available.
I believe it is well suited for a small sized company, like my previous one, that does not want any IT overhead to onboard a new tool. This tool is available online and can be accessed via the internet. It has all the necessary components to help you record your activity. But the solution in its current form is not scalable. [I've] Given few of my reasons I feel this is not well suited for a large company (like the one I currently work at).
Widgets are the best feature of Ajera. Designers can make tiny reports for the entire company, or for one or two individuals. These little reports are the first things that the employee sees when they log in. Viewers of the reports are able to filter, sort, group, print or export the widget without impacting the other users. Deltek has been releasing new features that allow the editing of data in widgets. You can now create new projects or edit timesheets from the widgets.
Credit card importing and credit card reconciliation in Ajera has greatly decreased time spent by administration. You can import credit card transactions from your credit cards. It saves on data entry, and it is easy to see what receipts you are missing when you get the statement.
Mobile timesheets and expense reports help engineers or other users enter their time and expenses as they are on the go. They can take pictures or receipts or submit their timesheet from home.
The Project Command Center is a one stop fountain of information. Everything the project manager wants to know about a project can be found here. You can also add custom fields that allow you to tract addition information.
It allowed me to fill my work time sheet. Every week I had to fill this. Based on the numbers the company keeps track of which days I worked.
It reminded me to fill the time sheets constantly and also notifies me when it gets approved. So I never really forgot to fill it.
It allowed me to see my vacation days left, and plan ahead.
It had a list of holiday dates which was very handy to plan my trips or vacation.
It had categorization by department and my view of time sheets was only limited to me. I could not see others time sheets, and except for my manager, nobody else could look into mine.
It had internet access, which meant I could fill my sheets anywhere. It came in handy while working from home where a VPN connection may not be present. I also guess that this service being online meant no extra effort from IT department side.
The UI in my opinion was too simple. Calendar views were pretty stale.
I don't believe there was a mobile app for this, or this site worked nicely when opened on small devices.
A better view of my time could have been shown. At the time I could only see small excel like boxes filled with numbers. Graphs, or some other visualization of remaining days would have been lucrative.
Very stupid login page. We had to fill "company name" at the login page and this name had to match exactly to what was set in the database. It was frustrating and I always had to refer my notes to get that right.
There wasn't any preselection option which made it hard to do it fast. If I can only set a few fields (because we had long list of dropdowns to choose from) then this process could be much smoother.
A major issue was not being able to see my team-mates schedule or calendar. E.g. when are they taking vacations. So I had to pester them offline to get this information. Many times due to inter-team miscommunication we didn't know about others vacation days during planning. A central place where I could see this information would have helped me a lot.
The previous systems were essentially timesheet systems only with very basic accounting. It's mostly the accounting subsystem that made us select Ajera.
I believe it is not in my power to select the best tool. It depends on whatever company I work for. It just happens that we use a different system (and I don't even know if this is an internal system, or another online tool). But I do like my current system. It has a better UI, and more detailed insights about my time. It also shows my pay stubs and other small neat information like tax papers to help me organize. It also has notifications when something new comes up. All these features I think I lacked in Replicon (or maybe my company didn't have access to these).
Replicon helped me maintain a record of my time. This helped during my assessment where my manager could see my work hours.
Replicon was easy to use, so I didn't spend my precious time filling sheets in this site. As far as I can remember, this site only gave me problem once, but was never down.
Though a good tool, I actually never got the use case of recording your time sheets. I think it will be pretty hard for an employee to just fill the time sheet and not show up for work. There are so many meetings and people around you, that you cannot fake your presence. So I feel there is no need to fill time sheets. It is a functionality with no real world solution.
