JobBOSS² Reviews

Excellent!

Customer support and product was good. We aren’t a machine shop and are a travel service company. E2 wasn’t offering a Mobil App at the time we needed it. That is why we moved to another software to track all employees time and expenses.

It's not that our sales volume has outgrown JobBoss, but our processes have. The lack of flexibility and customization are forcing us to work outside of JobBoss (e.g. custom software). The more that happens, the more obvious it is that JobBoss isn't right for us. I always consider JobBoss as a first source for our processes. Most of the time it can do something similar to what we want, but we would have to make serious concessions to make it fit.

Ps. Stop sending "Important JobBoss Updates" that are primarily selling custom utilities.

The E2 Shop system has improved our quoting capabilities, which in turn, increases our bottom line. Our company uses Quickbooks and the interface has been consistent and reliable. And again, on the few times where there has been connectivity issues with Quickbooks, E2's technical support was able to resolve the problem very quickly.

The system works well in going back to find orders, customer tracking and works for providing packing slips.

We purchased E2 Shop System in October after months of research to find a manufacturing system that would integrate well with our accounting software that is already in place. There are several little quirks and kinks that we quickly discovered upon deploying the system that just made it a bit more tedious to use that honestly we probably wouldn't have purchased the software had we known this during the demo. The online training classes are not one-on-one and are instead a classroom type of environment, however, with having to stop every 3-4 minutes because the sample system interface is frozen or someone is having an issue understanding the procedure it tends to get a little lengthy and the content of the class is lost. We have actually taken it upon ourselves to pay the additional fee for someone to come in-house and go through what we still have yet to comprehend (yet have not been contacted to schedule a date well over a week of already approving and paying upfront costs for the trainer.) Hopefully, once we are able to sit down with the specialist all will be running smoothly for us and I will be able to provide a better review.

Cannot live without it now.

The software support people are easy to work with and very helpful. I'm not stuck for hours trying to get something fixed. Overall it is a good value for the money.

Efficiency, time saving, and error reduction are the main contributions this system has brought to our business. The error reduction is found in only having to enter information one time, and having that follow through in all of the processes, even on our Open Order Summary. If an initial error is made, it can be corrected at the source and the other paperwork corrected or re-generated. The efficiency and time-savings are self evident in what I've already said.

We are a custom fabricator of precision metal parts and assemblies. We are very diverse in our customer market base, each of which has their particular needs and associated challenges. We started out several years ago using Excel spreadsheets for quoting that became increasingly complex and customized. The maintenance aspect of the quotes and quoting process became very convoluted and messy. The biggest problem with a Microsoft product system was the ability for any user to accidentally make changes to the quoting sheet for one particular customer and that calculation would carry over to other quotes. We knew that we needed to improve the process of quoting and tracking time associated with each project. In addition, we wanted to add BOM and stock tracking capabilities, so we began to look at all of the options available. We researched JobBoss, Citrux, Syspro, Intuit and Microsoft Dynamics. Each of the software platforms had pros and cons. For us, the determining factors were price per function and the feature set offerings that were specifically designed for manufacturing. We did not want to custom tailor a software package for our shop. We wanted a software that was already set up for the way we do business, all we had to do was populate the fields and learn the basic functions.

Overall, E2 has been a good decision for our company. It has allowed us to scale up and spend much less time tracking order status, employee and machine utilization and keeping track of BOMs without the use of Excel spreadsheets, which we used to use for everything. Excel was a good starting tool for us, but was not sustainable as we have grown. We are much leaner now than before and I feel that we are able to generate and evaluate useful BI data for evaluation. We like having the ability to know the time it takes us to process a particular job through the shop, and the ability for administrative employees to be able to check the status of a job.

We have recommended E2 to two of our supply chain partners since inception. One of the companies uses it and does well with it. The other company never embraced it and made the commitment to fully transition over to it. The moral of the story: It is a good tool, but it is not a five minute process to transition into it. It requires a champion within your organization that will learn it and be willing to get the data transfer set up so that your company can make a hard-stop transition over to using the system and not look back to your current system. Human nature is to resist change and you will have to manage your staff’s desire to keep using your current system because it’s comfortable and quicker, due to their knowledge of the current system.

We have had a few issues along the way that have been frustrating (probably 5 times in 6 years). On a few occasions we have lost some data and had employees that were unable to input data into the system. We believe that the root cause was the system failing in some way while an employee was logging data. For example, If I am inputting data into an order and there is a fault (for any reason: power dip, hardware on my computer, etc) the E2 system sees this a problem because I was in the main database and when the network connection is re-established. We back up our data daily and can always revert to the previous day’s data. This was a fairly easy fix, but the primary frustration was the lost time determining that the system is no longer recording the data that we put in.

Ratings:
Initial Install and data transfer, 7 (The tool to do this has gotten better since we migrated our data)
Training and support, 9 (Support has been good)
Ease of use and how easy to work with, ( Initially, 7. Now that we are comfortable with it, 9)
Any hiccoughs or glitches, (Yes, but minor, and probably in line with industry standard.)
Accuracy of info generated, 9 (You must ensure that employees are logging into and out of jobs accurately. This takes time, but will become a learned behavior. We have a lady in our office view the employee's log twice per day to ensure that they are logged into a job. If not, then they have to explain why)

We would purchase E2 again.

Our company has now used JobBOSS for around 4 years. We have found that the user interface is quite intuitive and straightforward to use. This is a plus when training new people on the system. Functionally, it has met most of the needs that we purchased it for.

We loved the idea behind the scheduling module, but have found it to not be a good fit with our shop. We are primarily a custom high mix, low volume shop. This leads to many jobs that have potential to run in more than one pathway on the floor and most jobs are first run where we do not have a history of expected production run times to fall back on. We also have split our shop floor into three self directed production cells that have a fair amount of cross work. The self direction means many production decisions are made at the cell level and not at a command level. Because of these factors, we found that matching our shop floor to the scheduling module was exceptionally difficult unless we were willing to dedicate a full time person to keeping it accurate. In the end, we believe that the scheduling module would work better in a higher volume production environment with more of a top down command structure than how we operate.

The reports that come with JobBOSS are reasonable, however, we have found that digging deeper into the data (at least the directions we looked) required special reporting. It is handy to have someone on staff who is comfortable working with SQL tables, data mining and creating custom reports. Exact does offer custom report creating. Just remember, it come at additional cost.

So far - we have been very happy with it. The simplicity of the product is a great. As it matures, perhaps some of the features will grow too. We will continue to support that endeavor by providing as much feedback as we can, and offering new product ideas that can be rolled out into the system.

E2 has been great to work with from the very beginning. We do not have an IT department but they helped walk me through the steps of setting up our system. They are always very nice and polite on the phone whenever I have to call. The system is great, with only a few bugs.

This software has all of the features necessary to quote a project, purchase for a project, and move the project successfully through the shop from one work station to another, accurately accumulating time as it goes.

It will give you insight into your jobs as to estimated performance versus actual performance, it will give you control over your purchasing and a 30,000ft level view of your work center loading.

Overall, it has the capabilities to meet a wide variety of manufacturing requirements with good reporting, and useful tools

I'm sorry we ever upgraded to the webversion

Delta Gear (formerly TIFCO Gage & Gear) is a privately held entity providing advanced machining services to the aerospace industry.

E2 was implemented at Delta Gear in 2004 after the company was acquired and moved to our current location in Livonia, MI. In keeping with the company mission to strategically invest in the latest machining technologies, Delta Gear also upgraded the business system to an enterprise-wide solution that could centralize critical processes, provide real-time status, and still be relatively easy to use and maintain. E2 was selected and quickly implemented using the primary modules of estimating, sales, purchasing, shipping, and billing. This model served the company well for about five years. However, as the company grew and customer requirements increased, we recognized that our model needed adjustment and that there were E2 functions available that could help us meet these new demands. Accordingly, in mid-2009 we initiated an improvement project to move us to the next level of E2 and business system effectiveness.

First, an internal E2 ‘champion’ was dedicated to the project with the charge to be a functional leader/liaison between the system, our staff and E2 support resources, which have always been very responsive and helpful. Next, a full evaluation of our Table master data was performed and we discovered that we could significantly increase our performance visibility by improving that data. With that foundation in place, we began to implement unused E2 functions. For example, Document Control became a key tool in our successful migration from ISO 9000 to AS9100. Also, our legacy paper-based Non-Conformance and Corrective Action program is now centralized on E2 and links to the associated items and jobs to which they apply. Employee training records were also migrated to E2 and we are now testing the Work Center and Tooling Maintenance functions.

Even more important has been the improvement recognized by better use of the Advanced Scheduling and Purchasing systems. After tailoring our work-center master data, we can now identify potential bottlenecks and address them before they occur. Purchasing is now using the auto-ordering tools that pull from job requirements defined in bills of materials and orders.

Finally, these efforts have allowed us to effectively use most of the QuickView module to provide real-time performance data as well as to export reports for monthly business metric presentations. These are then logged into Document Control as objective evidence for AS/ISO, or customer surveillance audits.

By embracing the disciplines embedded in E2, we are steadily moving from a ‘reactive’ to a ‘pro-active’ planning approach for our entire enterprise. Our business has recently moved to a larger state-of-the-art facility and we are confident that E2 will be able to handle our growth effectively.

We are a small third-generation custom sheet metal fabrication shop that has garnered a reputation for high quality, honest work, and trying to help all of our customers meet their increasingly shorter delivery times. Before E2 Shop System, we were using an outdated custom-written software for the Mac and updating that software into the 21st century was proving difficult and expensive. One day I received a mailer from ShopTech that said ''Are you controlling your shop, or is it controlling you?'' I thought to myself 'Isn't that the truth!!' So I called the number and talked to Greg in sales and after much consideration, we made the leap to the windows-based E2.

It took approximately one year to fully migrate over to E2 once all the new hardware was set-up. I believe it could have been faster if we had an actual IT person. That being said, I'm not trained in IT, nor had much experience with Windows, but E2 was fairly easy to set up. It does take some getting used to, mostly because people are used to other software and have to make the mental switch, but once you figure out how everything ties in together, it's easy. The tech support staff was fantastic in helping me set up a windows server and they connected me with another customer that had done the same thing, which was extraordinarily helpful.

We still use our Macs, but we LOVE E2 Shop System! My father even prefers the quoting method of E2 to the old custom program! It has allowed us to improve turn-around times on jobs and eliminated the constant bother of trying to figure out where jobs were in process in the shop. It has also improved our billing process; simplifying many tasks. It takes about 5 minutes to run the month end pdf reports for the accountant, vs an entire day of sorting actual paper in the old system. Everything is tied together and searching the system for just about anything is super-easy. I have customers call me all the time to look up information for them that they can't even find in their own systems.

Our shop floor employees love being able to see what job they are clocked in on and eventually they will be able to know what job they should work on next. I haven't had time yet to delve into the wealth of data to analyze and quantify the exact benefit of E2, but just from our books, we can tell a marked increase in revenue, and we now can tell the actual real-time cost of jobs, rather than waiting until the next day's import. We have yet to harness it's full potential, since we are so small and focused on production, but there's only one way to go from here....up!!! Thank you SO MUCH to Janelle, Corey, Melissa, Greg and the rest of the ShopTech team that has helped me over the years. You have no idea how fantastic it is to call tech support and get the same, friendly, English-speaking, and knowledgeable people every time.

E2 makes our manufacturing easy to track and analyze. It is a very simple but powerful software.

A.C. Horn & Co. is a custom sheet metal manufacturer (job shop). We will make almost anything from a customer's drawing. We specialize in food processing and packaging equipment. We also have our own line of popcorn and peanut processing equipment. Our owner’s grandfather in Dallas, circa 1907 as a tin shop, founded the company. Our old manufacturing software was complicated and very inflexible, plus was no longer going to be supported by the small company that wrote and developed it. This was a good opportunity for me to recommend to the owners that is was time to change. I wanted software that was more user friendly, menu driven so it would be easy to learn, and more flexible. Also, payroll and time entry had to be clean and a single entry.

Before E2 Shop System, we used a company called Caelus, based in the northwest. It handled payroll also and is very detailed in the accounting area. That was acceptable, but it made our company "accounting-driven", instead of "manufacturing-driven"... we make our money in manufacturing, not accounting... We use the 7.2.14 release. I just noticed that .15 has been released and I will install it very soon. We purchased the software in the fall of 2010, and implemented it on the first workday in 2011. Implementation was a ton of work, long hours, and much trouble-shooting and phone calls to the technical help number. I know changing any software is a monumental task, so in my opinion, the implementation went well.

Everyone on the help desk was helpful, and I especially leaned on the accounting team because that is an area I am not familiar with. Most of my team learned the software fairly quickly, but some who are not as computer literate struggled. I had some issues with a few who tried to "force" the software to do things it was not designed, nor capable of doing. That took some time to sort out, but it helped us learn the limits of E2. I still call the support line (although not as frequently), and it seems the first person who answers the phone is sometimes less knowledgeable than I am. Usually, if I have a real problem or question, it will get kicked up to another level.

The benefits we have realized are in the organization and planning of our proprietary equipment. It has much greater flexibility than our previous software. The system is much more open in the estimating area. Our AP and AR persons like the easier processing in this area. Accounting, however, is still a challenge. I think we are still fairly new users, having 15 months under our belt. We have not even touched the scheduling feature, and only two or three of us are using the quote feature (which is great), so we still have more steps to take to fully utilize the software.

We need a system that could fulfill our shop needs.
E2 Shop System is user-friendly while providing multiple functions to our shop.
it really helps ensuring traceability especially when our shop requires AS9100 standard.
If and when E2 system have some glitches, customer service are always easy to reach and can resolve issues remotely.

Overall I would say I am pleased with the software on a daily basis. We have learned to work around the restrictiveness but it is often a repeated topic for us and is what we consider a major flaw, Had we know before purchase how restrictive it is to making changes we might not have opted to buy,

before buying any software make sure it look seriously at E-2. Their prices are more affordable than you would think and by far best program for you.