Advantage Reviews

Excellent core app for us. Team loves it. Outstanding technical support.

Comments: Project management, accounting, workflow, routing, expenses, time tracking.

Pros:

Our entire team on one platform for projects + accounting? And people love it? Is...such a thing even possible? It is - and it is Advantage. Having worked with Quickbooks, Netsuite, Sage, Foundation and all manner of home-grown horrors... Advantage is a wondrous breath of fresh air. I'm the IT Director and have not had a single incident or technical issue with Advantage (beyond your occasional password reset). The times that I have reached out to technical support have been largely for information / usage questions as I learned. They greeted us, recognizing our number, and were enthusiastic, professional, and unbelievably swift to answer any question or to solve any issue. I love that the software is hosted (at least for us). A joy to not have to deal with local servers, network shares, etc.

Cons:

1 - long term - having 100% web based Advantage would be neat, but Citrix Receiver works perfectly on our Macs and PCs. 2 - The logins are a little weird (generic strings, rather than a custom username). Users will of course forget those, or write them on a sticky on their monitor (bad). We ended up making a chart of people's user logins and keep it in 1Password. Not a huge deal.

30+ years of Controller role and this is the very best product and customer service

Comments: I love Advantage. I have worked in other software systems (3) and implemented Advantage 2 times. You have found a way to have proper audit controls to help keep a company safe and knowledgeable in real time. I love your webinars and learning library, it allows us to grow on our own. But when we do have to call in for help, I am never disappointed by the knowledge and professionalism. Thank you

Pros:

It is solid and performs as it should. Advantage make continuous helpful updates so it is relevant. The updates are painless. But what I like the best is the customer service. I have used this company for over 20 years and I have NEVER had a bad experience. Everyone has solid background of experience and is not only helpful but polite. We joke that we have learned more about proper process controls by using the system properly. The system makes it easy to perform work controls properly.

Cons:

We are hosted - if we could export all the reports in excel or pdf easily (I have noticed many reports are being added and love it when we can email them).

Not User Friendly

Comments: I preferred working with ASANA

Pros:

We've been told it is a better tool for us to track how many hours everyone is using and estimate time we will need for new projects.

Cons:

We changed to this for project management and time tracking. It is one of the most frustrating interfaces I've ever seen. Nothing is intuitive. You have to click so many times to just get to the thing you need.

Switching to Advantage was a great choice

Comments: Working with the Advantage team has been an amazing experience. From implementation to training, and now through regular daily use the team at Advantage has been supportive, communicative, and always willing to help. Remote training was a fantastic option for us, and left us with amazingly detailed videos to reference as we began really working with the tool. Their support staff is patient, knowledgable and can easily help troubleshoot any issue faced. We are so thrilled with the level of customer support offered to us at every turn, even when the issues are clearly user errors.

Pros:

When switching to Advantage, we were looking for a tool that allowed us to more seamlessly integrate our billing, media and project management needs all in one platform. Prior to the switch much of our media billing needed to be manually entered into the system, as all buying took place on third party sites. With the switch to Advantage, we were able to integrate our media campaigns into the Advantage software, cutting down on the manual work needed in the billing process. Additionally, we loved the project management tools, and robust reporting capabilities available.

Cons:

Any new software implementation is a challenge. There is a lot of work that goes into the setup of Advantage because it is such a robust tool. Really understanding how all the pieces fit together for your business and for the systems daily use is very important and one that must be addressed at the start of the process. We are still learning all the aspects of the impacts of choices we made during implementation. With all that said, the advantage team has been with us every step of the way to help us maximize the tool for our agency. They are always open to software enhancements, and so any minor inconveniences we have faced they have heard our feedback on how to improve it for us.

Great support team!

Comments: Our experience has been great. This is a great system to help organize and build your operation into the future!

Pros:

The human component. They have a tremendous support team that really takes the time to understand your business and how you can most effectively benefit from the myriad of features both on setup and implementation. On the software side, there are a lot of options so you'll always be able to find a way to make it work the way you need it to.

Cons:

It can be quite overwhelming and confusing. There are aspects of usability that I believe require more steps than necessary. However, this is often the case with software that's built to service a variety of business types and sizes. Again, I'll point out that their staff and support are phenomenal and even in times of confusion are right there with you to guide you through and get you effective solutions to the hurdles you're encountering.

Administrator, trainer and support point of contact at my Agency for Advantage.

Comments: Automation for tedious work functions, workflow streamlined across departments, ease of use once you know the software. People appreciate the ease of the timesheet compared to other software programs. Nice dashboards and reporting offerings to get our data and metrics out quickly.

Pros:

The breadth of offerings from this ERP system is fantastic, especially for an Agency to streamline their media, accounting, timesheets, project management, resource management and dynamic reporting functions. Their customer support is phenomenal as well and always willing to help my company out even if they don't agree with our setup or processes. They are always pushing out enhancements, new features and bug fixes which keeps you up-to-date and moving with technology.

Cons:

There are some limitations to some of the functionality and features with this system that makes it aggravating to easily get some actions accomplished. Ex: timesheets could be easier to do if you could add multiple lines at one time or upload a spreadsheet or have an API tied to our other internal systems. We wish licensing was a little more affordable, especially if we had this hosted on premise at Advantage. The frequency of upgrading the system becomes a bit tedious to me but I understand it's needed.

Comprehensive Software designed for agencies

Comments: We are extremely happy with Advantage/Aqua! Billing clients used to take our accounting team 2-3 weeks. Now we can get invoice drafts done in just a few day with improved accuracy. Even after 5 months on the system, we continue to discover new capabilities and information that help us run the business.

Pros:

Advantage has been specifically designed to fit the needs of a PR or Advertising agency. Its flexibility allowed us to adapt the software to support our existing processes. It's made our team more efficient and gives us much more insight into our business data and metrics. Project management capabilities improve communication, budgeting and scheduling across the organization. In a long career, Advantage has the best client support team with which I have ever worked! Calls are answered immediately, problems are addressed and the Advantage folks are a delight to work with. Even better, many of the customer support folks have worked at PR or advertising agencies so they really understand our challenges and can offer "best practices". Lastly, it is a cloud based system so our team can work from anywhere with no need for server access.

Cons:

This is a complex system and the learning curve is steep. The first couple of months on the system were a real struggle (this is where that outstanding client support really comes in handy!). New users should be prepared that implementation is a big project that requires both dedicated resources and management support. Aqua, the program used by most agency staff, is a good user experience but the accounting system is old code and it looks & works like old code. Some of the menus are not very intuitive and it can take a while to figure out how to use them.

Using Advatage makes agency work easy

Comments: I used Advantage for the first time in my last job and had about 15 minutes of training and that's all I needed. At my current company, they didn't even train me when they learned I'd been in Advantage before. They let me figure it out on my own, even functionality I had not used before, and that was just fine

Pros:

The ability to track hours, projects, and create jobs and purchase orders with this software is so easy and intuitive that I need almost no training in my last two positions to get up and running. I love that I can figure things out and basically train and trouble shoot for myself

Cons:

It has so many more capabilities that I don't think our staff is using because we don't know what we don't know. Also, when an upgrade happens it can take a bit to get used to the new look and functionality, but isn't that true of any software?

Advantage is highly customizable and gives you great insight

Comments: Advantage did a great job unifying us onto one accounting platform from two platforms and allowed us to move from five different project management platforms. Although set-up was complex and change was difficult after a year into using the product we are glad we switched and still learning new insights about our companies from the data we are collecting.

Pros:

With a distributed workforce and five separate companies Advantage gives us great insight into financials and project management while allow.

Cons:

Set-up for Advantage to match our business was complex because our business is complex.

Advantage User Since 2003

Comments: Very positive, I highly recommend this software, the company listens to its clients and constantly strives to make their product better and more efficient.

Pros:

The software support is outstanding, always prompt in answering a question or troubleshooting problems. I've never had to wait on hold for any length of time, call are promptly answered by representatives that know this product well and get you the answers you need.

Cons:

The Report Writers could definitely be more user friendly, I often find them difficult and time consuming to setup.

Advantage believes in upgrading and improving the software!

Comments: Advantage has been great to work with and continues to take customer feedback to make the product better. I highly recommend this software all agencies.

Pros:

Advantage believes in upgrading and improving the software. Others in the space have not provided significant upgrades to their buying software and it shows. Advantage has a running list of improvements and asked for client input to ensure their products are user friendly! Their customer service is above the rest. The feature that has the most impact for our agency is the ability to filter in Broadcast Worksheet. The filtering options saves my agency time and money because I can filter by day-part, CPM and build my broadcast plans so much faster. I love that it calculates the reach and frequency for you even if you are buying a market where you do not subscribe to Nielsen or Comscore. This has been extremely useful in assisting the agency in getting new business! The reporting available is also a great resource!

Cons:

Again, Advantage has a great customer service team so they have been able to find me a workaround for what I was trying to accomplish.

Software

Comments: Depending on your comfort with new systems, it takes a while to feel comfortable getting around and using the software. When I first started using, I didn't have much instruction from the person using prior to me but luckily Advantage has really knowledgeable customer service people. I definitely didn't hesitate to call them but could have utilized other methods that are available for learning.

Pros:

For the most part, this software is better than any I've used before. I'm not the most tech-oriented so it is relatively easy to use and intuitive. This software is very robust and we don't use it to its full capacity but would like to use more of its capability. Advantage has the best customer service people and availability that I've experienced in numerous software systems.

Cons:

Finding and running reports can be cumbersome as there are two sources for reports. I believe Advantage is phasing out one of them to be able to just use one. There are small things on certain reports that I would like to see but Advantage always seems open to hearing suggestions. Also, there are so many reports and ways/options, as well as custom reports, it's somewhat overwhelming.

Outdated and not optimized for Mac

Comments: From a financial and timesheet perspective, Advantage is fine, but from a project management software system it was pretty rough

Pros:

The financial part, like putting in PO's and invoices was easy to edit and go back to.

Cons:

Things just seemed overly complicated and the software wasn't optimized for Mac users so it was sometimes difficult to use.

Works well, but it's hard to set up.

Comments: Support is wonderful. The people behind the phone are great and always get what needs to done right away. Using the software has been difficult simply because it's a huge program that tries to do everything and as a result, it feels awkward and hobbled together. Training is non-existent unless you subscribe to the expensive training videos. Don't you already pay enough for the program to begin with? Having to work in Windows is a real downer and it's one of those programs that force people to run a specific operating system.

Pros:

Fantastic customer support. Product is really flexible and customizable.

Cons:

The product is Windows-only. Even though there's a web-based version of the software, you still need to use Windows to set some of the advanced features. The product is not well supported with detailed documentation and as such it's difficult to set up and learn. Advantage sells the service of installation to such a degree that they compete against their own documentation. As a result, training is placed behind an expensive paywall that must be purchased for as long as you use this product.

Project Manager; Responsible for company-wide task entering.

Pros:

Time entering is convenient, checking workload and calendars is convenient. Good reference -- nice to be able to say "check advantage for everything" but that goes for a lot of CRMs.

Cons:

There are no resources for Advantage online, so good luck learning how to use it. Customer service gave us next to no context on what we needed to find out, and it is excruciating to enter tasks if you do not have a template set up.

I find the software clunky, difficult to use. It costs extra for training to maximize functionality

Pros:

It has a lot of features and integrates job data into the general ledger. Support staff are always available.

Cons:

Nothing is intuitive, not flexible or user-friendly. You learn through trial & error the correct way to set things up to get the results you need.

Advantage is a great product

Comments: Because our project management and media buying are linked to our accounting our financial reporting is far more accurate.

Pros:

We have our project management, media planning and buying and accounting all in one package. The company is very proactive in keeping up with technology and the market.

Cons:

That our server is on the eastern seaboard of the USA, and we are in NZ so there are timing issues with being able to contact support.

Disappointed in this Software

Comments: We ultimately cancelled our contract with them after 5 months. They were nice enough to let us out of it because they knew we were extremely unhappy. I think their media buying product is probably a few years away from being on the level of strata.

Pros:

I was excited the most about the ability for buying and accounting to talk to one another.

Cons:

So many things about the software that I didn't like. One, it was cumbersome to use. Two, set up and deployment took forever. There were issues with our Office 365 two factor authentication. There were glitches that were not passed along to the development team, or noted in our account.

Use Something Else

Pros:

It's easy to log in. That's about it - I hate Advantage.

Cons:

SO hard to use, not user friendly, oftentimes lags. Use anything else.

Advantage Software and Support

Comments: We've had a relatively easy experience with Advantage - most problems are easily overcome - and if you need assistance with anything, Advantage reps are quick to respond and walk you through things.

Pros:

Advantage is relatively easy to use and makes our accounting easy!

Cons:

Integration with our existing software was easy - however, there are some minor issues that could be addressed (i.e. Listing of $$ amounts on the invoice listing when looking up invoices - you have the invoice number, date and a description, but no $$$ amount.) Time Sheets (it would be nice if when entering time that the same job number and function couldn't be used more than once per time sheet)

Advantage Accounting & Media Buying software

Pros:

The media modules is intuitive and has many layers of features to individualize the process.

Cons:

I know have been features, I wish I had. Can't remember them at the moment. They are small things that would make things more seamless. I know a couple of in the works for future releases.

A few thoughts

Pros:

It does what we need it to do and is fairly flexible when we want to do something "a little different".

Cons:

It seems like their are patches and updates quite frequently. I get the need to fix data safety/security features, but minor updates to features or updates to features that we don't even use can be a bit annoying.

Not the most intuitive

Pros:

I like the time tracking feature for the most part.

Cons:

This software takes a while to get the hang of. There are so many ways to access the same features, which can make things confusing. Additionally, sometimes the program saves automatically, like in time tracking, but other times, like in the tasks, you have to manually save.

We use Advantage daily.

Comments: We use it daily to keep track of employee time and job tracking.

Pros:

We've been using Advantage daily for 10+ years and are quite pleased with it. Tech support is great and very eager to help with any and all issues.

Cons:

I really can't think of any cons, other than some users find it a little difficult to do specific things due to the complexity of the application features.

We use Advantage for project management, time tracking, and accounting

Pros:

We have spent years getting Advantage to work for our 100-person agency, and it has much of the functionality we need.

Cons:

Despite investing lots of time and money into configuration and training, Advantage seems to slow us down. Project management and expense reporting are not fast or easy to use.