A good workflow solution can increase your team's productivity & streamline their tasks. Whereas a great workflow solution can enhance the way you and your team prepare systems & processes while ensuring a pleasant experience throughout.
Selecting the right tool requires you to have a bird-eye view picture of different features & their need for your firm. With this aim, the blog explores the Jetpack workflow tool & couple other solutions that you can keep under your radar.
TL;DR: Jetpack Workflow vs. Karbon vs. Cone
What Is Jetpack Workflow ?
As mentioned in its name, Jetpack’s expertise lies in optimizing accounting workflows, standardizing tasks & work. Jetpack targets a specific part, workflows, instead of consisting of all types of features that consist in a standard practice management software.
Keeping a track on tasks, team collaboration, client projects, & more, Jetpack becomes a savior for firms wanting to go deep in the optimization of workflows among their teams.
Pro tip: Learn more about project management software for accountants and bookkeepers.
How Does Jetpack Workflow Operate?
Once a project is created, inside it users can define all the sub-tasks, different team members picking their share of work, blockers to finish any step, & more. Assigning team members, by defining work, they can get an overview of when & by whom a task will be done or is already completed, offering a sneak-peek into all the date, deadline & time required.
Using recurring features, they can see how in the future the date, steps, & work will be divided if they continue on the same path. Basically, having a good projection of the future work. And there can be systems & processes set in the clients work.
Since, unlike other project management tools, Jetpack has accounting firms pain points in mind & has made the software accordingly. Accountants usually struggle with generic project & task management tools, as they’re not designed keeping them, their niche, in the central focus.
How User-Friendly Is Jetpack Workflow's Interface?
Jetpack portrays its handful number of tools as a feature & not a shortcoming. By not being populated by dozens of features & tools, its interface is clean, easy to comprehend, & helps the user to focus on the job to be done.
What Is The Pricing Structure Of Jetpack Workflow?
The pricing structure of Jetpack workflow is pretty straightforward & simple: $30 per user, per month if billed annually, and/or $45 per user/month when billed monthly. The pack unlocks all the features and also includes the live chat & email support.
What Is Cone?
Cone is an all-in-one practice management software for firms to replace their usage of multiple softwares for accounting & tax related work. For example, with Cone you’ll no longer need to use your Proposal software, time tracking software, & the like.
From the start of a project cycle pitching proposals to clients, to task and project management, dedicated accounting client portal and crm software for accounting firms - Cone goes the extra mile so that firms can function like a smooth oiled machine.
All these features while also consisting of a solid workflow, task management, automation, & other similar features like in the Jetpack workflow.
How Does Cone Operate?
Cone is all-in-one practice management software, that replaces the need to use multiple software, by bringing & combining those necessary accountancy & tax firms used features & tools together.
Cone has taken care of your proposal generating & sending needs, eliminating the need of your existing proposal software. This enhances your overall workflow experience as you can schedule client meetings, do billing & invoicing, task & document management, eSign, collect reports & analytics, have a dedicated client portal, and customize your settings for the best workflow.
Staying from pitching to your clients, onboarding them, efficiently doing the work, delivering results, to collecting feedback, Cone is a comprehensive solution for your firm’s exhaustive list of needs. Cone created a workflow system that you & your team is going to love every single day while keeping your clients happy as well.
How User-Friendly Is Cone's Interface?
Designed with keeping accountants in the center focus, Cone’s interface is up-to-date to today’s standard & style, keeping intact easy to navigate throughout the platform to get all the work done easily & quickly.
What Is The Pricing Structure Of Cone?
Cone as well has made its pricing easy to understand, but additionally also keeping it at competitive price putting even mainstream tools a mile behind.
Cone, loaded with features & tools as an all-in-one tool for firms, takes pride in creating this value for you to save not just your time & energy, but also money. A lot of it.
Cone comes at a fraction of price when compared to the market average.
Yes, just at $10 per user/month, the benchmark is set high where the industry average is $50.
What Is Karbon?
Karbon is another all-in-one practice management software for accounting firms. Tasks, time tracking, timesheets, automation, workflows, & more are included in it.
Karbon as well supports firms in their complete project cycle like Cone.
How Does Karbon Operate?
Similar to Cone, Karbon gives a big canvas to customize your workflow and present layout as per your wish. It can also send client reminders, give insights and reports, & help with project management.
How User-Friendly Is Karbon's Interface?
It can take some time for a new user to adjust & get used to Karbon’s interface. Since it contains a variety of tools & features, locating things one needs can be difficult initially. Nonetheless, it has done a good job at presenting a dozen of things on a single screen.
What Is The Pricing Structure Of Karbon?
When it comes to pricing, the entry level pack costs $59 or $79 per user per month, when billed annually or monthly respectively.
Its second pack consisting of more or advanced features like automations, time tracking, client reminders, & few more comes at $89 or $99 per user/month, when chosen to be billed annually or monthly respectively.
Jetpack Workflow vs. Cone vs. Karbon: Pros & Cons
Advantages Of Jetpack Workflow vs. Cone vs. Karbon
Jetpack makes a distraction-less environment for users to tick their tasks, collaborate better, & have nitty-gritty of every action or raised flag by them or by their fellow team members.
Cone serves multiple needs that solves a broader problem, for firms that are keen to foster their client relationship at the same time. Hence, with workflow & automations, other needs of firms like client portal, proposal software, & more can be tackled in the same software, eliminating the context-switching of different software, cost factor, and more.Cone shall be your best choice if you want a versatile software at a great price.
Karbon as well helps in the same manner as Cone, for firms to adopt better & effective practices, by combining multiple jobs. With its insights on the data from workflow, the workflow could be then optimized, minimizing the risk of errors, & improved workflow management.
Pro tip: Also, explore top accounting workflow software.
Key Considerations Of Workflow Management Software
The aim of having a workflow management software is to save time & energy, automate as many recurring tasks as possible, and having to spend less time on admin level work.
Therefore, the use of AI is going to play a crucial role while designing your workflow. With the advent of AI models, if they’re going to be already present in your workflow management software then the amount of assistance that they can provide & add is huge.
Cone and Karbon both are AI-powered to get the stuff done and keep your workflow boat sailing at all times. Especially with Cone business owners can automate the mundane & recurring tasks, will no longer need to use a separate software for sending proposals & do eSign. Cone brings a great deal of automation in your workflow, where business owners will no longer need to remind the clients about pending payment, document sharing, & follow-up messages on different matters.
Secondly, the function of workflow management is to adjust & help set your priorities in order for a smooth, productive, work schedule. According to your domain specific work, you’ll need the interface to add or subtract elements in order for you to focus on the important stuff. Customizable settings help you to do so. Cone enables you to modify your workflow, customize settings to fit as per your practice’s requirement, needs & wants.
Limitations Of Jetpack Workflow, Cone, and Karbon
Starting with Jetpack Workflow, an accounting firm will find its features to be limited for their daily use as it doesn’t offer a dedicated client portal, time-tracking, payment gateway, & document management. Firms will need to use additional softwares and tools to get this part of the job done.
To setup Karbon software for your firm is a challenging task. It also lacks an automated proposal-to-payment feature. Finally, navigating Karbon for clients can be time-consuming & hard to find a particular stuff. In terms of pricing, it can be a big barrier for small & medium size firms.
Conclusion
Finding the right software for your business can be tricky. But if you’re aware of your current needs & can forecast a few of the future firm's requirements then choosing your software becomes easy.
If you’ve a simple business which demands only a plain workflow to keep in check, then Jetpack workflow is a good option to consider. However, if you realize that your goals & firm is growing at a rapid pace and you want to use a multi-functional software without paying an exuberant price, then Cone is your friend.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What Types Of Businesses Are Jetpack Workflow, Karbon, And Cone Best Suited For?
Jetpack Workflow with a laser focus on getting the tasks done within the deadline, is a niche product for solo, freelancers, or small teams where the work is not dynamic in nature & is very straightforward. Hence, using Jetpack they can track their progress, improve their workflow, automate recurring tasks, and complete the project.
Cone & Karbon, target firms that provide dynamic & full-service to their clients, and therefore its highlighted features are client portal, billing & invoices, client engagement, & more. Small, medium, & large firms can make use of it to deliver their client results while also fostering a relationship with the client.
Cone is an all-in-one platform, meaning it unifies the needs of accounting based firms by replacing the use of multiple software. For instance, users can manage Proposals inside it without depending on a separate software to do so.
How Do Jetpack Workflow, Karbon, And Cone Handle Client Management And Communication?
In Jetpack Workflow the focus is on the completion of the client’s work, and therefore effective communication takes a backseat here.
In both Cone & Karbon, a dedicated client portal, increase the frequency of conversation between the 2 parties and be involved by their client engagement features. Starting from storing documents, to reviewing the final work, clients can be an active participant while the work is getting finished. Portal also helps clients to get many small scale self-service done at any time, anywhere.
How Do Customer Support Options Compare Between Jetpack Workflow, Karbon, And Cone?
Support systems come handy every now & then. All the 3 software have put a good focus on making sure they deliver a good result to their users.
All of them consist of a customer chat support system, in addition to raising a ticket via their respective email addresses.