Survey – If you changed Software in the last year or so…

[Rod Zimmerman]

If you did, you changed from:

Old software:

Garage Keeper

New software:

Motive Pro

Why:

Garage Keeper was thier old DOS program. I had to change they were not going to support it anymore. Went to Motive Pro because I could bring all old data foward and for familiarity. Also looked at a couple of other popular others and liked what I saw in Motive Pro. I had Garage Keeper for over twenty years and it was rock solid. I only had a serious problem with it one time and Myles repaired it quickly. I am hopefull the new software is just as good.

Would you do it again?

Yes. The new program has many marketing benifits the old one did not. Also it has a feature called smart jobs that store all of the information from a job and when I go to use the job again it enters the complete job onto a new estimate. This really speeds things up. There are lots of other features that take advantage of Windows like Scoring invoices for profit, Ease of transferring data to Excel and Quickbooks. I really should have made this move long ago. I’m sure it is more than paying for it’self as I can track that too. That is one of the benifits of these new systems is that they track everything !

[Andrew Tobias]

If you did, you changed from:

Old software: Mitchell Manager Plus

New software: Protractor Enterprise licensed through Mitchell

Why: All in One Solution. Multi store capabilities, accounting, payroll, electronic cataloging, etc. Cloud based, database safe, accessible from anywhere.

Would you do it again? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! The training curve is extensive so if you hire someone new it takes forever to get them up to speed. Service Advisors hated it because it was soooooo slow. I mean it would be seconds between every key stroke. They blamed it on my ISP, the Internet Infra Structure, and my network. Parts cataloging was archaic.

Oh and by the way, the main reason I (personally) switched was for the accounting and payroll. Well the accounting program is from the ’60s. I’m that old and remember. QuickBooks is so good that I’m spoiled. Why would I go back to double entry on everything? Anytime anyone that has access to the system makes a mistake whoever is doing accounting has to make all these double entries to fix. Everyday was mistake ridden. I have quality service advisors and computer people. Believe the mistakes made were what any user would make. Then to have to go back and make all the fixes was an incredible task. There was no modifying, no deleting, just make entries to back out the error then re-enter the correct entries. I needed to hire a separate person to do the entry work.

PAYROLL???? Enterprise does not in any way do payroll. When they say they do payroll they mean you do all the calculations then enter them (both sides into the ledger). I mean you get out your circular E and do all the math then enter them. Enterprise is a step back into history.

I switched back to Manager Plus 5.9 and am so happy. Yes I have to double input into QB but I’m not doing 10 times the work as if I was doing Enterprise.

We looked at RO Writer which I think is a good possibility but the buyin was way to expensive. As well as they kind of try to hide it from you until you sign. They want you to sign then spring it on you that what you need to run your shop is X amount more which is substantial.

The Manager program is good, not great but good. For right now it fits my needs the best. Based on my calculations, I lost $100k due to the switch to Enterprise. Between training (90 days), then lost sales due to going “live”, and overall slow operations, it was a nightmare for us. God Bless those that use it successfully, you are much better than me.

[zeepatel]

Hey Rod,

Can you Pro Motive’s website link? Or some material?

Thanks!

-Zee