Earth system modelling is a key instrument to investigate the climate system. This includes the simulation of processes on a large range of scales and of different Earth system components. To account for the different components, Earth System Models (ESM) are composed of submodels. In practice, these submodels are developed independently and bring their own scripts for downloading, compiling and execution. In order to bundle these various scripts in one tool, we developed the ESM-TOOLS software. The aim is to facilitate the work with different ESM and, therefore, to ease the work of the Earth system scientist. We will briefly explain the purpose of the ESM-TOOLS, and discuss our experiences during development and application by the users.