We have been using TOM since 2007, at that time i personally had no software training and was a working owner that still had my tool belt on. It was very simple to learn this program and that can be an issue i know for owners that transition form the field to the office.

The ease of the program is outstanding, we can be working on an accounts payable entry and within a couple of clicks we will be on our schedule board setting up a service call. The program has everything in one place so there is no importing or exporting to get your accounting to show up, truly a simple program that does everything we need it to.

I cant think of anything that we do not like, there are a few reports that we do outside of the program but we are working on our end to be able to do them inside of TOM. The ability is there but the way we setup our technician time tracking is limiting us form getting good billable reports, again this is something that we did when we set the program up.

There have been some issues with e-mailing through Total Office Manager and Outlook. I know that it is being worked on and will be corrected soon but it has caused some issues in the office.

It is very easy to use and can be adjusted to how you want to use it. You create and set it up how it best suits you.

Some of the reports are difficult to find at the beginning. You have to play around a lot to find exactly what you are looking for.

At the beginning TOM was great, sure it had small issues that I was certain would be addressed and everything would improve, but that is all wrong.. They spent lots of time and money making a stupid message reporting system so they could search if anybody was texting a bad word to somebody else, and you could make a pie chart of how many times somebody said one stupid word or another LoL. Meanwhile, TOM continued to get more bloated, top heavy, and cluttered with more crap and less organization. I made countless pleas to consolidate and organize menu's to be more consistent with each other even gave detailed mathematical examples of how many hours over the course of a year could be saved to make the software better and how to better streamline menus, but excuses were made to avoid any improvements after I proved without any doubt efficiency could be increased. Aptora wasnt interested. Eventually I was having problems with my TOM and I wanted to upgrade to the latest version. The rep I talked to was a nube, It was a Friday and I had a lot of catch up work, so they took my money and had no more interest in making sure anything worked.. I told nube dont run off till the registration error is fixed. Nube told me it will be later, after everybody is gone. Well no it didnt. I was screwed all weekend scrambling with work arounds and Monday they called ready to help, but I was up all night all weekend and demanded a refund, now they are pissed and dont want to take my money anymore..

Local server, can do a lot, have loads of things on one screen by having line items occupy a small space rather than most cloud or others that little information occupies much screen real estate.

Cluttered, chaotic GUI with the right click menus inconsistent with each other. Mobile app operates differently than Total office manager. For example, when making a change to an invoice in TOM, TOM then goes behind our back and completes the invoice without saying or asking if we want the invoice to be completed.. I have constantly suggested to fix the problem, it has cost us much, but they said thats the way it is suppose to operate while Mobile on the other hand, will ask you with a pop up window, if you want the invoice to be completed, I suppose thats the way mobile is suppose to operate as well, completely different than TOM, When I say "mobile" its like a new arm to TOM that likes to slap you in the face occasionally.. TOM and Aptora mobile compete with each other rather than integrate with each other.. The schedule board for example, there is a new and an old, you can use either one, they work quite differently from each other.. There is an old schedule board, which is a lot faster than the new one and integrates well with TOM, and the new one seems like its a completely different transition into a completely different operating system. The SQL server setup utility is pretty much a complete fraud by claiming capabilities it does NOT have.. Not sure why that utility keeps getting worse over time, but not a single attempt has been made to fix the "enterprise server utility" but rather work arounds have been created without instructions..

I like so many things about this software I literally cannot list one. Dispatching, Estimating, the Sales Opportunity Manager (!!!), the Schedule Board... my list could go on for days.

The migration process is bumpy (we are on day 3 of using the software, training since September). I would suggest spending the extra money on bringing someone to your location for your Go Live week... be sure to plan this up front rather than waiting.

I have installed numerous, integrated software systems for various type of companies (manufacturers, professionals, educational organizations, service companies, insurance, etc.) over the past 30 years. I understand the VALUE they bring to the table, and I understand the difficulty of launching company-wide software systems. The long-term gain is well worth the cost of short-term pain. TOM is a tool that will enable you to examine many aspects of your business. It will provide you with data that allows you to make informed decisions regarding your company's current performance and future direction. The most important benefit that TOM brought us is the ability to perform job costing. It has enabled us to truly figure out what types of work we perform well, and what types we don't perform well. Additionally, the ability to stop using multiple pieces of non-integrated software from different vendors to manage our business … dispatching, quoting, inventory control, financials, field service tech invoicing … and handle all of those functions in one package is a HUGE advantage. There is a steep learning curve with a software system this complex, but the end results is very, very good. Aptora is a great company with which to partner, especially when you are working to grow your business as we are. I highly recommend Total Office Manager and it's companion products such as Mobile II and Form Builder. Their system is a great value.

Total Office Manager (TOM) is a feature-rich software system. It is a fully integrated system that won't require me to run multiple, discrete pieces of software to manage my business. We can manage our inventory in multiple warehouses, process our financials (including job cost analysis), link our field techs directly into our financial and inventory systems in real-time, handle all of our dispatching and scheduling needs, and easily export data into Excel for in-depth analysis. All that and more wrapped up in on package!

Because of the flexibility of the system, it takes a while to get all of the settings and features figured out in order to best fit your business. It was a bit of a long-term struggle, at times, to get there, but we are now pleased with the end result (have been using TOM for 15 months).

This software has changed the way we do business. As the owner of a smaller company, I don't have time to create reports from various data. TOM has been a game changer for us in getting real time reports with the data we need. We have been able to make so much better business decisions quickly because of this. We utilize it for accounting, payroll, inventory control, dispatch, flat rate, marketing and so much more. I believe It could take you years to realize the full potential of this software. One of the best business decisions we have made in 22 years in business.

We used to use multiple software platforms for accounting, inventory, dispatching, etc.. The problem was there was either no integration or not helpful integration. We did a demo with several companies and graded them on what we were wanting to have the software do. Aptora was the only one that hit all of the marks. It has proven itself, in the little over 2 years we have used it, to be exactly what we were looking for. The customer support when we have a problem has been great. I would definitely recommend this software to anyone looking to streamline their business.

It does take several users to get the most out of the software. We have dedicated dispatch, warehouse, admin and accounting people so it works for us. Since you can customize the software and use it in so many different ways, establishing YOUR process is extremely important. If you don't, you will spend a large amount of time fixing things. I say this from experience. However those are user issues, not software issues. When updates are pushed out, sometimes something will break and you don't find it until days or weeks later. They are good about fixing the problem and providing a way to fix your data.

I still like the program because I see the potential. After having the program over 5 years, we still only use a percentage of the program that we should but again, that is mostly on us. I have hired a few people that their main objective was to learn and utilize the program. We are getting better but it is taking too long. We did look at other software this past winter that was far easier to use but is limited in what it could do. I do wonder if sometimes we are too optimistic in thinking one day we will use it as it should be. But were not ready to quit yet.

It has a ton of potential but is not for everyone. If utilized as designed, it is a great tool to help run your business efficiently and track financials.

My bookkeeper and wife, who used to do our books before she was deployed with the US Navy, are not to thrilled with the accounting portion. They are ok with it, but like QB a lot better. I have no say since I am not versed in either. As well, we are too slow to utilize many of the functions due to lack of training, which I blame mostly on us. Your cost to train is rather expensive so I would like to see either a 3rd party trainer available or even an open forum amongst other users of your product. You do have a lot of glitches also but to be fair, seem to take care of them rather quickly.

With our previous software we could not view history of items or invoices with ease or even at all. Aptora we can find quickly if something hasn't been invoiced to a customer or anything else really. There are many features we have yet to start using even after almost 3 years, but within 6 months we were almost fully up and running when we first started. I feel the company listens to our requests for features, we would just like to see them come to life a little sooner.

My favorite thing about Aptora is it's ease. Within just a couple clicks you can find the history on almost anything. This abilities allows us to ensure everything is being taken care of from start to finish.

1) Average cost. The software does not allow us to chose a different method like LIFO and FIFO. Not every company works on Average Cost and it causes a LOT of extra work on our end to keep it "fixed" as we work off LIFO costs. 2) Proper inventory management between branches. It's a little convoluted the way we have to keep up with it.

We had T.O.M. then went to another program and recently returned to T.O.M. With any program there are pros and cons but T.O.M. is so much more adaptable/customization than the other programs we research or used.

T.O.M. is an all in one program that you don't need add-on programs. The customization for the user is a gem that is over looked unless you have used other systems. This is a tool that should be much more highlighted verse being at the mercy of the program creator and have to adapt to their way of thinking your business should be run. Search ability for inventory is another gem is not used in other programs and seeing the history of an item. That is such a over looked needed item that other programs do not have. The reimbursable feature is AWESOME and very needed for special jobs

Customer:Job List Search you have to select specifically what you want to search for. Example: If you are looking for an address, you can't just enter the address and it searches the data base. You have to specify if it is a work address or a billing address. This hinders the CSR for assisting customers quickly as the customer calling is a new owner of the property and not sure who the information falls under. This is especially a problem when the property is sold at auction or has new owners and not had service in a few years.

We'll stick with APTORA since we're so invented in it. There are other softwares available but none do everything that APTORA does. You'd have to use at least two different ones.

This software can do SO much! For a service company with multiple field techs it is great! It brought us up to the modern age with digital invoicing in the field and real time inventory management.

It is slow! The queries, reports, item lists, just about anything that has to do with a data base is horrible! We've got so really high horsepower machines running this and it is always either crashing or hanging!

As Somebody who has been dealing with dispatching software since the mid 90’s and then management software as a whole from 2001, I have tried many many different options. Aptora is my personal favorite. It has a very easy 3rd party billing like I’ve never seen. Over all, even with the little things that bug me, I can’t see ever changing. Updates are good and improvements are continuous and enhancements are well thought out.

I like it’s completness, and the fact I can buy it and not rent it except for the map, I don’t rent that, but I think there is a very very small single digit rental fee just to pay google last time I checked. Business coaches and franchises always say when you start a business think of an exit strategy, but if they recommend something like service Titan which screwed up my entire business, I was forced to use it for franchise by dwyer group, don’t get me started, or any other cloud based service management software, then they are hypocrites. Cloud based software had my business hostage, I don’t care what they offer, nothing is good enough to allow someone else to posses and charge me rent for my heart of operations. I could infiltrate a cloud based software company, set up shop next to a successful business, spy on everything they do, and then put them out of business because they might have been smart in business but stupid with software by using the cloud. Don’t get me started. With aptora it has its own exit strategy built in, when u execute exit strategy Aptora adds a serious value to the business as a whole to be an asset and NOT a cloud based liability. I suspect franchises don’t say that because they want to watch your every move. If I had a business coach recommending cloud based software, I would get a different one. Yeah they say u can download database but just wait till u try it, then try to organize it or do anything with it LoL. I can also see profit per tech

There are a few lose ends with so much going on, no big deal, just a little bit of too much stuff on the mobile for techs to look at, much of the menu items will never be used by techs, but that’s not a deal breaker. Picture upload from mobile should be a background operation rather than having to wait for upload to complete.. Total office manager still has a little bit of a DOS feel to it and doesn’t have the option to save the desktop so when signing in we can get all of our favorite windows up and in place. And when making adjustments to an invoice, even just the memo, total office manager will complete the work order without anybody knowing unlike mobile will ask first if u want to mark work order as complete with a pop window, so a little inconsistency in operation. And renting the mapping goes against non cloud based concept in my opinion.. I think Aptora should set up a deal with Garmin and dump google maps completely. Garmin owns the skies in gps, they aren’t going anywhere. At least all the cons are minor small things.

Outstanding. You will not be upset with the move. You may be frustrated during the transition and team training, but the end results are worth it.

The software is like others in that it will only give you what you put into it. The software takes awhile to learn, but is intuitive. The entire company is using Total Office Manager as our backbone for communication and data information. It's really nice to be able to pull any data, CRM, Accounting, Financial, Trucks, etc. from one place. The team at Aptora is also easy to work with.

Like all software, there is a learning curve. Expect a year or more to fully integrate it into your business.

It is very difficult to use and incredibly glitchy. Very much like paying a premium for a test beta version. The concept is great but the actual software can't keep up and the support is non existent.

It has great concepts for reporting. We really like the package we were sold.

Very difficult to use. Understaffed tech support that closes at 4pm central including when the server went down on us. We have to wait 2-5 hours to reach anyone with questions or problems and still don't have our data brought over correctly 2 months in after paying for extra time with the migrations person.

VERY FRUSTRATING.

Plenty of reporting, lots of customization. A total office solution if you are staffed and equipped to go all in.

Software always has problems, never fully works, they are always updating every week to fix previous bugs and glitches only to introduce new bugs and glitches. Nice concept but the programming isn't there. I would recommend going with another option. I'm only still using it because I spent so much money on it. They are trying to keep up with the jones' and become something they're not. Software is suppose to automate process and make you more efficient not create new problems that shouldn't exist. Consider other options as I feel they are trying to squeeze customers into their cloud services which is probably their ultimate solution because they cant get it right with the server based product.

Not pleased with this program at all. We are actually looking for another program that will fit our company.

Invoicing is simple. Writing checks is simple after they added customer vendor beside the name.

The program has too many bugs with updates. You can’t have colored or bold text especially in customer notes. The spell check is horrible even after we have added our own words that are truly words. The layout of our invoices and estimate is horrible. After an update it may just start using categories we don’t use.

We started using TOP several years ago and while it was a good change at the time, we have outgrown it. Aptora is made for retail work, and is simply a bad fit for long-term commercial projects.

Aptora's greatest strength is how information dominoes. Once you have a client set up, making an estimate, work order, or PO with the same information is quick and consistent. I also like that there is a mobile platform for field employees.

The software is extremely unreliable. With every update, a new feature (a needed report, for example) becomes unusable and disrupts our SOP. Job costing is slow and tedious, and does not give PMs accurate, real-time job performance.

Very, very poor. We're been using this program since 2011 and they still haven't solve basic inventory accounting problems/bugs. We totally regret going with this company.

Advertised Inventory Features - unfortunately most are inaccurate and/or do not function properly or accurately.

- WIP account value changes for past locked out date - Inventory Trial Balance does not match Inventory Valuation Reports. (We cannot trust our inventory financials with this program!) - For the longest time their Inventory Assemblies Module did not work and have false inventory values. In working with Technical Support they admitted that they had a fundamental flaw in their programming that they were struggling to identify and fix. - We spent tens of thousands of dollars using out Accountant and in-house bookkeeping to correct doctors values reported by this program. - After all this, Aptora is making us pay for Technical Support to correct bugs in their software that we've identified.

We use the mobile application and has saves many hours daily for office and field staff. Needs work but Aptora is updating frequently.

I feel software is quit easy to train new staff in their field of use. Support is excellent and updates are very frequent. Seems that Aptora management is responsive to the changing requirements of clients

Inventory is the weakest section of Aptora. It has improved considerably over the past couple of years. Aptora does not have ability to buy in one unit of measure and sell in another. Pipe is often purchased by 20' length and sold by foot. this is not possible in Aptora. Managing specific vender part numbers for venders is difficult requiring multiple screens and many keystrokes. Viewing the different vender parts numbers is almost impossible. Pictures of product should be on main page of parts form, but requires several keystroke to view.

Our overall experience has been incredible, and I highly recommend it.

Total Office Manager has drastically improved the efficiency of our business. The all-in-one functionality is the biggest advantage. We previously used 3 different programs before switching years ago. It is extremely user friendly, and we have found that new employees catch on very quickly. If you have a desire to learn more about any feature there are numerous training videos available. Their tech support staff are easy to get in touch with, and the people great to deal with, should an issue arise.

As others have indicated already the frequent updates periodically cause an issue with other functions. However I greatly appreciate that they are continuing to make the software better for the users, and they are quick to respond and correct the issues.

It seems to be a good system and has many capabilities. But the constant issues with each update can be crippling, and takes us extra time to back track and find the issues and point them out so we do not mess up the data in the software. Knowing that at any update something can change the data or how a feature works is very concerning.

There are many options for this software.

I dislike that every single update changes something in the software. The coding always has some sort of adverse change in the software. And we have to find out what happens after things have changed through the update, where we are always questioning the validity of the data inside the software. Then when we call, the answer is always.... have you updated to the next current one? It should be fixed through that.

Overall Total Office Manager has allowed me to run my business very efficiently. I am grateful to have this software available to me.

I love all the features and the ability you have in the software to run your business any way you choose. I love the support you receive from everyone at Total Office Manager. I love how I only have to worry about one software to run my business. All my accounting info is in Total Office Manager.

They are missing a customer portal for approving estimates or making payments. Not a big deal as I know they are working on it and hopefully will be available soon.

I have been using TOM for almost 7 years now, and I am still learning little things to make the program go a little simpler. I have been teaching the other people in the office all the tricks that tech support has given me, and it has really uped our production (office wise). A great product, well worth the purchase!

I like the fact that it has everything under one program. Dispatching, estimates, A/P, A/R. Letters, I could go on. It really is helpful in all the behind the scenes of our business.

Not a big fan of not being able to set certain preferences on how things are done. I'd like to be able to go to an invoice on any given day then hit a button to go forward or back. Same with Work orders.

Access to data in reportable, usable formats is superior to Quickbooks, ESC, and many other contractor service/construction industry programs. Get around the system lightning fast with logical links to all things customer. Data mining is so simplified, can find the needle in the haystack with minimal effort and can perform complex analysis from the logically organized data records. True multi-user systems - no kick-outs (unless performing a major data upload) several people can work on payroll at once allowing group/batch processing. We are an extremely busy and growing office and the flexibility and depth is just fantastic.

Not thrilled with canned reports - mostly the financial level. Lack flexibility but have been able to overcome most issues with no problem. Wish customer support was 24/7 or had a tiered service-level, but we make it work.

It’s a big program so expect big things, but also expect to spend time leaning, implementing, modifying to get even bigger results.

Aptora is always listening to their customers and keeping the software current and updated. Customer service is amazing! It is our “does it all” program that meets and exceeds our demands.

So many options on how to do things sometimes is a little frustrating. Hind site is always 20/20 Leaning how the process you chose affect other aspects of the program. This is a pro also though

FOR THE MOST PART MY EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN VERY POSITIVE WORKING WITH TOTAL OFFICE MANAGER

ABILITY TO TIE YOUR PROJECTS TO TOGETHER FROM QUOTING TO SELLING TO PURCHASING TO INSTALLATION. IT MAKES IT VERY EASY TO TRACK YOUR PROJECT AND SEE WHERE IT IS THRU OUT THE LENGTH OF YOUR PROJECT. VERY EASY TO TRACK AND RESEARCH SOMETHING WITH YOUR PROJECT

WHEN CHANGING SOMETHING ON YOUR ESTIMATES YOU ARE NOW ASKED TO LOOK UP AND RE-LOOK UP WITH A NEW SCREEN WHERE BEFORE YOU COULD JUST CHANGE AND MOVE ON IN THAT SAME SCREEN