Projector PSA vs. Todoist

We think Projector PSA is a great tool to track and manage people in a professional service environment like management consulting. This system is easy to set up, easy to understand and should easily suit the needs of smaller and medium sized firms. It may be less appropriate for firms that rely very heavily on project management through another system (like MS Project) or firms that rely very heavily on a sales pipeline tracking system. While still very much possible to use, you would (I believe) have to do some re-keying between systems

[Todoist: To-Do List & Task Manager is] fantastic for small teams or for personal use. Really simple and easy to use so requires very little in the way of onboarding and gets people engaged quickly in the tasks they need to complete. May not be perfect where more complex usage is required but integrates with other tools so time tracking and other add ons are more than possible through other tools.

Incentivized

• Time tracking. For a service company that typically bills retainers, it is very important to be able to assign a direct cost to your resources at all levels and analyze your profitability.
• Expense reporting. Projector easily tracks expenses of all types and allows you to categorize them under non-billable projects, client billable projects and/or client development ventures.
• Reporting. Projector has a large list of standard reports right at your fingertips. These reports can be extracted as Excel docs, mdp files and other useful formats. They are intuitive, clear and easy to analyze. For those you need on a standard basis, you can set them up to pull on a recurring basis. It should be noted that all reports are easily customized and Projector's support team is always there to help get you the information you need.

Incentivized

• Being able to manage tasks across multiple devices and platforms is absolutely critical to me. If I am out of the office, the tasks will be on my phone. But they are also readily accessible on the web, on my desktop, and on my iPad.
• There are several ways to organize your tasks... via Projects, Labels, Boards, Lists, etc. that allow users to use Todoist to fit their productivity workflow. I use them all and I have been delighted to see how Todoist has continued to improve and advance the Todoist application over the years.
• I rely extensively on recurring tasks which allow me to never forget a birthday, monthly submission, chore at home, etc. Todoist offers many ways to manage recurring tasks, such as, "every week", "every April 8", "every fourth Thursday in November", etc.

Incentivized

• The split between the desktop and web environments was awkward at times.
• While the reporting modules are powerful, creating reports can be complex and required a fairly deep knowledge of the product.
• The appearance and interface of the desktop application appears somewhat dated.

• Task Dependencies - Particularly for business projects, I'd love if we could make one team member's task dependent on another's where we could say "do this task 3 days after another one is complete"
• No Two Factor Authentication - For me personally, I like to keep all my passwords secure and backed up by two-factor authentication. Just wish this was something Todoist offered!
• Adding Start Date & End Date - Sometimes I set an end date farther in the future, but I'm not alerted that I need to be working on it before then to achieve that due date. If I look at the "Next 7 Days" section, I can see upcoming tasks, but ideally, I'd love to be able to set a start date and an end date so it could appear in today's tasks without needing to be completed today.

Incentivized

We have been using this tool for a year now and find our use of it continually evolves and broadens. We are also very excited about the overhaul that's under way and feel many of the improvements being put in place will help make us that much more effective and efficient. The Projector team is also very responsive and collaborative in terms of user feedback and improvement suggestions, which helps us know they will work hard to help us get what we need out of the tool.

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

Excellent features and concept, simple implementation, but the software is not very clear in training new users and communicating features. The occasional unexplained crash or freeze is not handled gracefully by the desktop software, requiring either the user or tech support to manually restart.

Incentivized

In 5 years of use we have never experienced an unscheduled outage.

I've been able to find answers to any questions I have in the support documents. You can explore key features and view ideas and best practices for getting organized with Todoist. You can also fill out a support form to submit a request for customized help if you run into anything not covered in the support documents.

Incentivized

We switched to Projector from Open Air. While Open Air was a good tool, we found it wasn't really designed for project management at the level of detail we needed from our PSA and used MS Project and Excel to supplement Open Air. We also struggled with the invoicing side of it, manually combining invoice summaries with custom time and expense reports in Acrobat. Projector however, was designed for project management. We are able to manage projects, track time and expenses, and invoice all out of one system. The project setup can accommodate a wide range of complexity, including milestones, dependencies, etc. Project and resource dashboards also help see the services portfolio and team at a summary level and allows us to zero in on particulars easily and more meaningfully than we were ever able to with Open Air. Invoice templates are also easily customized and we were able to get several set up quickly to meet our needs. Lastly, Open Air required us to purchase and pre-pay licensing for a year, so if we lost staff mid-way through the year, the unused seat was not prorated. Projector licensing is paid monthly based on actual number of active users that month, which makes more sense for a team with fluctuating headcount.

Todoist is more focused on its goal than Google Keeps and is far more intuitive to use. For example, with just a click we see immediately that Todoist provides a way to distill tasks so that we only see what's immediately pertinent to us, via the Filters (which can be customized and set to various priority levels). Also, Todoist's project board is something Google Keep doesn't even offer, it really can't even compete with Todoist simply because Todoist does so much more and was obviously designed with the business professional in mind.

Incentivized

• Even in the small time that I stayed to see Projector PSA reporting I saw ROI projections become more realistic. There was real data to analyze that proved we were spending way too much and charging way too less on some projects.
• Although employees were not used at entering their hours, this single reporting improved operations management and validated employees concerns that more people were needed to manage workload
• Project proposals were more realistic because they were driven by real data.
• Decision making overall for the department became more efficient and effective

Incentivized

• A good project management tool for daily completing/recycling my customers' project line items--time to value.
• Incomplete items stay on the list where I can see them and reschedule easily if needed--time to value.
• Built-in completion metrics for reviewing project completion success--time to value, and indirectly, customer satisfaction.

Incentivized