In the olden days, busy marketers had overflowing desk drawers and tabletops covered in papers.

Cluttered calendars and disorganized Rolodexes.

Now, our messes are mainly made in digital spaces.

When I first started as a content marketer, I messed up big time and let things get messy.

It was my own mistake for not using project management tools.

I’d send countless emails throughout the day to assign work. I’d fill my planner with daily tasks and assignments. And I’d spend a lot of time finding files on my computer.

Not surprisingly, I lost my sanity.

I lost track of deadlines. My team lost track of their deadlines too.

My team found my emails overwhelming and annoying.

So, I asked myself: How can I manage a team of content creators?

How can my team keep track of their deadlines?

How can I keep track of everything without going nuts—or driving my team nuts?

That’s around when I discovered the existence of project management tools. To start, I found Asana, CoSchedule and Trello. Then I realized that there’s a big, wide world of tools out there, suited to different priorities, needs and work styles. After digging a little deeper, I found AceProject.

For the uninitiated, AceProject is a project management software with impressive features such as tasks tracking, time tracking and expense tracking. I’ll review each of these impressive features and compare them with other project management tools.

But first, let me show you how you can get started.

AceProject Review: Is It Worth Keeping This Ace Up Your Sleeve?

1. How to Get Started with AceProject

Creating an account in AceProject is easy enough—you can just type your desired name for the subdomain of your AceProject account, and the URL of your profile will be updated.

Next, enter your email, password and timezone. And that’s it!

After you’ve created your account, you’ll be redirected to your team’s dashboard.

AceProject automatically gives you a short tutorial of its features to help get you started—which I was very grateful for. You can view more tutorials on the right-hand side of the dashboard. Here, you’ll find links to introduction tutorials, dashboard tutorials, quick tip videos and in-depth videos.

Although watching the tutorials takes a lot of time, they’re necessary to check out if you want to maximize the software’s functionality. AceProject’s interface is distinct and it has a ton of features compared to most other project management software. So, if you want to get used to all these features fast, watch the tutorials.

Starting a Project

After you know your way around the application, it’s time to start your first project.

In the dashboard, click “create a project.”

You’ll then be presented with two options. You can “create a project” or “create a project from a template.” For this review, I’ve chosen the “create a project” option.

Since I’m a content marketer, my projects are focused on content creation. As a result, I’ve named the project as “Blog Post Plan” with the description “write blogs about content marketing.”

It’s also important to remember that projects aren’t individual tasks. Instead, a project is a big campaign, composed of a series of tasks.

(Note: The software has a tasks feature, which we’ll discuss later on.)

What makes AceProject distinct are its budget-focused features.

These features allows users to set the budget, budget estimate and number of hours allotted for the project.

It’s ideal for those who contract out work for periods of time, and who pay team members at an hourly rate.

So, right from the very beginning you’ll be able to keep your budget in mind.

2. Using the Task Features

As I’ve mentioned before, a project contains a series of tasks.

In this section, we’ll discuss how to use these task features and compare with those from other project management tools.

To get started, just go to the tasks section and create a task.

Write a name for the task in the “Summary” text box and place the task’s details below it.

Since I’m a content marketer, my first task was to write a blog post. In the details section, I’ve placed the outline for the blog post.

On the right-hand side, you’ll find a “Save” or “Update” option.

I’ve also noticed that the “Quick Comments” section is small compared to other project management tools. Asana and CoSchedule both have comments features that appear similar to the design of messenger apps—they allow for more discussion of tasks, while this is more geared towards quick little notes.

I’ve found this small comments section to be a drawback, since editors usually write long comments.

Beside the task tab is the document tab. Here, you can drag and drop documents that are related to the task.

In other project management platforms like Asana and CoSchedule, you don’t have a whole separate area dedicated to documents. This compartmentalizes things a little bit better.

The task section features an overview of all the tasks that you created for the project. You can filter and view these tasks based on the users assigned, date, time and comments.

Since I’m user of Asana and Coschedule, I’m used to the calendar view. I also like to use color labels to organize my tasks.

I’m disappointed that these features are not available in AceProject. In addition, the tasks are in list view, so creating and organizing a lot of tasks may make a user feel overwhelmed—that said, this may be a total non-issue for you if you couldn’t care less about calendars.

In the image below, you’ll see what the tasks look like in the global view.

In the next image, you’ll see the tasks sorted by date.

The “view by date” option features dates such as an estimated start date, end date, creation date and update date. There are a lot of dates, which is why I prefer the calendar view available in other project management tools. But again, it’s all a matter of personal preference.

Overall, it’s fast and easy to create a task in AceProject. It has all the basic features required to create and keep track of tasks.

It’s also ideal if you have a team focused on one or two projects. However, if you have separate teams or departments, each with their own distinct tasks and projects, AceProject may be difficult to use. You’ll have to constantly switch from one project and task to another in order to manage everything.

3. Using the Time Features

What makes AceProject distinct from other project management tools is its time features. As an administrator, you can indicate the time allotted for a task. This way, you can track expenses, especially if you manage a team paid at an hourly rate.

To get started, go to the upper right-hand side and click the “Administration” option in the settings section.

First, make sure that the “Timesheets” option is activated.

Afterwards, go back to the task and click the “Add Time” option, which is found on the right side under the “Actions” section.

An “Add Time Item” box will then appear. Time Items are allotted on a weekly basis. For this example, I’ve set the task time for the week of May 28 to June 3.

I’ve chosen the project “Blog Post Plan” and the task “Write Blog Post.” Afterwards, I’ve placed the time spent writing the blog post.

You can indicate time using decimals (i.e., 1.5 or 2.5 hour) or in an hour:minute format (i.e., 3:30).

In the image below, you’ll find an overview of how time items appear in the time section. Users can change the time that they’ve allotted for a particular task in the time items.

Again, it’s easy to use if you have a small team with a few tasks. However, if you have a big team with a lot of tasks throughout the day—it may be far from ideal.

Time is allotted on a per task basis, instead of a daily schedule. It’s in list view (not calendar view) so time items are analyzed and viewed individually, rather than as a collective.

This means that, if you have a lot of assigned tasks for several users throughout the week, then it can be difficult to create a 40-hour per week time schedule and monitor weekly progress. While it does add up the total of hours spent at the bottom and the right side, it takes some time to get used to, especially if you’re used to the calendar or planner view.

Another feature that sets AceProject apart from other project management tools is the time clock. This feature allows people in the team to time how much they spend on a task.

To get started, click the stopwatch icon at the upper right-hand side.

You’ll then be presented with a time clock. If you click the start button, then you can track the amount of time that you’ll spend in a task.

Again, this is useful if you manage a team with an hourly rate.

In the time section, team members can modify how much time they spent on the task. Team members can send their timesheets for approval by choosing the task and clicking the “Approval Request” in the right corner.

Overall, the time features are useful if you monitor a team of content creators who are paid at an hourly rate.

Again, if you’re used to the planner or calendar view, it would be hard to adjust to the numerical appearance of the time items. In addition, if users have a lot of tasks throughout the week, it would be difficult to create several tasks and ask team members to accurately tabulate how many hours they spent on the task.