JobBOSS² Reviews

Excellent!

My overall experience has been very good with all E2 aspects, my concerns have always been handled professionally and quickly. They have been able to modify or create a new program I have requested in a timely efficient manner.

The software is probably the most poorly developed and an un-useful software that I have ever experienced. The product was complete and absolute garbage. I should have fire the employee who spec'd it in.
The implementation in trying to get the software to do what we wanted was a nightmare, so after 9 months of trying to "tweak" the system to do what we wanted, and another 2 months of just trying to live with what we bought, I decided to cut our losses. And then less than 10 days prior subscribing to the software for a year, I received an email telling me that my license key would be expiring, from which I was able to deduce and then confrim after contacting customer service, that we were on an annual contract.
And then without any call back number or anything I received an email telling me that I was required to cancel the contract 30 days prior to the "renewal", and therefore I could not cancel the annual renewal. (note I was paying monthly and frankly had no idea that this was an annual contract) Nonetheless I did contact them prior to the renewal once I figured out what they were pulling. For clarification, the email I received 10 days prior to the "renewal" did not reference "Renewal" or annual contract and it was sent to me 10 days prior so according the 30 day notice requirement, it was already to late as it were.

Overall I think the software is a great entry level ERP that can allow a business to quickly understand their costs and find avenues for improvement.

Our experience has been 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.

Overall experience with the personal at Shoptech. From the support to team to the sales team. All are knowledgeable.

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.

E2 manages ALL your data from your shop floor through your bookkeeping. The reports have always been the best selling point. Even sorting data becomes easy with the various export methods. You can quickly transfer the report dat to say excell and then again manipulate and massage as need for even more insight. I have always (and will continue to) recommend this sofware to other owners.

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.

Archaic and Tedious is exactly how I would describe Exact JobBoss. There are significant limitations in the software to consider up front. Part numbers are limited to 30 Characters. Drawing numbers are limited to 16 characters. General Description field is limited to 30 characters. Their answer to this is to provide an extended description dialog box. But you can not see the value of extended description in any sort of list view, therefore you can not see the complete description of your materials or parts anyplace until you generate quote document, or purchase order document, or a report. The general Description field will clip your description. It will let you enter more than 30 characters. But if you save and exit, then open the same quote it will have clipped the description to 30 characters. The UI is not user-friendly despite other reviews. I seriously doubt they have conducted usability and ergonomics studies with actual customers. It is very easy to get off track and be very disorganized with materials. Where it should have a good predefined material structure. The reporting side is very limited unless you are familiar with programming Crystal reports yourself. If you are building a product structure where multiple components use the same material, there is no way to add the same material to multiple components at once. You can copy material from one component to another, however, you cannot copy just a single material. For example, the component that I am copying from may have 5 materials in it. I have to copy all 5 materials into the target component then delete the materials I don't want in it. Same way with copying routings. A tech support rep argued this with me via email. To convince him I was correct and it was not possible I had to take a video of my screen attempting to copy one material and send that to him. Only then did he come off his position that it was possible. I can not see both the routings of a component and the materials of a component at the same time. They are two separate view windows you have to click back and forth in. Likewise, you cannot see the materials in multiple components at once. You have to click back and forth between the components you are interested in. If they rearranged their UI you could do some of these things, because there is plenty of room on your average size monitor screen. I have a 24" monitor and at a comfortable resolution, JobBoss is really only utilizing about 50% of my display space with actual pertinent information and controls. It's very easy to accidentally delete things and there are not many places where you can Undo, so if you accidentally delete something you are SOL. There is no way to add additional custom properties to a component. For example, I can not have Customer Part # and Our Part#. There are unforeseen nuances as well with formatting as well. If you enter a value in Vendor Reference field or Detail Number, then it overwrites the space for Extended Description on our Purchase Orders with Vendor Reference or Detail Number instead. You can not delete a material that has been used in a job. Unfortunately, we have a terrible material database with poorly named materials. We would like to replace the badly named materials with new materials that make more sense. But there is no good way to do this. Once a material has been used, closed, or scheduled it can not be deleted. It can only be inactivated. But what I want to do is replace it completely. Now they will say that they have a replace functionality, but it is really a rename functionality. But you can only rename one material at a time. So it's not really a replace function. Lastly, if you have limited seats you can set a user sign out after a period of time. However, I have found that if you walk away and have not saved your quote or job and it auto signs you out, it DOES NOT always save it for you. So you may lose work that you have done since last save.

To anyone that is thinking about purchasing E2, now known as Shop Tech....BUYER BEWARE

Our company made the decision to purchase E2 in 2018 at a machine show. The sales associates that were demonstrating the software did an amazing job showing off it's operational talents and expertise. The company paid for two of us top management specialists to travel to a training sight where we worked out of a step by step workbook, which began the wasting of monies....But then 1/1/2019 the nightmare began.

The program was not the same as the one purchased by the President of the company. They supplied a brand new version of E2 and told us that it had been a replacement for the one we purchased and the prior was no longer available.. For two years to follow we were nothing but guinea pigs. Our company suffered computer glitches, accounting problems, data loss and production interruption, due to the unready malfunctioning computer software supplied. Numerous hours spent with E2 support, could still not rectify the continuing accounting issues and glitches within the software. Weekly we received updates from E2 tech support to fix problems in their new system. These updates regularly had thousands of changes.

Goodbye Shop Tech... and good riddance!

We have been able to utilize the estimating (bill of materials / labor) system to effectively quote customers. We are able to track sales data, as well as purchasing data to make better business decisions about products and materials. Everything is integrated in the system so we can trace expenses back to the invoice and purchase order, or the sale back to the quote, as well as clearly defined job costing.

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.

E2 ShopTech has a great team to work with when your troubleshooting. If they can not find the answer they will make a copy of your database and find the answer and let you know the results. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] proved this to me on my last ticket sent in. Thank you for all your help troubleshooting the cost report vs the inventory stock amount.

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.