In the past, agencies would piece together a collection of different software tools to manage their operations. This often included: task management, time tracking, resource planning, CRM, and more. Spreadsheets were used to glue together disconnected data in an attempt to provide important insights. This reality proved cumbersome and made it difficult to see the big picture.
Today, the trend is towards all-in-one work management solutions that combine multiple features into a complete solution. This is where Ravetree comes in. Ravetree is a best-in-class solution for digital agencies and client-service businesses that brings together all of the important functionality needed to allow teams to achieve their best results. Below is an overview of the core components of Ravetree’s award-winning work management software.
How Does Ravetree Software Help With Project Management?
At the center of Ravetree is a full-featured project management suite that is ideal for both Agile and traditional waterfall teams. Unlike other tools that have workarounds for Agile project management, Ravetree has important Agile features built-in natively, such as support for Kanban and Sprint teams, story point sizing, Epics & User Stories, burndown charts, and more. Agile teams can choose to track their capacity in terms of hours, story points, or number of work items (i.e., user stories, tasks, etc.).
Ravetree has important Agile features built in—this Ravetree screenshot shows the burndown charts feature.
Teams that take a more traditional approach to project management will also find that Ravetree is suited to their needs. Each project has an elegant, and easy-to-use Gantt view that allows users to see their project work items (i.e., tasks, sub-tasks, etc.) laid out on a timeline view. Ravetree also supports all four dependency types: finish-to-start (FS), start-to-start (SS), start-to-finish (SF), and finish-to-finish (FF).
Dependencies, assignees, work roles, milestones, and more can all be added to a template, saving a lot of time when running similar projects that occur on a regular basis.
Project-driven organizations will find Ravetree’s project template feature especially useful. Dependencies, assignees, work roles, milestones, and more can all be added to a template, saving a lot of time when running similar projects that occur on a regular basis. There is even an option to create work item template groups. Drag & drop capabilities make it easy to reorder work that has been added to a template.
Ravetree includes many other important project management features such as: project portfolios, repeating tasks, automated reminders, and advanced budget tracking.
Ravetree screenshot showing the project overview of the hours and budget for a client web application project.
How Does Ravetree Help With Resource Planning?
One of the biggest challenges faced by any client service business is knowing if everyone is 100% utilized. Ravetree makes it easy to see who has the capacity to take on work and if there is anyone who might be over-utilized. Some insightful reports can be run to see historic utilization for each team member. For example, Ravetree will show you the average number of days ahead of, or behind schedule that each member has completed their tasks.
Ravetree’s resource planning feature also has the ability to display all unscheduled tasks and easily assign them to a user while viewing their available capacity on a given day. Furthermore, users can submit vacation requests in Ravetree, and once they are approved, they will show up on the schedule view and accurately be reflected in their capacity count.
Ravetree’s scheduling features make it easy to see who has the capacity to take on work and if there is anyone who might be over utilized.
What Are Ravetree’s Time & Expense Tracking Features?
Time and expense tracking are an important part of any client service business, even those that don’t bill by the hour. Ravetree advocates that every company keep track of their time, as it allows for important insights that may otherwise be missed. There are three primary ways users can log their time in Ravetree: 1) time logs, 2) timers, and 3) timesheets. Timers are the most popular way to log time on Ravetree. One reason is that users can have multiple timers queued up at the same time making it easy to log time as you move between different tasks throughout the day.
Ravetree’s expense tracking feature allows users to enter the actual cost and billable amount. The billable amount can be entered manually, or calculated as a percent markup from the cost. Users can also attach receipts to their expense logs. One important benefit of entering expenses in Ravetree is the ability to itemize project budgets by custom expense categories. This can provide granular insights into how a project’s budget is progressing and lets you know specifically where you are over/under budget.
Ravetree’s time tracking features, shown in the screenshot, help everyone in the company keep track of their time, track billable/non-billable hours, add expenses, and more.
How Does Ravetree Help Manage Retainers?
If you have clients that are on a retainer, then you’re going to love Ravetree’s retainer management feature. Unlike other solutions that force you to label clients as retainer or project-based, Ravetree has no such restrictions. There are a variety of options when setting up a retainer such as whether or not to include rollover amounts, track by hours or amount, or if you want to charge for overages.
You can even link project and work item templates to your retainer. Doing so will automatically generate projects and work items from your templates for each retainer instance. Invoices are also automatically generated for each retainer instance.
Ravetree’s retainer management feature lets you set up retainers with various options: for example, set it to include rollover amounts, track by hours or amount, or charge for overages.
What Is Ravetree’s CRM Like?
Ravetree includes a fully integrated CRM with the ability to manage all of your accounts, contacts, deals, and activities. You can create an unlimited number of sales pipelines, and customize the phases in each pipeline. The drag & drop Deal board makes it easy to move deals through your sales process. Each pipeline phase will display both the weighted and unweighted deal value. An unlimited number of custom fields can be added to your accounts and contacts to ensure you’re not missing any data. All of your client/prospect touchpoints can be managed via CRM “Activities”, which allows for the creation of custom activity types, and includes filtering capabilities.
Ravetree CRM features let you create an unlimited number of sales pipelines, and customize the phases in each pipeline.
Other Popular Ravetree Features
Ravetree includes many other features that can add value to your client service business. Some of these include: custom request forms, file approvals, client portals, invoicing, estimates, and a full-featured calendar. One thing that people love about Ravetree is that they get unlimited training and support. Users can schedule live training to get their questions answered quickly and easily. This is often more convenient than submitting support tickets (which is also available).
Ravetree screenshot of the full-featured calendar.
Ravetree Summary
Ravetree is a comprehensive solution that can keep all of your teams organized and connected in one place. It allows you to easily see the big picture and optimize your operations so you can be more successful. Companies around the world use Ravetree every day to help them scale. Schedule a demo today to learn how your company can achieve amazing results with Ravetree!
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