Ajera - Great for the business but not so great for your back office
Pros
- Project cost management.
Cons
- Timesheets
- Invoicing
Return on Investment
- Made accounting and payroll's jobs harder.
- Improved visibility on project cost management and profit.
What is Deltek Ajera?
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.
Categories & Use Cases
Media
1 / 5
Deltek Ajera was right-sized software for our medium-sized engineering company
Pros
- Generation of invoices, multiple invoice types and easy to customize for clients' needs.
- Report customization via data inquiries and custom report system.
- Accurate entry and tracking of timesheets
Cons
- They are working towards being browser agnostic. Ajera is still quite dependent on Internet Explorer's Runonce features for many functions.
- Developing custom SQL queries is quite difficult given the highly interdependent DB structure. No meaningful data dictionary is available.
- Their support department isn't always responsive.
- We'd like more options for electronic payments for AP/EFT.
Return on Investment
- We are now confident in employees time entry.
- Invoicing is a breeze compared to before.
- Financial reports are better suited to this business than the ones from the previous software used.
- WIP is easier to track and manage
Alternatives Considered
Harvest, Replicon TimeAttend and Synerion Enterprise
Great software for a small AE Firm
Pros
- 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.
Cons
- The complaint I here from our employees is often that there is a lot of Data entry. However, looking at the levels of data entry we saw when shopping for software, Ajera was one of the least.
- Custom fields in Ajera are great. But it would be nice if there was more options for how they appear on the page.
- About once a year there is a big update to Ajera with new features. Usually right after the update, there are a few glitches in the software. However, Deltek always releases corrections very quickly.
Return on Investment
- Employees are able to send invoices immediately when clients request them.
- Administration has had more time to handle our growth from time saved from credit card and bank reconciliation.
- We are able to get a snapshot of every project quickly and instantly see where we are on a project,
Other Software Used
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions
Deltek Ajera - great product for small firms
Pros
- Setting up project numbers and task numbers for each project so you can bill time to each project. You can then easily track costs.
- You can easily create customizable reports to show what data you want to capture in an easily readable format for you to read and compare.
- Time sheets are easy to enter for each employee as long as the project numbers, over head numbers, etc., are entered.
- Expense sheets are easy to enter as long as project number, over head numbers, etc., are entered.
Cons
- Would be nice if the reports would have more creativity with the ability to add more charts and graphics.
- The user interface for time sheets could be more user-friendly.
- The user interface for expense sheets could be more user-friendly.
Return on Investment
- Ajera has allowed our company to become more efficient when it comes to compiling project management reports.
- Ajera has allowed us to become more efficient when it comes to monthly invoicing.
- There is some initial downtime when we hire new project managers as many are not familiar with Ajera so we need to train them on the software and how to run reports, task management, budget management, etc.
Alternatives Considered
Deltek Vision
