The spectroscopic and magnetic properties of dioxolene complexes of zinc, copper and nickel were studied by DFT calculations on model complexes of formulas [(NH(3))(4)M(II)(SQ)](+) (M=Zn, Ni; SQ=semiquinonato) and [(NH(3))(2)Cu(II)(SQ)](+). Standard approaches such as time-dependent DFT (TDDFT), the Slater transition state (STS), and broken symmetry (BS) were found to be unable to completely account for the physical properties of the systems, and complete active space-configuration interaction (CAS-CI) calculations based on the Kohn-Sham (KS) orbitals was applied. The CAS-CI energies, properly corrected with multireference perturbation theory (MR-PT), were found to be in good agreement with experimental data. We present here a calculation protocol that has a low CPU cost/accuracy ratio and seems to be very promising for interpreting the properties of strongly correlated electronic systems in complexes of real chemical size.