Paymo features project management tools like Kanban board and Gantt chart that you would hardly find in any other time tracking software. In addition to that, you can store files up to 500GB in size on the platform which is not common to products in this category.
Paymo is a versatile time tracker that functions majorly as a project management tool with a strong focus on time tracking and time management. A common theme with most of Paymo’s features is organization. Every feature works to put your tasks in one place for easy access and management. The task management feature, for example, provides a personal workspace where you can see exactly what tasks you should be working on, when, and in what order. It also organizes team tasks in a way that can be viewed and grouped by priority, due date, and project.
Paymo has quite a lot of exceptional features and one of them is task commentary. Interestingly, you can assign as many team members on one task and they can leave their comments on it. Paymo’s mobile app also sends notifications to team members so they don’t miss out on critical information.
In addition, project managers can also set what is called “dependencies” to let team members know that a certain task depends on the execution of another. Using color coding, managers can also set task priorities to be critical (red), high (yellow), normal (gray), and low (green). This helps guide team members to where their sense of urgency should be directed to.
Another stand-out paymo feature is their file management system. With this feature, users can attach and organize files in a central storage on the platform for each project. Team members can also comment of each file within the storage. Every one of Paymo’s price plans (except the free version) comes with a certain amount of storage capacity. This capacity can get up to 500GB.
With Paymo, you get particular project planning tools like kanban boards and Gantt charts. Kanban boards utilize cards, columns, work in progress limits (WIP), and swimlanes to help teams visualize workflows better.
Their Gantt charts display tasks against time with visual representations, which can be helpful for managers to get a clearer picture of team performance, deadlines, and remaining work. The chart’s visual representation is usually in progress bars. As the work moves along, the progress bars move as well, until the tasks are complete. The chart also uses color coding to indicate whether there is an issue with any project.
Managers can also set goals on paymo in the form of “milestones”. With this feature, a due date can be set as well as alerts to remind team members of the said date. Paymo also provides useful scheduling features. If, for example, you have a project that requires a number of different separate tasks for its completion, you can take advantage of Paymo’s critical path feature. This helps you determine the earliest and latest dates to start critical tasks so you can finish the project without delay.
There are also financial management tools on Paymo to help employers manage resources. It is possible to set a project budget with the budgeting tool and also view the financial health of the project as the work goes on. Not only can you set the budget amount in money terms, you can also set an hour budget i.e the time it will take for you and your team to complete the project.
Paymo provides more than five reports to help managers get a broad overview of everything concerning their teams, resources, and projects. The user report, for example, shows how many hours team members have logged within the project. The client overview report gives details about your client's activities such as unbilled account receivables, billed invoices, and pending invoices.
These reports are displayed as pie and bar charts, and they are sharable to clients as a CSV file or a PDF. Paymo also makes it possible to get reports in real-time with the live reporting feature.
This time tracking software also has invoicing capabilities and they take it a step further. Not only can you automatically create and send invoices for the work you do, you can also send estimates ahead of time.
Said estimates can be created by taking into account the project’s tasks, time estimates, and potential costs. Clients can also pay via payment platforms like Paypal, Stripe, and Square. All of which integrate well with Paymo.
Paymo gives users the flexibility to customize the platform however they want. Since the software is available in 23 languages, users can set any of them to be their preferred language of communication. It is also possible to customize the dashboard, menu, and add shortcuts to quickly access frequently-used sections within the app.
All these features can make it difficult to navigate through the app. It is not unusual to see potential users booking several demos to get a hang of the app before they commit. This is something you should have at the back of your mind if you feel Paymo would be the right solution for you.
Adidas, New York University, Accenture
Paymo also offers:
Paymo integrates with Quickbooks, Xero, and Zapier.
Paymo’s paid price plans come with a free 15-day trial period. You also get two months free if you bill annually. The plans are as follows:
Paymo is best for growing project-based organizations and agencies. The free version provides all the necessary tools for small teams and as they grow, the two top tiers offer even more features to manage their larger teams.
Paymo has been around for quite a while (since 2008) and it initially started as a time tracking/invoicing software. Co-founder Jan Lukacs was running an outsourcing agency at the time and he needed a tool that would give him precise information on how much time had been spent on each task and project. Together with UI/UX designer Andrei Gadoiu, he created Paymo to address this problem as he couldn’t find a similar tool in the market at the time.
Paymo started as an in-house application for Jan’s agency to track time in his outsourcing business. He later shared it with friends and fellow entrepreneurs. During this process he would market the product with the slogan “Wise tracking pays more”. It is from this reference that the name “Paymo” came into existence.
Although the software initially had basic task management features, the demand for a more robust work management platform grew. And since 2015, the Paymo team have been frequently adding more project management features. For example, they recently added a "full task view" feature which creates a task URL containing all the details related to the task.