JobBOSS² Reviews

We are a small manufacturing facility - but small does not mean we don't need the same data as the "bigs". E2 in it's old form was terrific - however the cloud based version is superior! Functionality - ease of reports, working with other platforms....we can't say enough!
We are now working on customizing some reports and I can't wait til they are part of our daily work!
Great software, great people, great value!

IF we can't figure out a custom report and need some form changes...it has taken longer than we like - however....that is the only downside thus far!

Ability to add and adjust as the business grows

Support and set up is painful and stressful

Nothing of value for us to comment on because we couldn't use the software to receive materials or properly account for our inventory.

Too numerous to detail. Tech support, training and customer service keep telling us the same thing, "Software Functions as Designed". We don't see how we can use this job shop software for metal manufacturing and they aren't offering any workable solutions.

The software can handle all the process in your facilities from sales to delivery to the customer.
form SO to the customer, pass throug jobs (WO) and invoices to delivery product. it handle fine partial delivery so it can be accurate all invoices.

once you have all modules set up. it can work. but you need to get assistance from an partner to get all the information and help to set up all the process. it can't be set by yourself.

I think what drew us to this ERP system from the start is the aesthetics. It's got a great color scheme and easy to find your way around the system with the color coded sections and icons. A close second is the flexibility you have with E2. You can pretty easily undo mistakes and recreate packing slips, invoices, etc.

I want to be able to customize the reports more easily. I don't know how to use their Report Designer and it's not easily self-taught.

We really like that we can have multiple windows open at the same time and be working on lots of different things at once. It helps us to work faster. Also, the menu items are very clear and the system overall is easy to navigate. Recently quoted parts, RFQ, etc. are all easy to use for us. Keeping track of jobs that our employees are working on is easy with JobBOSS².

No complaints. The software does exactly what I need it to do.

Estimating is great. Shipping and Purchasing are great. Inventory Control is great.

Scheduling can be difficult to figure out, but we are working on that. Also, the Accounting can be a little wonky sometimes in how it integrates with QuickBooks.

My number one pro for JobBoss2 is ease of use. It's pretty intuitive, and I appreciate the simplicity of the accounting module.

The reporting for accounting is very minimal. I would like to see more standard accounting reports available. I would also like the ability to add more columns to my views (don't know if that's possible now. I haven't been able to find a way to do so).

Stock list was easy to use, and packing slips were easy to make

One spelling mistake on the stock list and it put in another category that you didnt know was there

The designers clearly have knowledge of a shop environment and are pretty comprehensive in touching all the aspects of a job shop. The sales team is very accessible. The product is very easy to get up and operational with which may be attractive to shops starting out or implementing this type of system for the first time. The software does have controls over what users can do what which is useful for keeping employees in check. The reports that it generates are concise and professional looking out of the box.

The interface is woefully outdated and lacks cohesiveness throughout, data entry practices in one area do not apply to others and certainly do not conform to defacto software standards. Its a bit embarrassing having state of the art CAD/CAM systems with wonderful imagery next to something that looks straight out of 1996. Looks are one thing but we have had a lot of time lost due to slow workflow and data entry errors. It will open many windows and dialog boxes which demand screen focus. Not only is it cumbersome to work in other windows applications with E2 running, you can not even run more than one task at a time inside of it. The software does not scale well to high resolutions or multiple screens. The software rarely fails gracefully, you'll get cryptic error messages in never ending loops.

The software relies on a number of 3rd party frameworks including outdated Java runtimes (insecure) All of your data is stored MSJet databases, for those not tech savvy, its late 1980's technology that is isn't supported by Microsoft any more and was never really designed to be scaled to the point you can potentially reach. They do offer an upgrade to MS SQL which comes at a significant cost (which doesn't include SQL server itself or migration services) and it has the added bonus of breaking any custom reports (which are also expensive commissioned work). Although some user controls are present, there isn't granular control over everything in the system. Its very possible users without clearance to certain information can gain access to things they shouldn't. (ie: ITAR)

Nearly every other vendor is offering some type of cloud integration, and although E2 does offer a component called webview (no surprise, its an additional fee), its really a customer portal and doesn't offer much in terms of what a company employee would need. The software will not play nicely across multiple networks, we had several locations connected via VPN which Shoptech does not support. Their solution was to use MS terminal services which is cumbersome and requires additional licensing. In today's global economy, accessibility should be paramount, not a vendor locked afterthought.

The software does have provisions for shop floor data collection and although it does work, its cumbersome and our busy and non-technical shop floor staff abhor it and we eventually abandoned it.

Support was initially good but as our business grew and our implementation of the software became more complex support has been slow to respond (if at all) and many of the ongoing problems we are facing haven't been satisfactorily resolved.

We are a 20 person precision machining and sheet metal fabrication shop. We do everything from prototype to large quantity production runs, and E2 Shop System does everything we need it to! This software follows a part from cradle to grave; from establishing raw material part numbers all the way thru to cash receipts, it ties every aspect of a job together, and is extremely user friendly! I love that we can collect real time information on the progress of a job, and when all is said and done, we know EXACTLY how much it cost us to produce a part. It allows us to give our customers the best possible price without any guess work on our end. We have been able to keep our accounting bills to a minimum, as the software allows you to produce balance sheets, income statements, 1099's - EVERYTHING! In 2017 we decided to convert to the Web Based version, and it was an absolutely seemless transition. I LOVE that we can do quoting, bookkeeping, analysis, etc. remotely. No longer needing to maintain a huge server has been great too!

I can honestly say that I don't feel like there's anything "missing" with this software. Of course, there are the occasional "glitches", but Shoptech is very responsive and quick to come up with a fix! If I HAD to find something to complain about, it would be that the "maintenance fees" are a bit high for the web based version. However, not needing to maintain a server and the expense associated therewith, it's probably close to a wash!

Being its cloud based that's great because it keeps you virtual anywhere anytime. The system randomly glitches and shuts down and when it does if you haven't saved your 3-5 quotes or orders all those hours of work is all lost.

The system isn't streamline. There aren't many good things to say. It's been a horrible experience.
Sales team over sold us on the product. When we launched with their cloud based system it was still in BETA which we where ok with at the time because they made us a deal to work with them while their in BETA and they wont charge for user maintenance thoughout the duration. Next thing i know problems still arent resolved and its out of BETA. That was 8 months ago when we found out, guess what problems still arent solved and they dont expect them to be for quite a while. Nor could they promised it would be solved.
Here is some ex's: You cannot download any CAD/CAM documents/drawings on their cloud based system. It has to be a image such as: PNG.. NOTE i said PNG and not PDF, DWG, DXF, STEP, etc. That really hinders our flow of operations from the office to the floor.
OVER WORKING YOURSELF: Every step takes 2-5 steps to complete. Such as: Making a simple print, whether printing piece of paper or emailing or viewing a document.
There accounting software is a joke. You cannot take Ccard transactions. We use SYnc option for QB's pro, That doesn't work at all. When it did work it wouldn't close out the invoice on shop side once its been transferred. Believe me when i say this ppl stay away there are MANY more problems than what was listed. I was warned before we bought it and should've listened.

This program is very basic so if you learn how to use one part of the system you can learn how to use the other parts of the system because they all look the same

This software does not allow for any changes to be made, and if you want to make a change you have to pay hundreds of dollars to do so. It is very set in the way it was build and you cannot change anything to make it easier for your company. First the shop floor doesnt account for scraps, they assume you will remake them so if you have any scraps and want to throw them out and move on to the next step of production then it wont count that step as being done. Then the accounting is put into many steps and the system gets easily overcrowded. the general ledger is done in too many steps to be accurate. The system will not work for orders of more than one line because if you want to unprocess an order in a second line after the first one was shipped, you cannot. Youre stuck with this floating error in your system that you cannot get rid of.
I personally do not recommend this to anyone. The system isnt very helpful, i feel like you could organize your data much better even on excel sheets than this program does. Finally their customer support do not know anything, as an experienced user of this i call them and ask for help with some easier things and they cannot provide me with an adequate answer, then through trial and error on my own part I find what i was looking to accomplish. Overll I am very dissatisfied with this system;the way its run, the way its reports are made, and how easy it is to create errors but its nearly impossible and in some cases impossible to correct them.

The ability to gather data on cost, and labor. Inventory tracking is probably the most useful aspect of this software.

The user interface is very clunky, and hard to navigate. The capability of the program is hard to realize due to how difficult it is to use.
I have, on multiple occasions, pulled my hair out trying to figure out why the program will not cooperate, only to find there was some missing information somewhere. Ok, this is my fault, but wouldn't it be nice if even the smallest window could pop up to say there is an error?
Sometimes I sign in and forget to actually click on the little green check mark. Turns out if you push the enter key to sign in results in the program window disappearing from the screen with no warning or indication as to why. One winds up waiting the several minutes expected for the program to respond only to find it is not opening after all.
The promise of what this software could enable a business to do is amazing. It is truly a shame how non-user friendly it is.

When we originally purchased the access version of the software that ran on our server. We were pretty happy customers. It preformed up to our expectations and we used the entire suite of modules. We used that version from 2011 through 2017 after which we upgraded to the webversion. The original version was easy to use and very comprehensive. The only pro for the webversion is that you can access it from any device that is connected to the internet.

Wait time while tabbing between fields is often delayed which significantly increases the amount of time it takes to complete any task. Most tasks require approximately 20% more time to complete. There are problems with lost work due to connectivity. We are told most of this is a result of our internet connection speeds but when we test internally, the speeds exceed the requirements. There are also many issues related to browser cache files. Each new update fixes one set of problems but rolls out a new set of problems. The time it takes to estimate and quote jobs has increased 20-35% depending on the complexity of the job. We are not able to downgrade to the version we had before without losing data and we are not able to put the new version back on our server without making a major upgrade ($20k est) to our server hardware and software.

E2 user for 13 years, sequel version. Most manufacturing companies hardly utilize more than 50% of an MRP/ERP, and don't put the effort to truly comprehend the system to ever fully utilize. In those cases, this would be a good system to use. It does a lot of muscle work for you if you use it right. If you are truly ok with simply letting their scheduling module spit out a generic schedule that is limited in work-ability, this would be a good system. The most updated version has more bells a whistles which is nice but for us was fundamentally lacking in real change and not worthy of the investment to upgrade - plus the fact it is an entirely new system where you would lose all your history was additionally disappointing.

The system has way too many issues. The purchasing module is as stagnant and rigid as it gets. No room for flexibility. The estimating module is also disconnected on very basic levels from the purchasing side. The scheduling module has not been updated in any sort of substantial way since the beginning and is entirely too slow to be of use if you actually want to actively manage your variables. It crashes a lot (and yes, we had it set up by them so no reason there). The support is BASIC. Within 1 year, I was more knowledgeable than the staff trying to help me with questions I had. Constant system issues where quantities duplicate on their own, or system crashes when running a report (which some of them take a really long time).