We currently use a mix of a home-made redmine extension for scheduling, redmine tickets for time logging and google sheet with custom addon for compiling everything per project / period for easier birds eye and invoicing.
We do not plan on maintaining redmine extension, we have different tickets trackers for specific projets, and it is very limited / simple (when not clunky at times).
It worked well for last years and volume, but it tends to be too limited, and not suitable for bigger needs (requires too much hand work each week to cleanup data and handle exceptions).
Main features we look for are :
* simple staff planning/schedule (resource requirement, capacity, allocation)
* time logging with aggregation per activity per project and basic analytics. Custom rules like increments (1/2 hour, hour, ...), minimum logging per day, ...
* full API access to plug to ticket trackers (time logging), invoicing, ...
We looked at some ERP but they usually were to clunky or complicated, and dedicated tools always seems too simple (most don't have any staff schedule management for example).
