Ease of administration and our accounting team rarely has any issues with the software

The support team is amazing. They are extremely helpful and are good at fixing the annoying bugs and getting to the root causes of our problems. The accounting and hr side of the software works extremely well and I have very few if any complaints or issues that I have to fix or call support for.

The project manangement side of the software was never really completed so its less than impressive. But I think on the positive side since Viewpoint has purchased Spectrum I think that integrating it with their Team software will make a huge difference in this section!

Overall Spectrum has streamlined and made our entire experience easier start to finish. As long as the information going in is correct the end product is correct - garbage in garbage out. The support system is great as well as the external support such as the Viewpoint Network, connecting you to peers is fabulous

Ease of use, eliminating multiple programs, live data update, split screens

having to do multiple steps to update invoices, not being able to access all information in one module. Some of the reporting is convoluted.

I never made it through implementation. Our "consultant" was constantly rescheduling, unavailable, on a trip to some other state. The "project managers" love to schedule useless meetings at a rate of $250 an hour. You will be required to buy "Crystal Reports" to make your own invoice templates or have the consultant do it at $250 an hour. This wasn't disclosed to us. The implementation was extremely difficult. The modules are very hard to use and have way too many features that are not used. Tax deductions in payroll were not correct after several attempts to get them correct. The answer was always to update the payroll deductions file which you also have to do manually. When I asked to end the contract after 2 years even though we signed for 3 because it wasn't working out they said "Too bad" and sent us to collections for a third year of use even though we never even got up and running on the project. A $60 to $80K mistake for our company that is now struggling to make payroll because of it. Highly recommend NOT using Viewpoint Spectrum.

Not a Lot. It was hard to use, expensive, hard to implement. Customer service is none existent during implementation and otherwise.

Expensive, Hard to use, doesn't eliminate other programs because their modules aren't that great in some cases.

We are still developing our processes as we are still a relatively new user, but overall we have had a very good experience with Spectrum.

The software was relatively easy to implement and start using after going live. There are numerous canned reports that are very helpful and it is also easy to navigate the database when creating custom reports.

The cost projection entry screen desperately needs to be updated. It was so cumbersome to use that we had to hire an outside consultant to build us an Excel template that interfaced with the system. Also, we allocate overhead based on a rate per manhour and this turned out to be a manual weekly process (our old software actually did this automatically).

The overall experience has been a positive one. The benefit is the data is consistent and reliable.

It was timeconsuming and somewhat tedious, but that could have been converting the data from our former software.

The inability to customize reports without advance knowledge of Crystal Reports.

Nothing, honestly. I have to use this piece of shite software 40 hours a week and it never fails to fill me with absolute rage.

I dislike just about everything about Viewpoint Spectrum. It seems like it was created in 1996 and hasn't been updated since. It lacks the most basic of features, such as MULTI SELECT. All processes take 5x as long as they should. They have a suggestions site, where they continuously mark suggestions that do NOT exist as "already exists". If they have a UX team, they must not be paying them enough. They seem to have a high turnover and do not attract talented developers.

Overall it has been a great experience. I have no doubt I picked the right software. It is easy to use, the trainers were knowledgeable and easy to follow. The few times I have needed Tech Support, the response was quick and the issue was resolved. It does everything we need it to do.

I really like the AP system. Very easy to enter data and make corrections. The support I receive from Viewpoint is very helpful. Now that the training is finished, I feel they still have my back. Also the Cash Management with being able to print MICR checks. Now we can order blank checks instead of having to order new checks for each account (53 of them).

My least favorite module is AR. Entering information is easy, but if you make a mistake it is hard to follow how to make the correction. Maybe it is just me, but I think it could work a little easier.

Spectrum fit for us as we had outgrown Quickbooks. I love the document imaging and the cloud-based usage.

You need to be well versed in Crystal reports to create any custom report = more money. Spectrum does not seem to review suggested features that users need despite having a place to put that.

The Job Costing/Tracking abilities are great!

The Project Managers do not know how to use the software and are not interested in learning as it spins them out trying to follow all of the different reports/areas I need to pull up just to find a couple of numbers.

The job cost history and time card history functions are both very detailed

Change order management and subcontracts management are a bit confusing to navigate

Started at this company, where the system was set up incorrectly, and not a single module could pull proper reports due to the set up. I had paid for trainings that end up without being fully trained on the modules because the set up was so wrong it did not function and the spectrum accounting processes could not function and be completed. 6 months in, and over 15,000.00 in additional trainings and partial audit of our system and still cannot complete period end process, quarter end process, or be fully trained to a properly working system. Every time I contact support, I get a response of [sensitive content hidden]. Support just directs you to the "help" files which I have already read through and they don't help, which is why I contacted them.. Tickets are also closed before a resolution.I have been trying to fix mistakes and correct the past 2 years of accounting errors and spectrum is not user friendly when errors are made that need to be corrected. You also cannot just call the past the past and move on with a fresh start for a new year, since all the reporting ties together. You have to go back and try to find every single issue (which I stated before spectrum doesn't easily let you research and find errors, especially when you are not exactly sure how the system was set up and changed multiple times in the past)

Haven't found any pros of the system compared to other systems used.

Highly dislike all accounting functions as it is not user friendly and you have to do 10x more clicks and entries just to do one simple task. Cannot find reports easily, and cannot just search a transaction, or do a quick look up for something within the entire system. You have to physically do way more work and go through every single module to find what you are looking for, then typically it has vanished and not there.. Spent 8 hours trying to find one simple discrepancy and with help from the trainer, still cannot find the error. The system is not efficient and wastes company time and money.

If you want a successful implementation with a company that responds promptly and effectively when problems arise, look elsewhere! On our "go live week", Spectrum was not configured, AP and AR were not fully imported and the parts that were imported did not match up. Due to overworked Project Managers, it often took 2-3 days out to schedule a call time with them and no one from Spectrum senior leadership team seemed to care that our implementation was not proceeding successfully. We had to cancel the implementation and revert back to our previous accounting system (at substantial financial cost). I am currently waiting for my PM to update me on how they plan to take us live yet again with a detailed project plan so the above never happens again (Note: My PM never offered any suggestions here, I had to proactively reach out asking for a go-forward plan to keep them organized.) See below for all the struggles we have had with Spectrum. Also if you are transitioning from anyone other then the major accounting software systems, stay away! They promised that they had the past experience and knowledge to transition us from our current accounting software, Starbuilder, but when it came time to transition they had no one who knew how to do it. See "Cons" below for additional problems I will continue to update this post as things evolve.

-None so far as they failed to take us live. -Competitive pricing -Great user community with a forum.

Cons: -Custom projects not delivered on time for "Go Live". At least 1.5 months behind schedule -Sales team would send a contract and then when we went to sign said they made a mistake and increased contract price. -Never provided solutions to problems. -Implementation specialist what tell us features about features that we would be using then come back to us and say those features are actually not included and would be additional. -Never told us when purchasing that future modules might not be available for self-hosted customers only to more pricey cloud hosted customers (2 are already not available for self-hosted) -PM teams are not proactive or reactive. -Concerns and problems are documented by PMs but are never reviewed or escalated to management. -The purchase of Dexter+Cheny by Viewpoint has hurt the customers as admitted to by employees and seen by users (Short staffed, reassigned positions, information not shared across teams/ companies. ) -Dexter Chaney/ VIewpoint has not once, without a fight, offered acceptable solutions and any problems caused by them. -User is billed for time spent by PM team to fix problems caused by Dexter Chaney/ VIewpoint -This list can go on for another 30 bullet points at least.

Document imaging is truly built inside the software. The image storage was built inside every module for anything you want to scan. All of our AP (invoices, vendor contracts, Insurance Certs), AR (invoice supporting documents, MSA's), equipment files (titles, registrations), etc. were stored electronically and very easy to review. When approving AP, right inside the pre-check register I could review an electronic copy of any invoice making approval on the road very simple. There were also reports that could be run telling you when contracts were to expire, registrations were due, etc. The bottom line is that the designers not only listened to what the end users wanted, they also spent a lot of time making sure they designed it to make it easy for everyone. There are also a lot of user designed fields that allow you to customize things to fit your needs.

We had problems keeping the TB in balance. At least every three months, we had a transaction that only posted 1/2 of the entry, so when we ran a trial balance, it was out of balance (and the rebuild utilities wouldn't fix it), we then had to spend hours researching witch entry didn't post correctly, figure out the other side of the entry and then pay someone with backdoor access to recreate the missing entries. When we called Dexter and Chaney's support team, they had no answers as to why it happened; they would just help us figure out how to fix it (charged per hour). The financial report writer needs a lot of work. They do not support any of the better 3rd party systems like FRx, F-9, Hyperion, etc. Therefore, there was a lot of dumping to Excel and re-keying things into formats we could use. There was also zero drill-down capability. If you ran a TB and questioned what was in the line item, you had to run a detailed TB to see the detail. Then, if it came from another sub-ledger you had to run a report there to see the source document. Our implementation consultant was not very good; her training seemed poor and her knowledge of the workings of Spectrum were great, but she had no experience with the every day use of it, so I frequently pushed back on how it would work in the real world. Eventually she would concede that it would work better the way I proposed.

it has been a work in progress, we felt abandoned during our training and thereafter. We do not feel with the fees we currently pay that we should have to pay someone to guide us thru something we were not taught or needed to go back over, tech support should able to do so.

the uploadable pdf function to put with invoices

Equipment Control/Fixed Assets, very unfriendly for job costing, to hard to track with the way the system is set now, also if you have depreciated out a piece one time and an error was made you cannot correct it, you cannot do a negative to get it back on track or to change months of depreciation etcChange order entries are redundant and not easy to enter in, does not automatically show the new billing items when you do the draw requests, you have to then manually enter into the draw request even though you made a billing item in the change order

Overall I do like Spectrum. I feel like there are areas it could improve in and that I could be made more modern/ appealing to the eye. When I am busy I am able to answer the phone and navigate through Spectrum quickly to get the information I need right away. The depth of the program is a very good thing as long as they focus on having ways to be able to dig deep quickly or else finding information can become a headache.

I really like all the different reports that are made available. There are many places to add all different kinds of information and once the information is added in Spectrum allows you to pull reports for everything. Another feature I like a lot is the Favorites Bar. Spectrum is very broad and the Favorites Bar makes it very easy to quickly assess certain features of Spectrum that are specific to your role.

Some features about the software can be "glitchy" in certain features. For instance we have a tab with lots of information added in to one thing and this can cause Spectrum to freeze up and I will have to close completely out and log back in and start over what I was working on at the time. We have tried different recommendations to resolve this issue, but we get the same result.

The features that I find most impactful is the ability to not only use "canned" reports but to customize reports to our needs. Real-time information all day, all the time. Being cloud based means that everyone on Construction management has real-time data of the same information, whether in the field or in the office and everyone can communicate using this real-time data. This allows for trouble-shooting and prevention of overruns more efficiently. Field management with mobile users allows for the most current project information to be uploaded into Spectrum at any moment. This ability to have current information at any time allows for better analytics.

Being able to do comparative reports over years. There are no reports that allow for jobs or financials to be viewed and compared over multiple years. Also, being able to pull customer historical data over 3 - 5 year period for Projects and various Industries worked in for bids.

Overall Spectrum is a time saver. It has helped bring project management into the loop of being able to resolve customer issues. The best part is it has allowed me to be able to work from home two days a week for a year now!

The navigation make it so you can figure out what you need to do next with a minimum amount of training on how to use the system. The customizable reports are a great asset. Billing reports are easy to pull together.

Draw Request is my least favorite in this system. When you open draw request it shows you in the upper right in financials you have previous work. The total schedule of values is NOT showing. If you have amounts in both this period and materials stored the system will not give you a total of combined for the draw. Also when you are in the draw the entire line needs to highlight while scrolling down for the line you need. It gets very frustrating at times. When something is entered into job cost under the wrong phase, there needs to be a way to change the phase and not have to do multiple entries for negative to to incorrect phase and a positive to the correct phase. That would be ha huge time saver.

We are improving our use of the software's many features and use Spectrum's reports to track, report, and monitor financial and job performance on a weekly basis.

As a construction accounting software package Spectrum offers solutions for most of our essentials. With help from a knowledgeable consultant we've been able to to modify or create the reports we need.

Timesheet entry is missing mobile components and approval processes offered by third parties. Project and document management is not as robust as Procore. Scheduling for labor, tools, and equipment and comparing against estimate, budget, and actual doesn't functionally exist. We are spending a lot of time, money, and effort to research, source, purchase, and integrate third party applications.

It works. My only comparison is Maxwell. I would not rate this platform better or worse than Maxwell. Each program has/had its issues.

I assume that Payroll and Job Cost are why this product was purchased. I do not use those modules. I do like the Contract module (other than actually creating Contract invoices - that's not so good).

Work Order and Service Contract are the units I use. Cost reports cannot be collapsed, information saved to the Cloud constantly disappears (not deleted - just, poof, disappears) when work orders are loaded on the local machine. Work order invoicing (especially batch processing) is lacking. Contract invoicing is awful.

AP, AR, Multiple company setups, intercompany transactions,

Job costing does not work well, major failure. Difficulty with credit transactions in AP and AR. No ability to match AR and AP from same customer easily

It's great once you know how to use the product.

everything is easily accessible, in order. There are multiple ways to get the results you need.

There aren't instructions in the software to assist me if I ever get stuck.

It's easy to use but there are some reports that we have to build ourselves b/c Spectrum doesn't produce them.

the WIP isn't working for us and I'm not sure why. Haven't been able to figure this out.

As I mentioned in the title, so good so far.Viewpoint looks like specified for construction project management. My boss and our team members like this program now. Except for the cons that I typed.

The best pros in Viewpoint are connection (Sync) and update. All the update is synced right away. So this was so helpful to me to work on a computer or mobile phone.

Regarding Uploading and downloading the pictures.Our company stop using picture with Spectrum. Because of how hard it is to download and research it.I know you guys make "Tag". But it was not the solution to the work. Also, the Login system makes me so stressful. Every time I need to log in again and again. I hope you can handle this issue.

Our experience with Spectrum hasn't been the best. There was great support/conversations during the process to determine if we should go with the software. Then, upon implementation there was a drastic difference. We had a support person come to our facility for a week for a quick overview, but we had to get ourselves up and running. After a short time, the support person was "unavailable" for questions/issues. Our implementation process was done on our own. Most of the times when we called the support center, issues weren't resolved quickly. At times the person on the other end of the phone was less than courteous. We pretty much ceased calling for assistance and worked around any problems by ourselves.

Easy to use. Reports and documents look clean.

The Materials Management and Job Cost integration is very cumbersome regarding the Scale Ticket process. Much has to be done before importing ticket files into Spectrum, and it leaves itself open to errors due to the amount of steps needed to complete for job costs, special customer pricing, etc.

Our experience with Spectrum has been good over the 6 years we are using the software.

This software does a good job of integrating our construction operations. We do not use the project management part of it though. We do a lot of job costing for our projects.

I think the inventory module should be modernized and brought up to current standards. It is not very easy to use.