NCR Voyix

A Review On NCR Counterpoint

We have been using NCR Counterpoint at our computer retail store for years now, and despite some of the flaws, it has been an invaluable tool for our daily operations. It's not too complicated to learn how to use this, if you devote some time to learn the different features & procedures necessary for functionality. It is mostly reliable and stable, barring a few instances where it can seem unstable or glitchy. Didn't have a chance to use customer service, so I can't really comment on that. Our internal IT takes care of all the issues, and they seem to be able to be resolved fine, so I can only give 3 stars.

It has been a road

CounterPoint works if you require complex inventory management for larger businesses

The complexity of CounterPoint almost requires an onsite power-user to serve as support for staff. As that individual, I often found myself providing tech support to other users.

We are a retail pet supply store on the island of Maui (Hawaii), in business for 38 years.
As our business grew and our database included 10,000 SKUs, the program we had been using became increasingly slow and problematic, actually causing many errors that tech support could not figure out. Our supplier (and tech support) were based in San Diego, a three hour time difference, another problem in itself. It became obvious that we need to research other companies and other POS systems.

We decided that the time had arrived to shop within our own state, and were fortunate to meet with Francis of Computant in Honolulu - different island, but same time zone- important for "across the sea" support.

Our first impression of the Counterpoint POS system was "VERY EXPENSIVE"! However, after spending time with Francis and his team and watching them demonstrate the features, we could see the incredible speed and flexibility, which were money-saving features to offset the initial cost. We were sold!

Francis, being the congenial, persuasive gentleman that he is, soon had us upgraded to all new equipment, including the Radiant Touchscreen registers. His installation team of three highly competent individuals flew to Maui on the day we went "live" for the installation and training. It turned out to be one of our busiest days of the year, which made it very hectic, and somewhat stressful, but his team was truly fantastic! We were up and running smoothly on day 1.

Our sales contract included a number of hours of tech support included, and we were taken care of immediately with any and every bump in the road. They continue to have superior customer support, at any time of the day.

Having been in business for 38 years, the complexities of inventory control only seem to increase, particularly when we are across the ocean from our suppliers (7- 20 days lead times). Customer buying trends change faster than ever as new products enter the market continuously, and customer relations became ever more important to cultivate. Counterpoint makes these much more manageable. Purchase orders and receiving are simplified. Our sales staff love the ease of touchscreen cash registers (originally intimidating).

The program seemed very complex, originally. After the initial learning curve one begins to better understand the "flow", and today I am amazed at the fact that we continuously find new ways to use the software to our advantage. We are able to modify the touchscreen buttons from the back office at any time, adding or deleting buttons as needed.

If time and information are money, this program is the way to go!

Great Software For Point of Sale

Counterpoint made our inventory and POS terminals simpler and more efficient.

DO NOT USE

The worst experience I have had in almost 20 years of running my store.

Support

Be prepared NCR will not help. NCR will only advise to see a dealer.

Counter Point POS for the Small Business

This product has many functions but has limited functionality of the functions. NCR could have done a much better job researching the market and finding out what functionality should have been included. Features that have either limited ability or the ability was grossly under developed causes issues. The application runs slow, the back office operations are extremely limited, the receiving process is underdeveloped and quiet frankly the entire application is remedial. This product CAN become a top notch application if the features were added to the base system. For example QBE (query by example) has been common place in application for the last 16 years and is non-existent in this application. The base reports that come with the system does not even have a simple re-order report that would merely query the min and max and current balance. I have been in the IT industry as a developer for 27 years and have seen the best to worst applications. This one sits right in the middle!

Review of NCR Counterpoint

My company uses Counterpoint for computer hardware and software retailing. We've been working with Counterpoint for many years now and I have to say it gets the job done and has met our needs.

Counterpoint

Overall I think this software is very good but it has its flaws like anything else. I'd recommend it to others though. Many times it does some funky things like freezing or didn't connect to servers but that is not too commen anymore.

Counterpoint, it's a thing.

One of the Best!

We used NCR for a while and we're very happy with it! Unfortunately we had to discontinue it due to a new chip reader we had to get, due to fraudulent transactions. At the time, NCR didn't work with our merchant processor. At the time of service, customer service was great. Always someone available to help which is very important! And they were based in the US. I am hopeful we can go back to NCR in the future!

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!

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!

Amazing, just needs a tweak to be perfect

I love the inventory features, truly has a great interface thats almost as easy to use as an iPhone. I love the customer service features that help you remember your customers, market to them, and even get them some loyalty points. Adding and editing items and prices in your inventory are really easy to use and makes scanning and identifying simple. As for the value, I wish that it either had a lower price for the small or first time businesses or at least add extra free features to help them get off the ground.

Have been using Counterpoint since 2007

This software is helpful and increases our productivity in many ways.

I enjoy working with NCR Counterpoint

Simple to use easy to learn.

This system is the worst I have ever had and I have only had two in twenty one (21) year. There is know reason that this company should not have a manual or how about a help button that really work. This is really funny I printed out a report but I for got were it was on the system. So I went to help and put in the name of the report and it said it was not there. If you have a question and need to call tech suport it will cost you a arm and a leg for the information were if you had a manaual or a help button that really work it would save you money.

Customer is God

Installation Support

The product is OK at best. Their support is lacking and they will charge you for everything they can. Training is expensive, and unless you get Renee during your support calls, your probably won't get a resolution in a reasonable time frame. I use Counterpoint for a gun retail store in Daytona Beach FL "Volusia Top Gun". Please feel free to contact me regarding this system. I have had it with this system and their support. The Bound Book software they offer is even worse!

Not an upgrade

WRONG SYSTEM FOR OUR BUSINESS

NONE

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!

NCR Counterpoint: An Invaluable Tool...A Work In Progress

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.

Product is fair ... but they will nickle and dime you to death ...

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

My Company recently made the switch to CounterPoint Enterprise SQL 8.4 and would like to share my experience with Radiant Systems. We have been in business for over 50 years and have had several different POS systems and CounterPoint has been the best system by far. Implementing a new system is never easy but with the help of OneStep Retail Solutions this has been the easiest and the quickest implementation I have ever done.

There are so many POS systems on the market finding the best fit for your business is a very difficult decision. Kevin McAdams and Jay Shore with OneStep Retail Solutions took the time to learn our business needs and recommended CounterPoint as the best solution. After using the system for over a month now I am glad I took their advice because this is a great system.

The CounterPoint Gateway for processing credit cards is very fast. The touch screen terminals make ringing up customers quick and easy. The ability to customize searches and change the information displayed through the column designer makes looking up the information a breeze. The reporting is equally fast, flexible and easy to use for all of our staff members.

Blythe Franks, our business analyst from OneStep Retail Solutions has played a key role in making this transition from our old system to CounterPoint. Her experience and knowledge of the product has made implementation and integration of the system quick and easy. With her insight we were able to customize CounterPoint to meet all of our business needs making our company more efficient than ever.

Sean Kinney
IT Manager
Hi-Time Wine Cellars

NCR Counterpoint is a robust, reliable and user friendly software

Good software for retails businesses as well as workplace cafeterias.

a very scalable and configurable solution.

Product is great - customer service is AWFUL.

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.

NEW VERSES OLD

Counterpoint is a Remarkable Product!

Bark N Purr is a pet supply business that focuses on cats and dogs. In the last 6 years, we have implement 4 different POS systems. Two of them were actually unusable due to flaws in the software. These systems also did not have all the capabilities we were looking for - specifically eCommerce and better ordering tools.

We decided on CounterPoint v8.3.9 because of its eCommerce integration and ordering flexibility. The system was very user-friendly and took very little time to train my staff on basic Ticket Entry, inventory maintenance and receiving. In fact, I think most of the staff was a little bored during the training because the software is so intuitive.

The ordering capabilities are outstanding. During this recession we have seen a shift in our business from one foot to another. Prior to CounterPoint, we established Min/Max quantities for each item. Ordering with Min/Max meant that these levels had to be constantly reset as our business changed. We now use a combination of Days of Supply and Min/Max which has greatly reduced the amount of time spent on orders.

Our support has been excellent with most problems are resolved immediately. In fact, the only thing I do not like in CounterPoint is the report structure using multiple lines for each item. I find the reports difficult to read and waste paper.

We are a retail garden center. We sell trees, shrubs, perennials, roses, birdseed feeders, grass seed, fertilizer, insecticide, fungicide, lawn and garden ornaments. We are open all year. It is a family owned and operated store in business for 109 years. We looked at software to run our inventory about 6 years ago. We settled on CounterPoint because of it ease of use and great function ability. Before CounterPoint we used a general cash register without UPC scanning capability.

One of the main reasons we like it is for the great support we get from Randall Data Systems, the company that implemented the system. We have a huge inventory so the implementation took a few months. Karen, from Randall stuck tight with us throughout the whole implementation, and is available for every question we may have even now. She really knows her stuff!

CounterPoint is very easy to use. I train new cashiers and they catch on quickly. Even the ones with no computer experience, although it does help if they have some. We are now able to see our inventory with the click of a button. We know when to reorder inventory and what we may have in back stock. We also now know the profit margin on everything we sell. We never knew this before.

I truly recommend this software to everyone.

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.

Perfect for Starting Entrepreneurs!

I had just started a facebook page for my online e-commerce store and wanted a site and a pos system to take orders! I did not want to pay for cheap software and have to open source code the rest for myself nor did I want to pay over the top price and have features that I did not know if I would be able to use just yet with money I know I do not have right now. I just needed to take payments online, keep in contact with customers, and look professional all at the same time!

We are a retail gift/novelty/tobacco store that has used this software for eight years.

This software is expensive, tech support is very expensive, and in our experience, tech support charged us even for informing them of bugs and glitches. When we tried to enter tax codes on loyalty cares for Missouri, they went against the Department of Revenue codes, but our understanding is that there is no way to fix it. There is no way to easily track consignment sales. The software would not print Z tapes on receipt paper, but only on 8x12 paper with the margins cut off. There is not a SKU lookup that employees can access without seeing costs of goods. There is no way to print small barcodes unless you print them on butterfly labels and waste half of them. The software does not come with a manual. The help button didn't work half the time. The Crystal Reports feature does not work.

It was a very expensive program, and the cost is ongoing. You have to pay subscription dues yearly for the software and a call to tech support is always a significant charge, which we had to pay even when we didn't feel the issue was resolved.

NCR Silver- a great POS system!

We have been using CounterPoint software for over 10 years. The solution serves the retail environment well - it is easy to use and easy to teach new staff to use. Radiant has continued to develop it to meet the new world of Internet sales and marketing. I love the fact that our online store integrates into our retail database. As a result, we only have to worry about one set of data that updates to our website with two easy clicks.

I also have to say that customer service is very good. Our CounterPoint reps, Sandy and Kevin, are super. Sabrina helps us maintain, develop and keep up our website, and she is terrific. They are responsive and helpful, and really try to help us understand and solve problems. The online help portal is also good, and teaches as well as solves problems.

Overall, I would recommend CounterPoint to those who need a point of sale system, and/or Internet software that is very sophisticated in capability, but remains easy to use.

Competent POS software