Ventus Features

Pros-One software for all facets needed to operate a business. The staff at VMS make you feel like family and are personally vested in your success. Bar coding capabilities. Ability to transfer Estimate to Job Cost and Service. The ease of searching is great. Docu - ability to attach all documents. Vast number of reports, very diverse in what you can pull. Ability to save to queue to have a history of all transactions.

Cons - No user's manual. Inconsistency between modules in where to go to search really just inconsistencies between modules period (Ex. some modules you go through Tasks to execute things, others you can do directly from the screen you are in). Can't set zero quantities doing a cycle count for a portion of inventory. Lack of synchronized data (Ex. PM Inquiry -must execute function to make sure...

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Ventus has modules that address the majority of our business application needs in one piece of software. It gives us the ability to instantly dispatch P1 tickets to our remote technicians and gives them the ability to invoice instantly. It also gives us the ability to manage construction projects from start to finish.

There have been many improvements to reporting in the application, but I would like to see a dashboard that would give us quick data visualization options.

I like most that the software contains almost everything that we need. It has service for our dispatching and bill of service. It has job costing for all of our larger projects. It has Payroll, Inventory, Accounts Payable, Purchase Orders, Equipment Controls, Call Management, Estimating, Order Processing for over the counter parts sales and Accounts Receivable. You wont need anything separate to run your day to day transactions. The Dispatch board is our FAVORITE part. You can schedule your technicians, maintain contracts with billing, bill by time and material, fixed dollar or flat rate.

There is few online add options. For example, when you need to make a new inventory item, you have to go to the item maintenance file. So you have to leave the screen to you are and go somewhere else - however, you can keep the tabs open so don't loss what you are working on. Some of their add ons (like e-time) don't really work for technicians that are multi-taskers (work both on jobs and service tickets).

Item inquiry is one of my favorite functions. Ventus makes it easy to find when a part came in, where it came from and the open and past sales. This has became a time saver in many ways. Writing checks in Ventus is a breeze. It allows us to change the information prior to creating the check if discount amounts were entered in incorrectly. There is a new credit memo function in AR for applying checks to invoices has saved time and allowed us to keep a better AR record. The new lookup functions that have been added everywhere makes finding information easier. One downfall is not being able to lookup a number with begins with.

The item inquiry is one of my favorite features in Ventus. However, we do not have a way to look up customer part/material sales history. This can be difficult when a customer would like something that they ordered before but is unsure of the part number. Post-match: The overall idea of post-match is wonderful! However, we are a company that pays our invoices by the discount date. We were unable to...

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From an accounting standpoint, it works very well because all modules, including General Ledger, are part of the Ventus product. The dispatch board is very dynamic especially when running mobile data. We are also implementing the barcoding module and DocU, the paperless document management module.

Because the software is so versatile, sometimes we struggle with finding the best way to set up our work flow process.

It works well, gives us accurate information, and bottom line, makes running our business simpler by being able to integrate everything we do on one platform without compromises.

My only criticism is that we will sometimes experience a new issue after loading a software update. We always get a quick response to any issues that result from that when contacting their support personnel.

What I like most about Ventus is that our company is able to use one software for all of our database needs, everything we do is run through one database that covers us from contracts, service management, purchasing/accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, billing, it does it all and each module communicates with the other.

My only dislike is that due to the system constantly being enhanced via software updates, our company experiences a higher than desirable frequency of bugs and issues when we do software updates. These can often be solved fairly quickly, but the amount of issues our company has faced has been a real hardship both in terms of time we have to spend tracking issues and on the flip side, waiting on fixes for the issues that we experience. We have only been on Ventus for a little over a year so we are hopeful that as time goes on the problems will become a less common occurrence for us.

I love the complete, thorough, and effective applications that allow for effective accounting and profit calculating.

There is really nothing I dont like about it

Bar-coding has allowed us to tag each individual item as it is received. Once tagged it makes the transfer of material from warehouse to Tech van much easier and faster (saving time) and this allows us to scan the item versus typing it in which can lead to many typos and errors which leads to wrong parts getting transferred and of course that leads to loss of money and extremely time consuming to fix...

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Bar-coding and Scanning has been a positive for us.

Customer Support and ability to customize

Reports. But there is now a designer function and more reports that are Excel Raw - improving each day

It is a fully integrated product from purchase orders to dispatch to all things financial. We don't have to go outside the VMS product for supporting software such as an accounting product. Ventus can be customizable to fit your needs and have not seen a better dispatch board.

There are places in the software that are inflexible and some processes that could be improved such as the ability to online add items (such as a new vendor or a new inventory part #). Currently have to go the task of adding something new.

integration between all modules is great

in service - on the gui side (vms not ventus) you can't search by the name of a street, you have to have the house number or when you search in a/r, its is by the vendor id and not the name

The software handles all of our needs in one interactive package. It seamlessly handles detailed workorders, inventory, job cost, payroll, general ledger, equipment control. AR, AP, general ledger and offers management tools and reporting to know exactly where we are doing well or not so well in real time. Mobile data, barcode scanning, and % of profit reporting are my favorite features, but I truly enjoy the whole package. Using this software has increased our profit 10% or more.

Requires employees to be well trained on the software.

We migrated from VMS to Ventus about 4 years ago, and it was a great decision! We were up and running within a day and needed very little training. The support from VMS is great, they are always very helpful and responsive. The product is easy to use and navigate, and we are very happy!

Currently, the only issue we have with the software is that we are not allowed to have a master password for the Company Maintenance portion, and have to call in every time we need to use that portion of the software. Sometimes we are doing maintenance changes after hours, and we cannot obtain a password then.

The thing I like most is that it is all inclusive containing dispatch / service through payroll and accounting. Also the fact that it’s customizable to your business - different companies have different ways of using it.

There is a learning curve - it takes a while to learn everything this comprehensive software is capable of. I still am learning more each day even after 2 plus years.

I like how easy it is to use and understand VMS. You are able to get reports that show you valuable information. You are also able to put things in order by job number or area.

I don't like that this program is set up as excel but it doesn't have all the functions of excel. For example you should be able to group a bunch of categories in order and be able to change them. In Job Cost when setting up a job it would be useful if you could change all of the divisions, departments, or tax codes all at once.

It helps me to track all of my equipment that I lease and create easy contracts and invoicing as well as all of my rental properties and even consulting services. I like the easy to use password options. I can secure private information or limit use of programs or reports that are only for use by certain users.

Requires trained and informed users …...

Very robust. Integrated modules allow us to efficiently handle all accounting, payroll, inventory, service management and dispatch functions. The ability to have custom programming for additional needs.

In the past, work orders were slow to be resolved. Much improved now.

It has great functionality, and it's user friendly.

1. The programming is very unstable. Most of the time, when a new release it's out, it messes up something that was working correctly before. 2. Service is far to slow in responding, if they respond at all. If they do respond, they are usually helpful....BUT it's rare for them to respond quickly, and sometimes they do not respond at all.

The mobile data and dispatching part of the software is worth every penny. Our techs can now do their paperwork on their phone and it has made dispatching so much more efficient.

Some parts of the software you have to adapt your way of doing things to and you wish the easy adjustment could be made to fix the issue.

The amount of information right at your finger tips

because of its vastness, sometimes it becomes overwhelming

What I like most about this software is what some of the reports give. They can be extremely useful in managing our technicians

What I like least about the software though is that you are somewhat limited in reporting and can't easily create custom reports

It was designed specifically for the PEI industry and had estimating, call management, AIA, certified payroll, core processing and gps integration built in.

Starting up was slow and cumbersome. Tech support and software fixes are slow. Reports that are basic don't work.

The ease of learning the software and customer support received from VMS has made our transition to the software much smoother than we anticipated. The programmers and reps are always willing to listen to your problems and help with different suggestions.

Crystal reports have been a struggle for us, when running reports. More training with Crystal Reports would be beneficial.