simPRO

Pros

Simpro is an excellent software for project management. it embeds features such as estimation, planning, execution of tasks, inventory management. it's really a complete and quite easy to use software.

Cons

I have to use it at least for 3 pojects to get my hands on it.

Alternatives Considered

Switched From

Pros

I like that we can track a job/project through the entire process starting with Lead Generation to creating an Estimate and then converting the estimate into a Job/Project all the way through to the final invoice. All stages of the project life cycle can be tracked and job-costing is a breeze because all job Purchase Orders, technician time sheets, etc. are visible.
The inventory management capabilities are a significant improvement over our previous methods. Having all of our vendor's products entered into the Catalog with visibility into our current on-hand inventory makes things more efficient during the estimating process and provides means of controlling how and when materials are assigned to jobs.

Cons

The user interface can be improved a little to make accessing information a bit more intuitive. It is not difficult by any measure, but I would like to see more flexibility and drag-and-drop capabilities - especially with the estimating portion.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing simPRO

Reasons for Switching to simPRO

Pros

The software is relatively easy to use once you understand the workflow. Setting up the system for the first time was very easy. Customer support has been good. The quotes portion of this software is a breeze.

Cons

Over all this software to me has more pros than cons although some of the cons are very big in my line of work as a commercial HVAC Mechanical Contractor. The office, administration, scheduling , quoting and reports are very good though the tech work orders (ie job cards as SimPRO calls them) are probably the one of the largest pains we suffer with as a commercial HVAC Mechanical Service Company. The main problem is that Simpro will not allow you to create one Service Ticket to send to the customer that shows the techs write up of the worked performed, the techs on the job and the total hours. If two techs worked on a centrifugal chiller tear down for two weeks Simpro would generate a service write up with the same job number for each tech for each day. That’s two Simpro Service tickets a day for two weeks which totals 20 Service tickets that we have to send the customer just to show the total hours worked each day versus having one service ticket that the customer signs showing tech names and the total hours worked each day. We have talked to Simpro Support about this and there is nothing they can do or will do about this.
On the accounting and estimating side of this software Simpro uses Margin percentage (Simpro calls it Gross Margin) and not Gross Margin dollars. From what I understand Simpro originated in Australia and they use mark up percentage where as in America we use Gross Margin so beware.

Pros

Ease of use, functionality, easy to scale up and down with the software.

Cons

I hate the fact that I cannot remove the ability by security group to download whatever is on the screen. This is a huge data info/sec problem. For a business product I should have the ability to limit employee's ability to download a CSV file from any screen effectively handing out my pipeline, customer list, etc to whomever they want. There should be some control for this and this is almost to the point where the product is unusable because of security requirements we have from our own customers.

Pros

simPRO Enterprise is functional! And improving all the time. It's quick to load and easy to navigate. Now, this may be because we were one of the first to use it in Canada, but the level of customer service and attention to the users requests throughout our set up and subsequent upgrades has been amazing.

Cons

I would say, it has a learning curve - but if your implementation team are on the ball - you'll be ok!