Reduced IT costs, Improved staff experience and greater overall efficiency of our business practices.

I give this review after having tried many different software packages over the last 15 years. Some costing x10 the price of Windard, some costing x10 less. What I'm left with over these years is perspective, and that perspective was hard earned. You will not find a more complete point of sale, inventory control, accounting, crm, etc. for this price range. With the ability to fine tune it to your exact business needs, it's easiest to configure, maintain and operate...especially compared to the "enterprise" software world where your eyes will water from pricing. Its got lightning fastest Point of sale with the absolute best part find search tool I can recall using. The special order management is the best complete solution from any I've tried. If your serious about your Business, you should consider Windard. I honestly think that in the long run it has improved our business, staff and bottom dollar.

There is no such thing as perfect software. With that being said, there are issues...but then it's technology. You have to considering that it is a highly customizable product that able to serve an amazing range of business types with thousands of options. What Windward has that sets it apart is a fantastic support team with Canadian staff and an out-of-country team that is admittingly fantastic...probably the best off-shore support that I have ever experienced in IT. Tech support is typically same day, commonly instant or within a few hours of placing a call. If you have an urgent problem, they will find someone for you RIGHT NOW. If you have problems using Windward software...you will most probably have problems using another piece of software. The key with any software, especially if you are new to it, is to have patience and use every opportunity to learn.

My existing business had an old time cash register when I purchased it. At the beginning 12+ years ago it worked ok for me. But over the years as prices rose. I had no way of knowing at a glance what I paid for an item and what I should be selling it for. I was losing money! I was familiar with another accounting system but it required extensive time at home each night entering hand written A/R bills and daily till totals into its system so I could bill customers. I had heard of Windward several years prior but just didn't think I could afford it. A new employee who had experience with other systems encouraged me to purchase. Implementation was so much work because I didn't have any inventory computerized. No lists and I jumped in in the middle of a month and a fiscal year. I was going to finance the purchase over 2 years but decided to put it on my line of credit. I paid it and my new equipment off in 6 months! I have now used the software for 7 years and am very happy with it. It has saved me about $2000.00/year in accountant fees. Love the fact that all monthly Provincial and Federal sales tax reports are easily paid. It has an employee section with payroll etc. So easy to upload inventory that is new from an excel spreadsheet.

Inventory from multiple suppliers with barcodes have to be entered in as coming from one main supplier with all other suppliers entered in as alternates. The barcode can't have any supplier attached to it or my computer makes a loud beep. I purchase by item # not by barcodes. I wish the system would let you enter item #'s from each supplier with the corresponding barcode even if it is also the same barcode for another supplier. I am not always aware that the product coming from one supplier is already in my system under a different supplier.

Our overall experience was extremely poor and detrimental to our business. All our staff were frustrated ( I nearly lost staff), some customers were frustrated, we invested so much money, and have in turn lost so much money. Oh and did I mention the time invested. All that time I spent, all a waste, the time my staff spent which I paid for, such a waste. So much stress that my whole team went through only to end up worse off. Before we went live, in my gut I had doubts due to my experience with Windward staff in the lead up transition period. But unfortunately I have faith in people, and faith that people tell the truth, and they assured me that the Windward System 5 was an investment in my business- to have confidence, to go live and realise the benefit. Oh so wrong. The system just plain and simple had so many glitches and caused more harm than good to my business. Once live, it just got worse and worse. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut in implementation, written the money invested off as a bad business decision and aborted. By pushing on, I cost my business so much more, and then blindly I stayed for the full 60 days as required by the refund clause, further harming my business, only to be told they were not giving me a refund anyway. Also if you are in a different timezone, that is another thing to be wary of. When I signed up they promised local support as they had two people in Australia. But these staff left and no one replaced them.

We are a retail shop with a mechanic workshop out the back. The special order process was a positive, but unfortunately when you think of all the difficulties, costs and time loss from the rest of the system I can't go so far as to say it is a pro. The idea of the detailed security and reports options is good, but due to extensive glitches never realized any benefits. Unfortunately the reports and exports were missing data, which meant reconciliation was problematic, and the security just caused glitches and locked my staff out of the system. Due to this, the amount of bookwork to fix the mess is just huge, this system is continuing to cost me in staff costs and time even though I have left Windward. Ultimately this POS system was one of the worst business decisions I have ever made and I do not recommend it all.

The implementation is long and tedious. We worked hard with 'technicians' to ensure quality data was loaded. We had 5 different implementation technicians as 2 left the company, one they allocated to us didn't suit the timezone, one provided intermittent help, & one was finally helpful. Windward waived some licencing fees to compensate for lack of support as we were paying for a licence we could not use. Windward then deleted all my data and we had to start again. The daily technical staff in are in a Philippines call centre, they failed to fix most issues. Due system glitches we had no choice but to leave despite due to it harming our business. A huge amount of funds and time invested. Windaward refused to provide refund despite us doing the mandatory 60 days. Glitches include BUT WERE NOT LIMITED TO: mixing up data across customer records showing machines that belonged to other customers on accounts (nothing to with our data); showing bills and outstanding amounts for other customers on accounts; continuously locking our staff out; full system outage; slowing down sales; daily sales reports inaccurate; export reports missing data. Windaward technicians use a licence you have paid for to investigate their system's issues further undermining your business as you've less workstations. We wired the internet throughout our shop as they suggested, this resolved no issues. We found usability to be poor, search functionality poor, & it would take us many steps to do basic things.

One of the most recent benefits is the available training in many different areas of the Windward software program. This is an incredible asset to streamlining and improving day to day business practices for us. When we find out things the program can do for us that for years has just been sitting there not being used, we're like a kid in a candy shop....Excited...Wow!!

Over the years there have been many areas of the program that we never took advantage of. One of the greatest things is with all the recent available training on and off line it has allowed us to find these nuggets that have helped us tremendously to make processes within our business so much easier. This had to be one of the best implementations that Windward has made, keep the training coming!!

The one thing we dislike about the program are updates. We get very nervous! A few years ago we did an update and it totally messed up the whole program. We had to work offline (paper work) for more than 3 weeks, which was a nightmare after the fact. Though Windward programmers worked for over 6 months to find a fix, they never ever did. So here 5 or 6 years later our Point of Sales Transaction Report figures are still unusable. We recently updated Pervasive and were told it should really speed up the program. Unfortunately it didn't, actually saw absolutely no difference even though it had been several years since we'd done an update, so are looking at other areas now.

the main function of our business, our retail set up revolves around the software making it easy to operate day to week, to month to yearly. it has been absolutely essential. recording & keeping track of everything form our substantial amount of inventory, along with accounting, reports, staff, ect. our main source of operations for sure. :)

that is is absolutely fluent in keeping all of our information organized & keeps me able to do my job as a 1 woman Owner/Operator. without this softwear we would not have been able to stay open for the past 11 years without the ease of Windward System 5, for my retail business.

for us a small retail shop, the maintenance & updating costs are quite high & out of our price range on a year to year basis.