Karbon

Vorteile

Karbon AI, workflow, Triage, integration with the tax software and best customer service.

Nachteile

Setting up templates can be quite cumbersome.

Vorteile

It does practice/project management really well, but the best part of it is the people behind support and development. They are continuously improving the product, seeking customer feedback, and are dedicated to a single space. I'm sure at some point some of this might change (looking at you Southwest), but right now I cannot say enough good things about the product or the people behind it.

Nachteile

It's a little difficult to propagate changes to template base work items to recurring work items attached to clients.

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Vorteile

This is not a review of the product function - I couldn't get it to function with Google Workspace, even with their technical help. Technically, it probably does work if you can figure it out, but I'm not that person.

Nachteile

Customer service. There's NO way to cancel your subscription if you change your mind. I had to ask them to cancel it through their chat, and then they refused to stop debiting my card until I told them why I was canceling (which I already had made quite clear - I'm not techy enough to work with it.) But no, they wanted me to repeat all that, probably to a "retention" person, which I had no time to do at the time. So they kept charging the next month. So, now I'm asking my bank to change my card and leaving a one star review, because at least THAT will work.

Vorteile

The ongoing customer service if phenomenal. There are many platforms out there, but few have such great customer service. Even after years of using this platform I know that help is simply a phone call or email away.

Nachteile

There is no document management feature. When weighting out options we were bummed that Karbon does not include a way to get KB signatures or document management.

Vorteile

The integration! It can't be beat. It streamlines so many processes and adds a lot of transparency in client accounts and work.

Nachteile

That the list view of work doesn't allow me to set a default view and that it always shows completed work that i have to filter out. And that I can't customize invoicing more to make all work one line versus job by job.

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Vorteile

Karbon allows me to keep my time tracking, emails, and project management all in one place, and creates greater transparency within my firm. It is an essential tool in running my business!

Nachteile

It can at times be more difficult to track down an email in Karbon than it is to find it in my Google inbox.

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Vorteile

I love the un-siloed communication and client portals. These help so much when covering clients for others and being able to see the processes and procedures you might not be directly involved in.

Nachteile

I wish the close process management was better. Our firm currently uses another software to facilitate the financial review and be able to see the financials pulled from the ERP.

Vorteile

I love the transparency, that everyone in the firm can see the progress of our work and are able to answer client questions with the click of a button.

Nachteile

That you can't search emails that come through effectively.

Vorteile

It helps us streamline tasks and collaborate efficiently.

Nachteile

Timesheets is our least favorite for clocking in and out.

Vorteile

Client collaboration and reminders make life so much easier in the unending effort to get information and documents from clients. I spend so much less time emailing clients and hunting for info.

Nachteile

It has powerful process management, but it needs the ability to update templates across already created work products. It would also be great to have a more easily sortable visual representation of work across projects.

Vorteile

Our staff enjoys the Triage function and visibility of communication most about Karbon. With having a team approach to most of our client work, it's important for everyone to know details from client interactions. This has helped us to be more efficient, batching questions and keeping us from contacting the client repeatedly for the same thing. It has essentially helped us provide better customer service while making our team more efficient.

Nachteile

I would like to have more options of labeling clients, helping to narrow down a specific group of clients to target for an email message or reporting purposes. Filter work by work title instead of work type.

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Vorteile

A cloud-based, highly functional, simple UI application makes running our accounting practice much easier.

Nachteile

There is yet ot be a fully functional iOS app

Vorteile

Workflow functionality is great. Resource planning workbook is great.

Nachteile

Not well designed for longer duration projects. Limited to work with a duration of no longer than one week, otherwise manually intensive process to create longer duration work items.

Vorteile

Great features and helps manage your workflow well. Ability to send links to clients to download files

Nachteile

There is too much clutter with the email settings functionality

Vorteile

Allows me to have a wholistic view of our company through tools like My Week. Very useful to be able to manage and allocate work at the beginning of the week through the my week tool. Triage and the ability to assign/tasks/emails/mentions to employees, clients or client specific work. There is also an integration coming with suit files that will be very useful for practices i.e. some features that will come are document signing client portal integrations, and document management. This will help us automate a lot more. Auto-maters are definitely very useful, partially the ability to automatically change job statuses and assign tasks/work to colleges according where the job is in the process.

Nachteile

Definitely not being able to independently bulk update tasks without having to pay. Bulk update features are very important but not available (unless you pay the $999 build fee package, which might to expensive for some). The lack of integrations are (most notably, not integrating with Xero or XPM). The best option is if you already have Ignition (this allows content to flow from XPM to Ignition than to Karbon). No integrations into CRM systems. Automated do not have an "IF" functionality where if i.e. the client doesn't need to have more documents requested while the work is completed there should be the ability to tick a box that automatically triggers a different work flow.

Vorteile

Our original investigation into programs like Karbon were based on our massive email issue - clients would email the account manager or the Director (myself) and then we would spend amazing amounts of time cc'ing the right people. We were looking for a program whereby the email trail for a client was easily accessible to all relevant staff. Karbon has sufficient security to ensure its not open sharing, but allowed us to much better service client needs across our growing team.

Nachteile

The Kanban/Task Management didn't work well for our company and the way we operate - I think it might work well for many accounting firms in vertical stacks, but we operate on a tier based level and it made using the task management system in Karbon a complex nightmare. Staff became confused with assigning and allocating work tags. We use a different program for project/task management - but it synchronises broadly with Karbon - and we intergrated Karbon with T-Sheets to take care of time monitoring.

Vorteile

Triage has eased the pain of dealing with the ever growing problem and distractions of managing emails. Digital communication with the customer and team members is smooth and easy. Workflow management and process templates has been a real game changer!

Nachteile

Can’t think of any Cons… I feel this is a good thing. 😉

Vorteile

It's impossible to grow a firm without making intrinsic knowledge available to all. Karbon has allowed us to codify that knowledge in templates and checklists, while making both internal and client communications visible across the team.

Nachteile

I'm looking forward to improved integration with our file storage system, as clients tend to want to upload documents through Karbon but that's not where I want them.

Vorteile

Reports, dashboards and intelligent workflows give full control of work progress, team capacity/utilization and Time and Budget.

Nachteile

Integration with calendar and prioritizing work/tasks but Karbon team is working on it already.
It's not many options for making bulk actions.

Vorteile

Super easy to set up
Very responsive support
Makes scheduling work very easy
Makes keeping on top of ad-hoc jobs and regular jobs very, very easy
Constant innovation and improvement of the app
Keeps all correspondence and emails relating to each job in one place
Searchable emails, work, contacts etc

Nachteile

I can't think of any cons!

Vorteile

Karbon is the answer to all our problems. We have struggled with other software in the past. We have always found we needed to change the way that we do things to fit the system, rather than the system suit the way we do things. With Karbon we don't need to change anything. It suits the way we work. It has a huge amount of flexibility without being so flexible you don't know where to start. You just get started and go from there. There is no huge learning curve and even if you do need help the Support is fantastic.

Nachteile

None. There is nothing to say other than positive things. Even if there were some the Karbon team are very approachable about new features or tweaks.

Vorteile

On boarding process was fantastic
Great training provided
The team at Karbon are always willing to answer any question
Integrates with our QBO file.

Nachteile

A little pricy but so too is losing clients because you forgot to lodge their BAS or something important.

Vorteile

Most of our team already used their email inbox as a todo list, Karbon takes this functionality so much further and incorporates other workflows, CRM and team management.
Client Tasks allow automation of regular information requests from clients helping our team focus on the actual work.
The fortnightly release sprints are one of our favourite things about Karbon. When we on boarded the Karbon team promised lots of features and everyone has materialised.

Nachteile

Karbon is still missing some basic email functions that can prove frustrating and mean you still need to occasionally switch back to Gmail to get something setup.

Vorteile

It keeps all our emails, files and customer information all in one place.

Nachteile

The set-up was tricky, but once everything was done, it has been easy to use

Vorteile

The bringing together all our client information and work into one program. The "to do" and "triage" that allow assignment to other team members. The ability to manage your whole firm from one place anywhere anytime on any device.

Nachteile

The program needs more integration and dynamic links with other "cloud" programs. There are times when the program "stalls" and it has to be restarted.

Vorteile

Karbon is great for keeping task in order in your "my week" tab. easy to see what needs to be worked on this week and then puts the rest into the prompted categories. Triage is also great for emails and assigning tasks to co workers from an email thread. Also being able to link emails to the clients contact. You can also request documents from a client on the work item. AI feature also allows you to get a bot of a tax return results in email form for the client.

Nachteile

Sometimes you can type in the exact name of a contact and they will still pull up a whole list of contacts. Also that it talks with other systems but if you don't do it in a certain order it will created two work items for one contact.

Vorteile

The most powerful features of Karbon are the automation elements that allow projects to flow seamlessly through the office. Communication between clients and us is solid, and the fact that the system follows up automatically outstanding client issues takes a huge workload off us.

Nachteile

Document management is still being developed and needs further work, although the current options are quite manageable.

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Vorteile

Organising & managing my payroll on a daily basis. The templates have been essential in setting up or workflow.

Nachteile

I'd like better options for payroll progress billing

Vorteile

I like how easy it is to define who does what kind of work in the tool. Highly valuable.

Nachteile

I wish I could more easily save templates for emails.

Vorteile

I like the efficiency of Karbon.
Karbon has been a great workflow management tool.

Nachteile

I do not have reasons to dislike Karbon.
Karbon is so amazing.

Vorteile

COMMENTS FEATURE ABILITY TO TAG MULTIPLE PEOPLE

Nachteile

NOTIFICATIONS AND NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND A THREAD

Vorteile

the email triage was way more easy to use vs TD - I find it hard to use TD email to send emails to clients

Nachteile

portal was not great - e-sign and other things like not having a good app

Vorteile

The best decision you need to make if you own a Bookkeeping practice is the choice of your Practice Management software. I believe this is where you should economize on this decision. Karbon is definitely the best option out there. We are thrilled it was our first choice, and we were able to invest our time in such a long-term investment. We have been using Karbon since 2017 (we opened our business in 2016!) and we continue to improve our processes and take advantage of their continuous improvements. 5-star all over!

Nachteile

The CRM part of the software is probably the weakest and clunkier to use. I also don't find it as suitable for internal project development. We use a separate system for this (Notion) and are are very happy to use the two apps parallel.I would LOVE to extend its ability to a very simple support system where a ticket number is automatically generated for the client and those support requests are linked to the client's timeline!

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Vorteile

Karbon support was great in helping get us set up and understand how to use the product. From there, your imagination is the limit of Karbon. You may not even need that with all the helpful tools and templates they have!

Nachteile

It could do better about helping report on capacity. They have a new feature, but costs extra too.

Vorteile

Well designed workflow management that addresses most of the aspects of information management that accountants need on a daily basis. I cannot imagine going back to a time without it.

Nachteile

No practical option to use custom fields for clients or client groups. Custom reporting is not great if you want to look at your whole database. Basically you have to just dump everything to excel. Not easy to bulk update client records. Requires intervention from Support. No simple csv import.

Vorteile

The triage feature for emails and team communications is a massive time saver. Templates for work flows, and the ability to assign, view, review and action items with simple views and filters allows us to easily have a complete picture of where our workflows, outstanding actions and capacity scheduling for resource planning.

Nachteile

Nothing really. Karbon is very responsive to our requests for improvements

Vorteile

Good for task management. Helped me to optimize my working time

Nachteile

Sometimes gets frozen and had ro restart it, but no often tho

Vorteile

Attached documents process and email process.

Nachteile

Some times working slow and loading process.

Vorteile

The lost of tasks and ticking off as I go is great. It was of exceptional value when o had staff.

Nachteile

I find the weekly section confusing. I would also prefer a “cleaner” screen for emails.

Vorteile

The best thing about Karbon is the automation that is built into the existing templates and the ease at implementing it into custom templates.

Nachteile

The biggest challenge with Karbon is the time it can take to learn the idiosyncrasies of the software. It sometimes seems counterintuitive but if you take the time to learn the software things will make sense.

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Vorteile

Love the ease of My Week and its integration with Google Calendar. I simply triage all my emails - allocated to my week if needed follow up. Then slot them into Google Calendar to allocate time. My phone even reminds me of scheduled tasks coming up. The templates for work are so easy to use. The client requests are user friendly for the clients and us. All emails are allocated to work or the client. No more scrolling thru emails to find that particular document. Its all in the work. Essential with monthly or quarterly BAS. Or even if a client purchases a new car you simply add that email to their next years tax return!

Nachteile

Would love signing to be part of client requests. Its actually essential!Would also like documents to be added to the client rather than work as sometimes you don't have a work item.

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Vorteile

We implemented Karbon only a short time ago and I am already seeing significant impact on my time through the ease of delegation of specific tasks and the ownership of those tasks to be able to check provide oversite. My staff has had a similar response and although it has been a learning curve we all see the potential and benefits.

Nachteile

There are a few items around being able to apply templates after work is created (currently you cannot do this only at creation). It also takes the server five minutes or so to show a contact that you add which is a pain when setting up new client work. We had asked to have contact emails imported and although they were provided for some reason they did not get imported (that combined with the delay was a bit of a pain). A few other items are more about learning how to get the best use out of all so I would argue are not dislikes but more learning curves as it changes the way you work significantly with the implementation of triage. Overall the team at Karbon have been great in answering any questions and give a lot of opportunity to show you best practice even when you choose the self implementation option. I do hope they create more integrations with Xero Accounting Software as they do with QBO.

Vorteile

Karbon has revolutionized Workflow for accountants. Truly taken it to a new level. It does so many things so well that it is hard to not take those features for granted until you compare it to other similar software. Here are some exceptional features
While not perfect, the email integration is great
Creating and managing projects is relatively easy and painless
Client task management is excellent and extremely useful
Automations is work is great
team collaboration is very good especially at the task level
Mostly great utilization of screen realestate.

Nachteile

Todo list is frustrating for me. Being a Franklin Covey person, i want more control over my todo list. I cant export my todo list either which would help mitigate this issue.
Not enough control over tasks. Task list can be overwhelming and thus not useful
No proactive feedback about assigned tasks or notes. IF I assign someone a task, email or note, I want to know when they have done the work and if they have not done the work. I want automatic feedback on this.
I want more shortcut icons. Some steps are really "clicky"
I wish there was much better app integration. This is very limited.
On a task list, if a task does not apply to a client I want to mark it NA. Not delete it or mark it complete with a comment.
I need more flexibility on labeling clients. For example I want a job to be flagged as extended and not just have a temporary status of completed.

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Vorteile

It's very simple to get your head around in the main and comes with a good set of instructions. Love the task list and kanban boards for work management and as a practice manager, it makes my life much easier to be able to see all the work that is happening from one system. It also works wonders with repeating work items where you are able to assign e-mails or notes to multiple timelines and even if the work doesn't start for another year you have got all the information right there at your fingertips. The client tasks are an awesome feature too which have decreased our turnaround time on work considerably. You can start a job and be 100% sure that you have got all the information required right there as all the initial tasks have been checked off. The other side we have found very useful is the collaboration. With a team based in multiple areas this is so key and we find Karbon becomes that one source of truth which tells us exactly what is happening.

Nachteile

We have found it harder to get older members of the team onto the software and potentially could have a very simple addon for programs such as outlook and gmail which would let users use the system they're used of but still push the information into Karbon correctly. There has also been issues a few times with integration to Office 365 which when the whole office relies on the system can be a big hit on productivity. The other thing I probably would change if possible is the client portal and make it much more of a place where clients can actually log in and see the progress of their work and get an idea on exactly what is being sorted for them.

Vorteile

I can manage my entire practice with Karbon, from email communication to time tracking to creating and documenting workflows to planning my capacity. They are always rolling out new features, improving the product, and they provide some of the best customer service I've ever experienced both in B2B and B2C settings.

Nachteile

There are a couple small inconveniences, like when highlighting text or searching for work within the platform, but they're minor compared to the benefits of working with Karbon.

Vorteile

It keeps our team optimized and as a practice owner I know exactly what's happening and more importantly what's not happening!

Nachteile

Updating mass workflows for a new template - but honestly, each customer is so unique that it makes sense not to fiddle with the workflows on such a mass level

Vorteile

The ability to manage our work schedule.

Nachteile

Copy/paste features do not work well. I would like my Grammarly to integrate. I would like to move work tasks to client tasks. I would like to put an internal comment on client tasks. I would like to be above to select all work tasks, copy, then paste to Excel.

Vorteile

It is designed for accountants to both manage their clients and the team collaboration effectively and efficiently. Either as the owner, partner of the business managing the team or as a team member managing the client projects on a day to day basis, this tool does a great job. I can't think of not having Karbon HQ.
The Karbon HQ team is always providing new updates and on-going trainings to increase the usage efficiency of its users.

Nachteile

Can't say there is anything I don't like. The UX has a classical design and may be updated to have a fresher look and feel but that is a minor enhancement.

Vorteile

Sorting works and then individual tasks are great. Also, the auto-remind option is a huge time saver for our firm! I also really like the internal and external comments functions.

Nachteile

The analytics are a bit clunky to set up. It'd be really nice to be able to see projected budgeting, etc... but unless you have fixed prices for everything, it doesn't work and takes a long time to set up.

Vorteile

Everything about Karbon.

Nachteile

They have both of these on their Fall 2017 roadmap: 1) time clock for job/client/employee time tracking (which is the only other external program we now use and can't wait to only use Karbon for everything); 2) Canned Responses (template emails plug & play). Coming soon, and I can deal with these cons because of everything else has saved so much time.