Our Experience With Shopworks Onsite 8.3

[AMBRO_MFG]

Original Message Removed By Author.

[T Shirt Farmer]

Ahhhh Shopworks... one of the most painful experiences of my 35 year carrier... i could add volumes to your post but revisiting the experience would make puke, go on a drunken binge or possibly have a stroke .... 3 years latter we pretty much love it for the most part. In this day and age I cannot fathom that we do not have a better app than Impress or Shopworks available to us.

[blue moon]

Generally we are not to happy to get reviews, especially such tough ones from ppl we don't know. I think it would be a mistake to remove it, but also it does not sit well with me to just leave it up as it is. These thoughts carry a lot more weight from ppl that actively participate on the board so we know it's not just a competitor leaving bad reviews.
As it is, I'll leave the review up under the condition that you start participating in the other activities and if after few weeks we are comfortable that this is not a scam, the post will stand. 'just trying to be fair.

It would also help to post some more info on your shop with a name so this is not a post from an anonymous contributor.

thanx for taking the time to let the potential users know.

pierre

[ebscreen]

No experience with Shopworx, but I did want to stick my neck out and defend Filemaker a bit though.

It is a "rapid deployment user friendly" solution, but is far far more than robust enough to handle %99 of a
shops' needs. Custom Ink, no, but literally everyone else. We have our local FM database interact
with a hosted SQL db to handle customer payments, approvals, and eventually, customer accounts.

I read through your complaint page, and all of your issues that you have attributed to FM are actually solvable,
in FM. No bones about it. Your "blank" issue is literally as simple as 'substitute(field; ""; 0)'.

My best guess is that coding solutions for every single user becomes absurd at some point and the developer prefers
that the client learn to work YOUR WAY. (and in the reality of out-of-the box software, it is better to do so)
This DOES NOT excuse them for not helping you through any of this. At $20k for a piece of software I had better have your cell #.

I actually know the above to be true, I have stupid functions in our FM database that are literally named after employees
because I couldn't get them to do something the way it needed to be done. IE not putting control characters in a clients
name. I think they'll be okay without the exclamation point. Nope, have to write a function to escape control chars in any input.

The end all be all is that almost no shop will find an off the shelf solution that will work the way they want it to.You either change
the way you work to fit that workflow or you make your own solution.

[T Shirt Farmer]

Pierre,

I agree with your comments but do realize the poster is spot on with there assessment of this product and company which I can personally testify to as well.

[Frog]

Agreed, just could be perceived as a bit of a clumsy, negative introduction to the neighborhood.
In fact, Ambro, why don't you drop on by the introduction section and let the folks here know a little about yourself and/or your operation. Sounds like you'll have a lot to offer as you've been 'round the block a few times.

[ZooCity]

I say leave this up.  The experience seems bona fide and we have another, established, member backing it up.

What strikes me about this post is that the buyer offered to cover all of the expenses that shopworx incurred setting this up, matching what a monthly costs would have been and only asked for a refund of the software itself.  If this is true, shopworx's denial of a refund is damning.  What would shopworx be losing if they refunded?   

Caveat emptor perhaps applies here.  I trialed shopworx and when they couldn't install and run a trial on osx easily well that was about enough of a red flag for me- hasn't fm been primarily an osx developed app since the mid eighties?

Agree that much of this is related to the fm platform. 

I think the sales rep here probably sees a lot of push back from shops adopting this software and initially tells them to keep at it.  Maybe try asking again?

AMBRO_MFG I think you would be much happier with a web based app but at your size there's no web based solution anywhere near robust enough for you, it's not even close right now.  For the upfront cost of shopworx I think you could have had the right person pull a number of web based apps together into a nice gui on azure for your company.  Ongoing costs would have been much higher but you would have been happier I think since the experience would be what we consider normal in this day and age. 

[T Shirt Farmer]

Shopworks in reality is a great ERP platform the problem is you need to be part coder, part accountant and part system analyses to understand and setup the system. The amount of information you can access with FM is incredible to the point it is way too advanced and cumbersome for the average user to wrap there head around. Once you nail down the functions you can retrieve past orders and process new orders with ease, it will just take you a year of time and 5 years off your life span to get there and even then you will not have conquered the beast. BTW FM/Shopworks does not play nicely with any other apps ie. importing webstore orders.

[mk162]

So the tales of shop management software goes...or whatever the heck I'm trying to say.

For all of it's flaws, T-quoter is built on an SQL database.  It hasn't been updated since at least 2013.  It's a terrible option at this point for someone to move to.  I am suprised it's still supported at all.  It occasionally has to reverify the licenses, and I'm waiting for that to crap out one day.

I have been touring all of the programs out there and frankly, they are all lacking. Printavo and deconetwork both look pretty good but they have some basic flaws that make no sense to me. 

We started work on an online custom built solution, but I got distracted and it died.  I honestly wasn't sure the person I was working with could have handled it.  My brother in law is a programmer, and he really wants to get something of his own up and going.  He's also unemployed and has a lot of free time, so maybe he's the guy to do it.

Homer and I have been emailing back and forth about this...it's mainly complaints about how nobody has a truly great solution out there.

My biggest gripe with Shopworks is why did they eliminate QB?  It's a perfectly fine accounting program.  I do't use it for invoicing, I use it for payables and our accountant.  They spent a lot of time re-inventing the wheel.  Just batch sales info over and be done with it.

I say leave this post up, but the OP needs to get a little more active here or it would seem like he's selling something by slamming a competitor.

[merchmonster]

When I got a demo they pitched it as a replacement for quick books at which point I knew they were obviously looney. Just do what you’re good at and leave accounting to quickbooks which has so much money invested in it.

So the tales of shop management software goes...or whatever the heck I'm trying to say.

For all of it's flaws, T-quoter is built on an SQL database.  It hasn't been updated since at least 2013.  It's a terrible option at this point for someone to move to.  I am suprised it's still supported at all.  It occasionally has to reverify the licenses, and I'm waiting for that to crap out one day.

I have been touring all of the programs out there and frankly, they are all lacking. Printavo and deconetwork both look pretty good but they have some basic flaws that make no sense to me. 

We started work on an online custom built solution, but I got distracted and it died.  I honestly wasn't sure the person I was working with could have handled it.  My brother in law is a programmer, and he really wants to get something of his own up and going.  He's also unemployed and has a lot of free time, so maybe he's the guy to do it.

Homer and I have been emailing back and forth about this...it's mainly complaints about how nobody has a truly great solution out there.

My biggest gripe with Shopworks is why did they eliminate QB?  It's a perfectly fine accounting program.  I do't use it for invoicing, I use it for payables and our accountant.  They spent a lot of time re-inventing the wheel.  Just batch sales info over and be done with it.

I say leave this post up, but the OP needs to get a little more active here or it would seem like he's selling something by slamming a competitor.

[Prince Art]

Not about Shopworks, but about the original post: It has the ring of someone who got burned big time by a vendor wouldn't make it right, and they felt their only recourse was to respond with a "Yea, well, if that's the way you're going to be, I'm going to take it to the public as fully as I know how." And if they really were willing to work with the vendor on paying in part, but the vendor wasn't willing to work on it at all, then perhaps this is the way to handle it. If that's really how it played out, it seems others should know.

Nonetheless, I think anyone who reads this thread trying to decide if Shopworks is for them would be well-advised to consider it one shop's experience, to consider that there are usually 2 sides to every story (or was that 3 sides?), and then weigh it with other people's experience, too.

[T Shirt Farmer]

I think the OP is a bit more than upset to take the time to do this, more than once during our ramp up with SW i felt this aggravated as well. SWis a great platform you just have to want to learn it and work it.

http://www.shopworks-software-review.com/category/shopworks-software/

[Jepaul]

Jesus, if I was shop worx I’d give this man his purchase refund back and ask for this to go away.   

As far as leaving the post up the credibility is in the removal of anonymity.  At the least having the name of the shop in the bio along with their website.

This is posted on the website which is good:


We are AMBRO Manufacturing of Flemington, NJ, we have 19 employees, and we serve our local community and a few surrounding counties.  You can contact us by phone (908) -? (Edited for forum post) or via any of the contact email forms on this review site.

[KevinO]

Wow, an entire blog page created, that is a true disgruntled customer. Shopworx should have just bit the bullet and returned their money!
However in Shopworx defense, it seems like this customer has visions of grandeur in regards to shop software that I am afraid doesn't exist at this point. Printavo looks nice and they are definitely forward thinking and will be on lookout for their future products, but I don't think it is as powerful as Shopworx at this point. What I think has been lost on this person is that it is a long game when you look at Shopworx in regards to the reports and the data you can collect. I can attest that shopworx phone support is garbage and they are pretty set in their ways as a company, but through research you could have found that out. Also this person should have been able to figure out the things they don't like from the free trial Shopworx offers.

[GraphicDisorder]

Whoa, this guy went full out on his review and page, truly not playing games with this I see.

I still use Fast Manager, it's buggy and not perfect but it does work for me. I was sure Printavo would be better for me but it wasn't. I haven't tried any of the others yet as each time I look into one there is a glaring reason not to.