AllocPSA

I really love both AllocPSA and Feng Office.

Feng Office uses a concept of workspaces or contexts, which allows all connected resources to be linked. It has a good set of embedded office productivity tools - email, docs, presentations, etc. - which allow users to operate a virtual collaborative office without leaving the Feng Office application. One nice feature is the ability to create a task from an email. The user interface is lively, clear, quick and easy to navigate, and makes good use of Ajax. Project management is limited to tasks and milestones and lacks charting and other visual reporting mechanisms. A stopwatch icon control for recording time spent on a task is very effective, but its integration with the time-sheet management module and billing report generation module is unsophisticated, and there is no invoicing module. With version 2, Feng Office has improved it's plugin architecture, which hopefully will encourage contributors to address the gaps in functionality.

AllocPSA, as the PSA in its name implies, is all about Professional Services Administration. While it lacks the flexibility of Feng Office, it is far better in the PSA environment. The user interface is more business-like, and although it uses Ajax, its not as well conceived as Feng Office's. It's embedded Project Management tools are excellent with great charting and visual reporting. It has the feel of an ERP type system where inputs in one part of the system connect to effects elsewhere. Which implies a good, well-normalised database structure. AllocPSA's financial gadget offering is very good. Project tasks are easily converted into billing records, and the novel use of so-called tagged funds allow for easy financial management of project funding and payment of contractors, etc. In different currencies, if needed! As a bonus, there is also a product sales module. Staff management and an associated skills matrix make it a cinch to plan personnel resource allocation and job costing.

Both systems are web-based, both are geared to address collaborative project management. Both do it well. In any ways they are similar. Both come from the Southern Hemisphere: "Hola" is the greeting in Feng, "G'day" is Alloc's hello.

These developers would do well to look to each other for inspiration and ideas on new features and functionality.