A practice management tool acts as a second brain for accounting firms to reduce their burden of doing recurring tasks, remembering deadlines, & being timely with the clients.
A sweet spot for finding the right software is in choosing the one which contains plenty of useful features & at the same time not overloaded with features that will hardly come useful to you.
TL;DR: Pixie Vs. Karbon Vs. Cone
What Is Pixie?
Accounting firms require a constant to & fro communication with clients, to deliver solutions & promises. Pixie as a practice management tool helps firms manage their tasks, & overall organize their work. From email integration to status updates of what’s been done, employees are able to boost their productivity and keep track of all the activities running & getting done by them & their fellow people.
What Makes Pixie Stand Out?
Firms that are just starting out or require only a basic yet essential set of features are attracted towards Pixie. Its simple UI & UX design, without cluttering with many features, for small teams that only need to get daily tasks done and track to see who’s doing what, every now & then, Pixie can be useful.
Top Features Offered By Pixie
Majorly 2 top features offered by Pixie are a long list of templates library & automated workflow.
With plenty of email & task templates, users don’t need to start the work from scratch. From onboarding to engagement all types of templates are available & also new templates can be easily created. Adding on top of this is their automation & integration system to cut down on monotonous & recurring work.
E-signature is a niche, important, & delightful feature offered by it. Client reminders is another hard-to-notice but enriching feature.
Is Pixie Worth The Price?
Even though Pixie bundles a good pack of features & tools wanted by an accounting firm, its pricing sometimes can’t be justified when compared with other competitors in the market. A more value for money, added features, new generation tools that can be easily spotted in them that are missing or less developed in Pixie.
The pricing of Pixie depends on the number of clients you cater to, however, there’s no limit on the number of users. Starting from $106 per month(converted from Euros), if the firm has less than 250 clients, the software can be heavy on the pocket for small & medium scale firms.
What Is Cone?
Cone Practice Management Software elevates your practice with an all-in-one platform for CRM, proposals, projects, workflows, billing, invoicing, email management and more at a fraction of the cost compared to alternatives. Literally!
What Makes Cone Stand Out?
Cone offers a practice management software that unlike others includes a proposal management software inside itself, meaning unifying your workflow, with no need to depend on a separate proposal software.
With an impressive accounting client portal it allows for effective management of client documents and communications, giving your clients the transparency your firm stands for & gaining the trust for maintaining a good relationship starting at 4£ or 5$ per user/month.
Top Features Offered By Cone
It’s common to not find a proposal software with most workflow solution tools out there, however, Cone comes with a proposal software inside it, meaning you can now say goodbye to your proposal software.
Niche related features like accounting workflows, client portals, can not just save time but make your workflow more efficient in the long run.
Missing features like time tracking in the PIxie software & the like are cherry on the top.
Pro-tip: Also, learn about other cloud accounting practice management software options.
Is Cone Worth The Price?
When it comes to pricing, Cone has the most disruptive pricing in the whole market. With just $10 per user/month, with similar & in many cases better tools & features, it gains the deserving attention. In a market where $50 is average, Cone successfully without any compromises delivers a high quality, competitive, and better practice management & workflow solution.
What Is Karbon?
Karbon again is a cloud based practice management tool to solve your daily administrative work & increase productivity among the team. Solving multiple software needs into one like Cone, from workflow automation to client portal and everything in between.
What Makes Karbon Stand Out?
With a high level of integration offering, it syncs & leaves little room for errors when it comes to data. Range of different templates for firms, making sure that from operations to compliance, organizations can manage tasks better & even automate parts of their workflows.
Top Features Offered By Karbon
“Triage” is its top feature bringing all your email communication in one place, to send mails, tag co-workers, & more.
The visual representation of the work going in & around the firm helps anyone from the team to gain the advances or progress in projects of the organization & number of things that are currently running or completed.
Is Karbon Worth The Price?
In comparison to the features & tools offered, pricing of Karbon meets the market overall average. However, unlike in Pixie or Cone where you can get fully-loaded features of the platform by paying a fixed price, Karbon also lists “add-ons”, that firms need to purchase separately to unlock more advanced features.
The pricing for Karbon begins at $59 or $79 per user/month, when billed annually or monthly respectively. And its business plan costs $89 or $99 per user/month, if billed annually or monthly respectively. It also has an enterprise plan at a custom pricing.
Pixie Vs. Cone Vs. Karbon
Bottom Line - Pixie Vs. Cone Vs. Karbon, Which Offers The Best Value For Money?
If we look at all the different problem-statements that accounting & tax firms majorly struggle with and seek solutions for, then Cone has to win by being useful in most of the cases. It’s a versatile tool that covers every niche required feature for any accounting & tax firm. Plus also replacing your existing proposal software.
Hence, whether you're a small, medium, or large firm, the range of features & tools offered by Cone is an unique offering to save not only more time & energy of your and your team, but also by offering the best value for money. An easy money saving of 90% when compared to market average.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How Do The Automation Features In Pixie, Karbon, And Cone Differ?
Automation helps to reduce the number of manual admin work, recurring tasks, & such issues.
Starting with Pixie, it provides a small set of simple automation to automate task creation, setting reminders, updating client records, & such to save those little extra minutes.
Karbon at the same time also consists of similar automations, however having a client portal inside, users can optimize their workflow more efficiently by improving communication with clients as all the requests, documents, & work items are stored there.
Combining both the tools offering, Cone consists of all the above features, highlighting its automated billing services, status updates of tasks, & automated appointment reminders.
What Analytics And Reporting Tools Do Pixie, Karbon, And Cone Provide?
Pixie’s analytics & reporting tools can be underwhelming, its team management and reporting features can give one a broad idea of who’s working on what, alert members by assigning or reassigning them, & put filters to track particular domain’s work progress.
Karbon on the other hand offers sufficient features, ranging from insight reports to all kinds of activity timelines. One can perform client analysis, make spreadsheets of reports, create leaderboards to know your top teams and clients, & more as well.
Similarly Cone covers a handful features, starting from creating custom reports on financial, client attendance, & service utilization. It provides real-time dashboards with highlighting the key performance indicators for the ease of its users.
Which Platform Is Most Effective For Document Management?
Selecting Cone for your firm’s workflow & accounting solutions also secures all your document management needs.
Including all the essential features like secure storage for practice documents, template creation for common documents & even the uncommon feature like e-Signature capabilities for documents, Cone is the most effective tool when it comes to document management.