LiquidPlanner Review

Detailed Reviews

Founded in 2008 in Seattle, USA., LiquidPlanner is purely cloud-based project management software featuring an unusual way to manage projects. Unlike several such management tools, LP works with a unique scheduling tactic that focuses greatly on task prioritization. This makes the software quite innovative, which is designed upon the idea of making teams more effective by setting and communicating priorities, not deadlines.

The software is just appropriate for users who wish to develop happy project teams with the benefit of saving time and money while achieving the set milestones. This online project management software is a rich analytical tool that accurately predicts schedules and communicates project information while tracking time to meet the deadlines efficiently.

Different Editions

There are three editions on offer: Standard, Professional and Enterprise. Each of these plans requires minimum 10 users per plan and have several limitations in the features according to the plan. You can start with a free trial of 30 days.

Features

Unlike other competitors that are flexible and customizable, LiquidPlanner uses the Liquid approach to manage projects for saving resources. The functionality embedded in the clean interface is easy to navigate although the workspace you create is not customizable in terms of look or feel.

Project Scheduling

This is based on people-centric approach wherein team members prioritize tasks or even change their priorities frequently. This means the most important task is done first. With priority-based schedules, the team focuses on what is the most important task.

Further, the best or worst case estimates with a realistic range of actual working time helps in calculating the duration of task completion. Additionally, the software automatically updates the schedule for showing the changes. It also sends alerts about the task dependencies and deviation from the budgeted hours.

Team Planning

This feature set ensures that there is no overloading and tracking happens via checklists or to-do lists. The automated resource leveling featuring an efficient scheduling engine considers vacations and events for eliminating overload. The shared Inbox makes work distribution quick and easy, while the cross-project prioritization assigns tasks in a priority order.

There is also a checklist feature for team planning, where members can create checklists for themselves or other members of the team, assign these checklists to other members or reorder them using drag-n-drop feature.

Project Collaboration

Project collaborations and task management are key aspects of any project management software. The project collaboration feature of the LiquidPlanner offers many features such as connected conversion thread for activity feeds with conversion on the same tasks, file sharing with integration to Dropbox, box and google and direct email integration to create reply directly from email.

Analytics and Reporting

The custom report builder generates instant, customized, and real-time insights, while the dashboard reports reveal project status. You also get standardized workload reports and total trend reports. The dashboard can even export time sheets to Quickbooks, XML, or CSV.

Time Tracking

The pre-populated timesheets show up the assigned work for the week automatically, while the task timer tracks actual time for each task. When the timesheet is completed, the built-in workflow routes it for review and approval apart from exporting the same to your billing system.

Conclusion

LiquidPlanner is useful especially for educational and nonprofit firms who are managing projects as part of an event or annual curriculum. Irrespective of the edition or plan you choose, the benefits are almost the same: Unlimited projects, key integrations, feature updates, free support, and mobile apps.