Acctivate Inventory Management Software

This product has a low learning curve and easy to set up and use. It may be good for some businesses but it is not worth the money for ours. It works great for tracking inventory and bringing completed goods into our system and tracking them through to a sale. This is where it breaks down. We are a small business and do a lot of custom goods and small run manufacturing. There's not a lot to offer for the manufacturing side of our business. For a small shop, most of the functionality of this software can be done in Quickbooks. This product still requires quickbooks for accounting as well. The yearly maintenance fee, hard to swallow for what it does for our buisness.

Pros

Easy to use and update

Cons

Many glitches and bugs
Little help with manufacturing

Advice to Others

Only purchase this software if the only thing your buisness does is distribute products as a warehouse or "middle man".

It is a smart quickbook for our inventory operations and management.

Pros

The ease of use.
it is flexible and highly scalable

Cons

More features could be added to it
It requires skilled training to operate

Likes Best

Acctivate Inventory is a full featured inventory management system that can be added onto QuickBooks easily and cost effectively. By doing so, a QuickBooks user can extend the useful life of QuickBooks without needing to upgrade that accounting program. And it provides the same or better functionality than many inventory modules of many ERPs. This is an excellent product that is from an equally excellent vendor whose attention to customer service and details are superb.

Likes Least

I like the functionality of the product first and foremost and its ease of use. The vendor's training program is excellent and as I mentioned above their customer service is very very good as well. I am a business consultant to many companies and have never hesitated to recommend Acctivate,

Recommendations

Take a very close look at Acctivate Inventory. In my opinion and experience you can't go wrong with this program. It will accommodate all your inventory management needs today and will help your company grow as well by allowing for more inventory locations and complex tracking requirements like tracking lots, manufacture dates, and much more.

Likes Best

Acctivate goes far beyond QuickBooks Enterprise, even with Advanced Inventory. It brings preferences down to the customer and item level that are only available in QBES at a global level. It has CRM, customer service, bar coding, multiple warehouses, serial and lot number tracking, location and bin tracking, cost methods (LIFO, FIFO or Average Cost) at the item level, multiple units of measure at the item level and much, much more. For manufacturers and distributors with complex inventory management or compliance requirements, Acctivate can relieve all the pain points that you currently encounter with QuickBooks.

Likes Least

Can't think of anything. Terrific sales and support teams.

Recommendations

I typically do a discovery session where I learn about my clients' requirements and then I produce a comparative decision table that compares solutions feature by feature. Let your client make the decision after reviewing this comparison.

Likes Best

The software flexibility is the best thing about this product. If you work with someone who really knows this product then they can can help you with a solution that will help your business achieve the best results. The software is the best on the market that will allow you to remain in QuickBooks. Additionally, the fact that it leverages SQL and Crystal Reports makes it a truly good value.

Likes Least

I would like the ability to customize screens and I wish that it had API's for other connections.

Recommendations

Use a consulting firm for implementation to give your company the full benefit of setting up the system the best way the first time.

Likes Best

Reports are optimized to run quickly with large database.

Likes Least

Limited ability to add detailed cost information to a product. Would like to have better CRM functions. Very poor support communications.

Recommendations

Hire external tech support to assist with implementation and support.

Likes Best

Top-notch functionality and support. It uses SQL for the database and Crystal Reports for reporting which are expected these days for products of this type. The amount of detail and functionality is amazing. The programmers are awesome in some of the functionality they have come with. As an accountant, I can fully recommend the product to prospects without fear of a core functionality or need missing.

Likes Least

No online product, unless you use a hosting company.

Recommendations

Drill down into the Configuration Manager to really see the options and capabilities of the product. Also, sit in on the monthly webinars which explain a lot of the processes and best practices.

Likes Best

This software is very thorough. What do I mean by that? It can do almost anything you need it to do when it comes to managing your inventory. What I like best about the Activate Inventory software is it's integration to QuickBooks. Because it integrates so well there doesn't have to be a lot of double data entry. Data flows transparently in both directions. Also, their staff are really wonderful at helping you - they're easy to talk over challenges with, and always ready to help.

Likes Least

I can't think of anything that I disliked about the product.

Recommendations

My focus is from the QuickBooks side. When my client asked me for a recommendation for inventory tracking I wanted to be very sure that any software I recommended would meet all their needs, both those they have thought of, and some they haven't. I went into Business Analyst mode and I suggest you do too. Quiz vendors, get demos, and ask a lot of questions. Activate's sales team really knew their product inside and out. They were willing to demo their system multiple times and answer any and all questions. They were willing to consider the 'fit' or 'appropriateness' of the software to the unique needs of my client, and were not just looking to 'make a sale'. I really enjoyed the partnership forged on behalf of my client. It was a very positive experience and I'd recommend considering them in an instant.

Likes Best

Love the fact that it is scalable, modules can be added one at a time, as the company grows.
I also love the customer center as it incorporates great CRM functionality, many sales analysis at the users' fingertips, rather than having to run so many reports.

Likes Least

Wish it would integrate with QBO. I also wish it would have more integration with payroll.

Recommendations

If you are running out of work arounds and spending time in excel, then stop what you are doing. Forget the band-aid approach and get ahead with ACCtivate.

Likes Best

Implementation of acctivate is a smooth and painless process. Learning a new software can sometimes be stressful but acctivate is intuitive and easy to use.

Likes Least

Would love it if acctivate had more manufacturing features.

Recommendations

Ask as many tough questions as you can think of. Prepare all your questions prior to your demo.

Likes Best

The product integrates with Quickbooks better than competing products (i.e., Fishbowl). The product is stable, in SQL, and the database is well organized, normalized, which lends itself to reporting. I like the posting process overall (much easier than a batch system - i.e., Sage 100). The vendor provides excellent support and has outstanding, knowledgeable, helpful support staff.

Likes Least

I compare the product to other mid-market software that I implement (i.e., Sage 100, Great Plains, NetSuite). The product has limited functionality in some key areas: user-defined fields are limited, importing data into data entry processes such as purchase order, the data entry flow leaves much to be desired - having to click on fields, tab sequence, limited ability to default values in sales order entry to make the data entry process go faster, smoother. This can lead to errors in data entry.

Recommendations

Make sure it does what you want out of the box and it will work great. If you have a need to customize the data entry, integrate with other applications, or add new fields it might not be the right product for you.

Likes Best

Support is awesome for partners, and I like that the data is easy to work with.

Likes Least

There are a few limitations with the integration between MAgento using the webstore module. They are workable . . . but cause confusion with customers at times. I've actually been wanting to write a custom magento extension that would 'overcome' some of these issues for magento sites.

Recommendations

I definitely recommend it but would recommend hiring a consultant to help with implementation unless your needs are very basic or you have a great in house team that is technical.

Likes Best

Easy to use, great help from activate for setup, all customer records are transparent, well organized, so does the inventory.

Likes Least

reports are always a struggle, using crystal report need some training. We have hard time to get the reports we need.

Activate people are great, very helpful and personal.

Recommendations

As business owner, we buy products a lone with the supports, i.e. People behind the products. The supports are the most important. We had bad experience with big accounting software, such as netsuit and quickbook, but never had problem with activate.

Likes Best

The system is robust and always improving. The value for the price is unmatched

Likes Least

There is really nothing that I don't like about ACCTivate!

Recommendations

Just check it out. We had a very difficult set up with Discounts and Pricing Codes and managed to make it work beautifully.

Likes Best

I love the drill-down capabilities, the search options, copy functions, the wizards, reports, etc. So much that I enjoy. Great system!!

Likes Least

There is no vendor box in Acctivate, like how there is a customer box. We are limited to the vendor info we can pull up unless we have Quickbooks on our computer, and not everyone has QB in our dept. Really wish they would incorporate that into the Acctivate program.

Recommendations

Make sure you test it to see how it would fit for your company. We tried quite a few other programs as well before taking a plunge with Acctivate. It was worth it.

Likes Best

Acctivate is perfect for QuickBooks users that need a better inventory and sales order process. It is a bolt on product. You just "sync" it whenever you want to have QB and Acctivate talk to each other. It makes managing inventory really easy- and gives you a ton of room and vendor history so you can manage your costs. It also makes price updates really easy. Initial integration is easy- all of the details are handled by Acctivate thru remote sign in on your first day. I suggest to have an IT person in house just to handle the small details- so you can concentrate on your business.
I decided to go with Acctivate 5 years ago and have been Extremely Happy with this product. It is easy to use and is based on Crystal Reports - which means that you can get just about any report made - so you can get the specific dash boards you want or reports you want. Your employees will like using this product as well. My employees were using this by 10AM the morning we installed it.
Once you have this product 90% of the time you will be operating out of Acctivate. You only use QB for the Book Keeping for the most part. Inventory control and unique inventory situations are easily handled by Acctivate. Overseas shipments or Lead Time Inventory is not a problem- Acctivate has a solution for this. Your Pack Slip, Sales Orders and Invoices will look a lot better with this product. If this product doesn't pay for itself in 1 year or less- I would be very surprised. Excellent Product.

Likes Least

I dont have any complaints. After an initial set up- i do suggest using a 3rd party for special reports. But you dont have to do this. Activate can help you if you want work with them. I just like having a 3rd party vendor - but i make a ton of reports. Acctivate comes with enough reports to run your business.

Recommendations

I recommend that you look for something that is fast and gives your sales people and purchasing people a product that they will be happy with. Get them involved in this process. Don't just make a decision and stick them with the end result. The people that use the product should get to decide. Not the guy who wont be using it day in and day out. Whatever software you get- tell your employees that they should give something new a chance to make things better. There are always one or 2 people that like to nay say any product. So cut them off at the pass- before this happens.

Likes Best

This software has the ability to sync with QuickBooks.

Likes Least

The software coding is awful. There are many bugs. Most of the support techs I have spoken with have bad attitudes.

Recommendations

Compare with QuickBooks and see if it's what you need.

Likes Best

It is appropriately scaled for a small/medium business, both in complexity and price. It allows for the challenges of both manufacturing and selling of non-manufactured products and purchasing/warehousing and selling in different related units.

Likes Least

I wish it had one extra field for an option on products so that color variations or grind type (we're a coffee business), didn't have to be a separate product code. Using custom fields for this works until trying to link to a website for import, and then those fields are inaccessible.

Recommendations

I spent a lot of time looking into different options including trying custom solutions. This product definitely fit the bill in all areas. Going with a custom solution may work for a while but can become tricky and expensive when it comes to longer term updates and service.