Product Review: Bonsai
Oftentimes when I review a product, I’m considering its capabilities from the perspective of an experienced project manager responsible for delivering defined initiatives from start to finish. In other words, my review is intended to help my readers—both seasoned and aspiring project managers—figure out whether a specific tool is worth their while.
This product review comes with a twist. Bonsai appeals to me both as a project manager AND as a freelancer looking for ways that I can more easily manage client and financial data. If you’re looking for an enterprise project management tool, Bonsai is probably not your best bet. It’ll help you up to a point but is not as well suited to the needs of a larger organization.
But, if you’re in the business of agency, freelance, or consulting work, Bonsai’s business management offerings in combination with its project management capabilities are downright impressive.
Features
When you first log into the app, Bonsai displays a dashboard summarizing your portfolio of ongoing projects, including profit & loss and time tracked against those projects. You can use the left navigation panel to toggle between project management, client management, and financial management views.
You can also access app settings from the dashboard, including the ability to add branding specific to your business. Additionally, in the settings menu, you can:
manage integrations with other apps, ranging from Google Suite to Slack to Trello to QuickBooks to Calendly (plus many more)
import prior client, project, or financial data to make it easier to get started in Bonsai
export Bonsai data for use in another application.
Project Management
Projects are the main organizing component for Bonsai. For each project, the overview page summarizes associated tasks, invoices and expenses, any relevant documents or links, plus an activity feed.
You can view projects in a board or list view. The board view is particularly helpful for visualizing a pipeline of upcoming work.
You can invite team members to each project and set available working hours and billable rate for the staff that will be contributing. This feature would have been great in my consulting days, even when I worked for a large firm. I can’t tell you how many different spreadsheets and internal tools I had to reference to access this type of data. Bonsai brings everything together in one place.
After you’ve created a project and assigned team members, you can also set a project budget. Bonsai lets you configure a notification to warn you when you’ve hit a certain percentage of your budget (another nice feature that would have been helpful in my consulting days!)
Within a project, you can see a list of ongoing tasks.
For each task, you can add a description and due date, assign a team member, reference any files, create subtasks, prioritize, add time estimates and actuals, and track dependencies. You can also customize possible task statuses based on your desired workflow.
Within the project management section of Bonsai, you can also access a tasks view from the left navigation panel. Within this view, you can see a list of tasks across projects and search and filter those tasks based on criteria you set. For example, you could choose to look at tasks upcoming this week or tasks associated with a specific client.
Bonsai also has the capability to create task templates so that you can standardize recurring tasks to be completed across projects. For example, you might generate a task template for building a website or crafting a 1000-word article.
When it comes time to execute the tasks you are planning, you can use Bonsai’s embedded time tracking function to log time spent against project tasks. If you’re like me and need to reduce distractions as much as possible while you’re working, both the mobile and desktop versions of Bonsai include this functionality, so you don’t have to stay logged into the website.
As you track your time, the project budget updates automatically, depending on whether you’ve marked a task as billable or non-billable.
The timesheets view lets you see time logged by team member over a time period that you specify. I also love that there is a resourcing view where you can note team member availability based on available capacity and any planned time off.
Finally, like any project management tool worth its salt, Bonsai comes equipped with a canned reports library that you can customize to your project data around metrics such as utilization, profitability, and project health.
Client Management
In addition to managing projects, you can use Bonsai to manage your client roster. When getting started, you have the option to import contacts from an existing client list that you maintain or to add contacts manually.
Once you’ve got your clients inputted, I was especially jazzed to see that you can use Bonsai to help manage lead generation. Specifically, you can embed a contact form on your website so that anyone who fills out the form gets added to your client list. That utility is so essential for a freelancer—this way, you can track clients from inception rather than having to keep track of a bunch of emails. I can’t wait to put this in practice 🌞
Bonsai also integrates with scheduling tools that let prospective clients book time with you. Those bookings also appear on your client list, in case you choose to manage leads that way.
The services library is another cool feature for freelancers. In this section, you can generate a set of templates for common services that you offer. For each service, you can add a title, description, price, price type (e.g., flat rate or hourly), and category (e.g., consulting or coaching.)
You can take content from the services library and drag and drop into the proposal builder to generate professional-looking, custom proposals for your customers. It’s so common to want to offer customized packages based on client preferences, but it can be time-consuming to continually make up one-off proposals. This feature takes out a lot of the manual labor, so you can focus more time on your business.
You can either keep the templates generic or customize with your business’s branding. I wish I had this feature available to me before I spent hours slaving over painstaking template creation in Microsoft Word.
Once you queue up the proposal, Bonsai generates an email to send to the customer that tracks proposal receipt and review. You can even add reminders to alert the client the day before the proposal expires. Using automation workflows, you can set up next actions after a proposal is accepted (e.g., scheduling an introductory meeting or sending an email.)
In the contracts section, you can sign and send agreements for countersignature. Like with proposals, you can also automate next actions post signature. The contract portal includes a secure link for clients to access documentation associated with the project, so you don’t have to resend items that might get lost in the shuffle.
Financial Management
This section of the product focuses on client billing. I like the option to set up recurring invoices for longer-term projects. Now, I’m using a separate to do list to remind myself to invoice during these projects. With Bonsai, I can set up recurring billing when I land a gig and go from there.
I’m also a big fan of Bonsai’s PayPal integration. IMO, PayPal’s invoicing portal is not the most user friendly, so I like the idea that I could bypass that entirely and work with Bonsai to generate and send invoices for services rendered. You can also set up reminders if your clients haven’t paid you within a specified window.
If you’ve got a business of a certain size with separate business accounts, you can use the QuickBooks integration to log and keep track of invoice payments.
Product Pricing
In terms of pricing, Bonsai offers a couple different tiers based on business size and complexity.
The starter tier at $21/month may seem pricey if you’re just starting out. But, by the time you’re evaluating options like Bonsai, you’re likely at the point where your business is growing, and you’re looking to spend more time on the content of your business rather than business operations. So, it may be worth the investment.
I learned the hard way how to:
Optimize lead gen
Manage invoices and payment
Create a professional and uniform look and feel when interacting with customers.
Bonsai helps you get that right, right away. As a freelancer and former consultant, I was impressed with Bonsai’s capabilities and value prop and would encourage you to give this tool a second look.
