As a consultant implementing DEAR Inventory for a wide range of SMEs, we have solved an innumerable amount of problems along the way. From Batch tracking, to serial number tracking, integrations with online stores, accounting, shipping, reporting and forecasting, etc, it is all there. The team at DEAR are generally very quick to respond and offer assistance, and the users are given the power to request and vote on new features to be implemented. The subscription pricing is also at a point where it represents huge value for money.

As a cloud integration consultant working with SMEs in Adelaide and interstate to solve inventory management issues by implementing the right software, DEAR has proven again and again to be the leading choice for these businesses and is now our recommended choice as an implementation specialist. DEAR has the functionality to provide a central solution to any SME looking to sell online or instore across a number of channels, and manage all the inventory in one place.The integration with Xero is top notch and the most robust I've seen of almost any app that connects to Xero. The integrations to eCommerce channels are consistent in their setup and options and allow a great deal of flexibility. Complementing these integrations are shipping service integrations that allow for a full suite of inter-connected apps with DEAR as the hub.

If I had a gripe, it would be around some minor inconsistencies within the UI across various parts of the software, as well as some minor inconsistencies with various reports that are available.

[sensitive content hidden] was very helpful in getting my B2B store setup. I already created my product list that had 10k skus with variations and didn't want to have to recreate the store manually in Cin7. Using the families feature in the catalog, I was able to group my skus and eliminate the redunancies of variations.

Nothing I can really say about it negatively

They do not seem to have a very good handle on their "Official" integrations. We have a Woocommerce store that does about 30,000 orders per month and we recently had an issue where no returns or refunds were being imported to DEAR. In the mean Time our CS agents were entering all credit notes and restocks manually in DEAR. It took almost 20 days of back and forth for DEAR to finally point out that their system was not receiving web hook notifications and was in polling mode. 20 days! New situation, shipstation integration just stopped working. Submitted a ticket with the error details and steps to reproduce. Instead of getting any meaningful feedback, instead of their technical team just simply trying to reproduce it on their end which they would obviously do if they were developing the integration, they replied back that they needed to know the request details that shipstation is trying to send. They want the JSON payload presumably. But how in the world can they develop an integration if they don't already know what that response is supposed to be? How can they develop it without having a shipstation account of their own to test? The answer is they do and they can but they don't. It is much more convenient for them to simply kick the can down the road by telling the tier one person they need more information.

What I like most is that it is built by accountants. Costing is done better than most systems. I also like that it has a fairly strong inventory management and production modules. Purchasing / Receiving is average but the WMS below average. We use it all.

Customer support is absolutely horrendous. They are reasonably fast to respond but you will always be given a tier 1 support agent who can't do much but reiterate the documentation to you. Their technical team seems outsourced because in 4 years I have not been able to have a live troubleshooting session with them. Many times they push out updates to the system which cause problems with operations and integrations. For over 6 months we had an issue where any advanced purchase (a purchase with more than one invoice and receiving) would not place the correct receiving record with the correct invoice. And you can't even choose which receiving note to associate to which invoice. So we would have open invoices which were actually received and closed invoices which had not been received. I had dozens of back and forth messages with support and I ended up having to get a DEAR partner to reach out to them on my behalf and get in touch with someone who could actually get it fixed. Then after we got told they would work on a fix it took another month or two for the fix to be implemented. And it still isn't perfect. Another time, the support team deleted one of my eCommerce store applications. This meant we had to re-add the store and it re-imported and duplicated about 50,000 orders, causing a disastrous mess. Technical team refused to help so we had to go page by page in the interface and void 100 at a time.

Overall the implementation of DEAR has been great and glad we selected the product for inventory management

DEAR academy made it very easy to learn the software and helped us implement the software with ease

I wish that there were videos in DEAR academy for integrating into QBO. The integration has been a little difficult.

Very good

Ease of use. Order processing, purchases, new product loading, quoting

Bulk Pricing updates are not very easy to perform.

Have been using Dear for about 6 weeks after onboarding and it's taking some time for my colleagues and myself to get used to the system, but I received 5 emails in the first 12 days after onboarding, and another 3 in the past 7 days to give them a review so here it is. TLDR not as user-friendly as the system we were using before but no choice as QBC will no longer be offered and Dear might be the next best alternative

- Comprehensive and even has manufacturing components (unfortunately we don't require this) - Comparable pricing to TG/QBC - Some onboarding agents are very knowledgeable about the system - Support staff are very responsive and queries get answered pretty quickly

- Not as user-friendly compared to the system we used before. Even things like stock availability isn't readily shown on the product page - you either need to go into a tab within the product page, or a separate 'Availability' to check the stock - Slightly confusing configuration where you can't easily change the purchase prices as they are grouped together on a 'suppliers' tab within the product listing - Product family is quite confusing and a little tedious to create. During the import of our products, there were a large number of single-variant products created as product families with 1 product, and there doesn't seem to be a easy way to stop classifying it as a product family - Automation module (for things like out of stock notifications) are not provided FOC; you have to add on $50/month - Purchase orders only show product name and not variant/option names so if you are trying to order 3 colours of the same product, the PO will show 3 line items of the same product. - We sell on different e-commerce channels but there's no easy way to reflect that. We were informed that the only way we can only create the e-commerce channels as 'Sales Representatives' so that we can track them. Our sales from Shopify aren't differentiated between POS and online - The sync with Shopify seems a little glitchy and sometimes after receiving stock in Dear, all our products descriptions in Shopify get erased. This is less than ideal because our product listing on our website becomes blank

Easy set-up/parameterisation. Cloud based implementation - small infrastructure investment required, on the whole, a reliable 24/7 service. Intuitive and consistent user interface. Help Desk support people are responsive and helpful.

B2B application has not matured and has functional gaps - needs additional investment to make it the finished article.Direct access to 2nd line technical support is non-existent - everything is handled via the help desk - therefore, on more technical queries, issues are not always fully understood which can cause delay in resolution times and is frustrating.

The inventory management is very easy to use.

One issue i have noticed is when doing a stock transfer on the IPad it doesnt show the bin location.

good customer service, answers email very quickly

its a great help for managing the orders and production

can be sometimes confusing with the features that can be somehow be utilized but if you are not aware that it exists, you will not be able t o make the most out of.

support is outstanding

cost - it's too expensive for the add-ons

I worked with [SENSITIVE CONTENT] in the OnBoarding team and he was awesome! My implementation took a VERY LONG time due to our business being so busy. He was so patient and would contact me every 3 weeks or so to see how things were progressing. He took so much time to go over the product with me and my coworkers multiple times. He answered MANY LONG emails from me with tons of questions. He was always pleasant, happy, so helpful, and in my opinion the greatest secret weapon that DEAR has!! Now that my implementation is complete (thanks to him) I feel like I have lost a friend. He has assured me that the Support team are just as awesome and helpful as he has been - but I don't believe anyone will ever be as amazing as [SENSITIVE CONTENT] was! Thanks [SENSITIVE CONTENT]!!

I LOVE the fact that I can invoice before receiving the inventory physically. We work with an overseas company and their business practice is to invoice once the product leaves their hands, however accepting their invoice made my inventory way off in QBO. So glad to be able to maintain what the true physical inventory is and not have to try to keep up with the travelling inventory too.

The feature I would like the least is the CRM. I was really hoping that it would work for our sales team and that they would be able to have access to the inventory information easily. However, the CRM lacked a lot of the capabilities that our sales managers were looking for to help with managing their teams.

Still getting used to the DEAR system, however, if compare with other inventory systems we used before, I must say DEAR is the answer, so far very happy! It’s all there, just need a bit of time to learn how to navigate around. Selling on Amazon & eBay? No problem..... (once everything is set up correctly) DEAR will do all your daily routine for you. Using an eCommerce website (in our case it's WooCommerce), it’s all there! We are still in process of integration/switching from Quickbooks desktop however, after only 1 month of using DEAR (plenty of step by step, how to use information online and very straightforward YouTube videos, which will answer most of your questions (how to?) on daily routine of most of the businesses. Special thank you to the support team, for being very helpful, straight to the point answers with plenty of information provided to understand and learn ….. bravo!

Xero & Dear system user (new user experience). Everything you need to manage warehouse inventory! Detailed Inventory information, Order process flow, purchasing order management, stock control, eCommerce website eBay/Amazon integration, - easy to use once you get used to it. Helpful support team, and plenty of information provided to understand and learn DEAR systems.

Takes some time to know the DEAR systems (navigate) due to many features. I guess we need to use DEAR systems for some time to get a better understanding and therefore, give a revised review of experience and possible Cons we might have.

While still working inside a trial version, in preparation for cutting over from our current system and going live with Dear, I have been pestering the Support team on a daily basis for a few weeks now as I work through the finer points of the system. The Dear support structure is good - well structured with quick response times to questions, Was particularly pleased that one support person (thanks [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]) went the the degree to create and send me a custom video demo of the system aspect I was trying to understand that was hard to explain in text. I also found the published Video Tutorials and support pages helpful.

While thinking, as a Distributor, we have 'out-of-the-box' requirements for managing our inventory and processes around it, the exercise of evaluating our idiosyncrasies in order to go shopping for a new IM system has taught me that there's possibly not the absolute perfect system for any business, but the Dear system is beating the rest as it ticks most of the boxes on my wish-list for an inventory management system. For a complex system it's relatively intuitive and seems to be built with real world functionality in mind. In addition to my list of specific features, I was looking for a system that could automate as much of our manual tasks and work flows as possible - reduce the amount of data entry required and minimise opportunities for human error. Compared to other systems reviewed, Dear excels in this area.

Possible just a COVID thing ...or just a modern day thing, but I remember the days when; if you were looking at making a big commitment to something as important at the system that would manage all your inventory and link to your financials, someone would sit down with you and work through your specifics, helping you evaluate their offering as the right purchase decision for you to make. These days, it's "down load a free version and have a play". I've probably reached the sames decision based on the latter, but it's definitely taken up a lot more of my time to do so. Granted, phone calls and screen sharing sessions are on offer, but I find the time-limited sessions, working with generic databases etc. less beneficially that the old fashioned way. Not a short coming of the Dear System itself and every software company may have the same M.O, but perhaps an opportunity for Dear to differentiate themselves from the masses and win more fans - and quickly?

// DEAR SYSTEMS DOES + Manage inventory with different sales channels + Send PO/Invoices/Quote/.../... with customisable template + Auto assemblies + Bundles + Issues to production + Sync to accounting software + Handles goods in transit, FX gain or Loss etc + They are working on a reseller portal + They are working on a POS + Chat support is knowledgeable and they really try to help you

They have a forum where users can chat together and upvote functionalities requests. - They are totally absent from that forum, they say they scan it to update their roadmap but they won't engage in the conversation at all. - Functionalities are added too fast without feedback from their users. They really need to work on their communication with their active users.