I have today agreed with Autotask that our implementation has failed. They have kindly agreed to waive their cancellation charge. Despite the fact that the product has not managed to go live in the July to October timeframe and is clearly not fit for purpose in my business they have refused to refund me the money outlaid already so we will have to go legal on this matter.

They did make a last ditch effort in meeting with me and spending a day trying to tailor a solution but it was difficult to bend the product to meet our needs and no sooner had we agreed one lot of work rounds the next set of problems appeared and an old one we thought to have put to bed cropped up again. In the end they gave up and said that I was belligerent and insulting.

It was interesting to be invited to their Richmond office. The UK office is 95% sales people with a handful of clearly over-pressed support staff and implementation consultants. We were initially farmed out to a competitors services for implementation but declined this. I concur with earlier reviews the Support from both UK and US is indeed very slow and sometimes stumbles over one another. The references I took up did warn me this was the case but they had made it work for themselves.

The delivery approach is very much watch the Video's and read the notes, get on with it yourself and we will call you for a one hour slot next week. Unfortunately this means that if you cannot work out an issue yourself and need educated support from someone who has done this a dozen times there is only limited experience in their team to help you overcome the issue. I still don't see our model as particularly complicated but is clearly more sophisticated than Autotask are set up to handle.

**Beware standard implementation does not cover any of the reporting tools. Sage integration is via a third party so don't expect Autotask knocking on the door to help you with this.***

So, I have today drawn a line under 4 months effort wasted. I hope my story might help anyone in my position looking at Autotask to consider their options. Unless it fits you clearly and obviously and you have massive flexibility in your operation to change the way you work to fit the software then step away from Autotask.

I think it highly likely that the 5 star reviews on here are indeed from the numerous Autotask Sales types. They were indeed very good at sales. I followed a usually very successful diligence process and still got caught out.