NCR Counterpoint Reviews

First, an explanation on ratings. I would have given it five stars for Ease of Use, except that I am a new user and am still learning my way around the system. That said, it is easy to figure out how to do certain tasks, but when I can't figure it out, their customer support is top notch.

We are a small farm that produces approximately 1,300 gallons of maple syrup each year, and we raise alpacas for their fiber. Our farm store is stocked with maple syrup and maple goodies, plus an inventory of alpaca products, from yarn to apparel to accessories.

I went with CounterPoint, v8.4 because it is affiliated with NCR, a major corporation that has been around a long time. The implementation team at Radiant Systems was excellent. I had the system installed on my laptop, and so far it is working great. As a new user, I am still learning how to do certain tasks, and the project team has continued to hold my hand until I have mastered all the basics. We're almost there....

It is too early to tell how I have benefited from the system, but I am looking forward to comparing my holiday retail season to last year, when I had little time to enjoy the holidays and limited resources to control my inventory.

CounterPoint allows you to add on modules, such as integrated website management, gift card processing, scheduling and ticket sales, etc. RCS outsources these modules to other companies so they can focus directly on the point of sale functionality and improvements and assure that the modules work properly with CounterPoint.

Lastly, RCS invited me to their users conference, which I highly recommend to any user of this POS program. The informational sessions covered all kinds of topics to better use CounterPoint, and it included sessions on retailing strategies that I found very helpful. RCS is truly a class act.

We operate a marine wholesale distributorship, along with a retail operation. Our three sources of revenue are store traffic, phone orders and Internet orders.

Our previous software system, while specific to the marine industry and bundled with features we sorely miss, was unable to integrate e-commerce, point of sale, and shipping functionality. The time we spent dealing with each order on three different levels was time-consuming, and also allowed for the introduction of errors.

We are currently running version 8.3.9 of CounterPoint, but will be upgrading to 8.4 as soon as the season slows this fall. The implementation experience was choppy, to say the least, due to a reseller that wasn't up to speed on the software. This hiccup notwithstanding, we were able grasp the basics and run with it.

We have been using CounterPoint for just under two years now and the watershed moment was when we switched partners nine months into the project. Our reseller's knowledge of the system and ability to teach us its functionality have allowed us to move forward at a rapid pace. The program is easy to use, and a common logic follows through the system so even when playing with new features, the desired result is easy to achieve.

Our current partner could stand to be slightly more responsive, especially to issues I consider to be very basic requirements in a system of this size and power.

We are currently 95% integrated with UPS WorldShip. The only thing holding us back from 100% integration is CounterPoint's inability to receive tracking numbers back from WorldShip without cumbersome export and import of data, or utilizing a third-party program. We are currently investigating CPOnline with the hope of having full vertical integration by January 1, 2012.

So far, we have been able to streamline sales, shipping & purchasing with more good things to come!

WRONG SYSTEM FOR OUR BUSINESS

NONE

CounterPoint is one of the most functional POS software on the market

Our organization is a non-profit organization, but has a specialized shop. Our shop hours are not normal retail and our customers are sometimes very demanding. Our inventory ranges from thousands of patches to clothing, jewelry, etc. We have used CounterPoint since 2005. Our shop previously had a cash register and the old source of look and order on inventory. In 2005 the shop was handed over to new management, who researched and concluded to use CounterPoint. I have been at this shop for over two years and transferred from another shop that also used CounterPoint. We had version 7.5 until this past August and we upgraded to SQL. Version 7 was great to work with but SQL is so much more... We are able to resource more reports than before, with the ease of being able to have the help menu available.

The training of staff was so easy and quick to pickup. My staff and myself have had such a great time adapting to the new software. It is so easy to track inventory, sales, customers, and again the use of many new and different reports that help us on a daily basis. Our favorite is the 2 or 3 steps at the End of Day, with the older version there were so many steps and this is 1,2,3 and complete. Our support team is highly professional and always answers our calls in a timely manner. We are also excited because we do not HAVE to call them as much now with the new SQL. I would highly recommend CounterPoint to anyone who asks.

Small Retail Operations

Our experience with NCR was great! Opening our first retail B&M was quite the challenge and NCR was able to help us with multiple tasks on one convenient platform. NCR featured all of the essentials. Time clock, multiple employee log-in, built-in CRM program, inventory management (I'll cover this more), and several other retail functionalities. We did not use many of the restaurant features as they were irrelevant to our operations. From memory, NCR Support was helpful and friendly, although the MAJOR issues we had took so long to fix, that we chose a different POS company in the long run.

Counterpoint, it's a thing.

Competent POS software

Counterpoint works for the most part

Nothing very special

It gets the job done, but not in any way that really sets it apart from the other POS systems I have tried. Additionally our IT team seems to have a hard time getting any new features rolled out

NEW VERSES OLD

We are a retailer of firearms and just found out we are the first guinea pigs to use Counterpoint SQL 8.4.3. Since firearms are a regulated industry, they are always serialized. We purchased the bound book module to facilitate tracking the acquisition & disposition of firearms. In general, I do not find the system intuitive from a laypersons perspective. I can ring up a sale. However, receiving trade-ins on guns doesn't work.

We can't take consignments. Serial #s are missing from the bound book table. Our VAR is too overwhelmed to speak to us for entire days, bringing our business to a standstill. There is a substantial list of fixes that have been submitted to the programmers, and no timetable has been given for when they will be completed. Meanwhile, our business is limping along.

Software is supposed to make your life easier, so you can run your business. It has made our life harder, and we are losing business because we are spending so much time dealing with constant problems with the system. I have to hand-write labels for our firearms because the software cannot accommodate what we need to print on the label. We have paid about $30K for a system that we are totally frustrated with, and no one will get back to us as to when things will be fixed.

Overall, we're very happy with our purchase. From an point-of-sale perspective, it's very friendly. The back-office portion has some minor frustrations but has shown steady improvement. The important thing is that it met our requirements at a price point we could manage. Our integrator (Rapid Domains) has done excellent work at reasonable rates.

We do have one significant area of concern - like most software vendors, Radiant would like to increase their recurring revenue streams. In many areas where they provide additional services, this is appropriate. An example would be e-mail marketing. However, when they want to charge a monthly fee to have our system mine our data and send us e-mail alerts - I'm referring specifically to their Point of Sale Real-Time Alerts - we feel that's taking advantage of our somewhat locked-in relationship with them. It's not an end-of-the-world issue with us, but it raises suspicions that Radiant may heading towards more revenue-minded treatment of its customers than we've seen with other vendors.

For this reason, while CounterPoint SQL does handle our needs well, we can only give a cautious recommendation of the product and Radiant Systems.

Still waiting...

Customer service is practically non-existent, and when we do get to talk to reps, they give us conflicting information. One person told us that there was no way to deduct past payments and still charge full sales tax, but another person suggested we create house accounts to fix the problem. That's great, but they sent us the procedure for NCR Silver Restaurant version, and that's not the software we're using. We're not a restaurant. We've been paying for three months and have yet to ring up our first order. I asked them to refund us since we're not up and running, but they said it's their policy to begin charging as soon as we receive the equipment (it doesn't matter if the stuff wasn't even out of the box). So disappointed in this POS system. We feel like we've been bamboozled!

Has reliability and stability issues

Nona Ruth's is a new table top retail gift shop. As a part of our star up we were in the market for a user friendly, robust point of sales system that would free up as much time as possible for taking care of our customers while at the same time providing as much info as possible to help us manage and grow our business. Just as important was the support and backup available from the provider.

We spent considerable time and effort evaluating every provider we could scare up.
CounterPoint and their local representative, Image Business Systems, has more than met our needs. The software is well designed, the initial training and start up effective, and the ongoing support very responsive.

We whole heartedly endorse CounterPoint and if you are looking in the Birmingham area, suggest you save yourself time and effort and go directly to Image Business Systems.

It's overly complicated and highly priced!

We love our CounterPoint system! We have had in use for about a year and a half with no problems at all. Being a small business owner I have to spend a lot of time working. Since we purchased our system I have more time to focus on selling products and marketing my business, not to mention I get more time at home with my family.

The new system makes ordering and reordering easier than ever. The inventory management application is amazing. With one click you can see what you have and what you need. When it comes time to perform the physical count of inventory it is so simple, what used to take a week now takes a day.

The software has so many things that streamline the day-to-day operations. It is capable of telling me anything and everything that is going on in the store at any time. We can see where we are from day to day and year to year.

It has been a bad transition from Counterpoint on line.

I can't wait to switch over to something new. I am getting no resolution on my issues and all I get from support is no support at all.

Not too shabby.

Volunteer that uses this.

Correct Information

Overall a good tool

Ariday's Review

NCR is a great system. I loved how it worked with my company, and I have seen it at other big companies like our local grocery shop. It is highly recommended.

Not an upgrade