Viewpoint Vista Reviews

Viewpoint Vista

Comments: Overall our experience has been very good.

Pros:

Vista is a very powerful program! Is very customizable.

Cons:

Viewpoint's Customer Service! We hear from our clients all the time that the Viewpoint customer service is horrid.

Viewpoint Vista is a cost effective and powerful ERP for contractors

Pros:

Effective tool for project managers and accounting personnel to track job costs.

Cons:

Backend modifications require input from consultants and costly customizations.

Antiquated and Bulky

Comments: I haven't used vista for anything beyond time keeping and basic invoicing, but I feel like it needs an overhaul, but in terms of UI, but also functionality.

Pros:

It has many features and groups them all together in one place

Cons:

Filling out forms and records is an arduous task, the software balks at the user when fields are not filled out in the precise manner that it expects. Often after filling out an entire record, it is deleted because one field is incorrect or missing.

Vista is ok

Pros:

I like the ease of it syncing with other software's.

Cons:

There are so many steps to get to where you need to be. The invoices freeze for over 24 hours if you open them twice.

Great product

Pros:

I love how easy it is to just use it and hit helpgul

Cons:

Customer support could be easier to reach

Great for Task Lists, Hard to Navigate

Comments: I like it better than Sage 100 contractor, but it still seems based in the 90's. it could be much easier to navigate. the people that have been using it for 3 years or more seem to still have some issues with navigating the system.

Pros:

I like that you can set up your own task list for the items you use the most.

Cons:

its difficult to find reports, unless you know the name of it, or where it is located. it would be nice to be able to run a targeted search.

Overall a good product but training needs to be more seemless

Comments: I think it's a good program overall. Much better than JD Edwards, although I haven't used that in years.

Pros:

Forecasting and the PM tools are useful. It is not an intuitive program however and does take training. I feel like most of our staff would benefit from training, but it has not been prioritized yet.

Cons:

There are too many programs/modules that we do not use. Some seem repetitive, it's not obvious to a new user even where to start. There needs to be better training segments like "Training for PM's, for AR, for AP" etc.

Great Project Financial Management

Comments: Viewpoint Vista has all the tools to make Project Financial Management a breeze.

Pros:

Being able to customize this software to fit our company and project needs has been very beneficial. The project financial management capabilities are extremely useful.

Cons:

I would like more options for equipment management.

The program that does it all

Comments: I came up as a user. It was not easy to learn on my own. But over the years Vista has offered better help screens, new training screens and videos. I have been using Vista for over 20 years. It has always been solid. They keep adding new and better features. It just keeps getting better. It is detail oriented but that is required for all that we ask it to do. I like it.

Pros:

It is a one stop shop that includes all the various aspects of business. It is solid and proven to work together. It is adaptable when needed. We customize everything and Vista does it well.

Cons:

The more we ask it to do the more complicated it gets. There are a lot of options that we do not use or want. But others may love those same features. Not a big fan of the form searches. Most experienced users tell you to use the GRID search and not the form search. Too many issues.

A view from the daily worker

Comments: I have been working with Viewpoint for 15 years now and have seen many great improvements. Overall the software is user friendly and covers most all our needs. It has been a great software to use and the staffing at Viewpoint are always friendly. I have really liked the addition of the Employee portal, that has saved my team so much time, while ensuring that the field is using the correct jobs and phases.

Pros:

I like the fact that the software is very easy to use. They have many tools to gain more information on how things are set up and processed in the knowledge based articles. Customer service is very supportive and generally able to fix any issues that may arise. The use of the Employee portal is wonderful as well.

Cons:

There are defiantly things that can and should be improved. One of those items would be the labor categories and the fact that you can not use the same craft and class code combination in more that one category. This is really inconvenient given our customers want to see time grouped but others want to see them broken out.

Integration with Ease

Comments: We love the change that we made to VISTA. It has allowed our company to streamline, and operate with same personnel - with growing at the same time.

Pros:

We were a Maxwell Streetsmarts users for over 10 years, when Viewpoint purchased Maxwell. At that point we began to shop "other" vendors for the best comprehensive solution for our Heavy Excavation company. As it turned out Viewpoint Vista Softwarewon! We preplanned for nearly 15 months before making the transition. We opted to make the transition at the slowest time of year for "our" company. With our initial planning we were able to schedule training that worked in our company's timeframe, we were assigned a Project Manager who kept us on track. Our go live date was Feb 2016 - of which meant - we went live; hiccups and all! To the credit of Viewpoints Vista team the transition was seamless. We had the correct training from the start, correct leadership within our company, and a VISTA TEAM that moved us forward. We started out with the essentials, and have since added a few more modules, document imaging, and Mobile Field Manager. It has taken us awhile to adjust to the reports vrs what we were use to, but have found we can "adjust" reports via the Crystal Report writer ourselves. As software updates are released, they are easily installable from the end users aspect. I highly recommend the software as a whole - many ways to get information out!

Cons:

Cons are not negative to us - just ways to improve! After using the software for awhile and you call into support, and you know more than the support person.

Vista by Viewpoint - Project Management

Comments: I think a great deal of the Cons could be eliminated if the training was better, but the way I understand the roll out training was so expensive and fast that it wasn't that helpful. Plus it happened on the onset before they had any experience with the software. There are video trainings that are good, but some are outdated.

Pros:

After you learn the nuances of the software its a good product. It tracks compliance well, subcontract and change order entry is easy. Good reports to obtain information.

Cons:

Due to inadequate initial training the previous AP lady thought she could bill an amount on items that were designated as EA (having unit cost and Unit Quantity. As a result, we have had major issues. The support staff said if Viewpoint would fix that issue their support cases would drop exponentially. If they cannot fix it, at least they should not allow the user to be able to perform the function. Although good data on the reports, some are clumsy. At times it is difficult to find exactly what you want to display on a report. Support is great, but when the problem overlaps from one category to another, you can get faulty information. For example...if you have an AP problem, it could be causing a problem in SL but the AP support team won't know to tell you that. We had a major issue that was created as a result of this because it crossed years.

Longtime Viewpoint Vista Users

Pros:

Software is really easy to use. There are a get number of reports out of the box. Reports are really easy to create and manipulate to get you the information that you want.

Cons:

Software error popups are really vague and do not describe what is wrong which can make hunting down the issue very difficult at times.

Great product, great future growth perspective

Comments: Great product, great company, highly recommend. We have been on the product over a year and continue to be pleased.

Pros:

Vista is a very robust system and if you are an organization that wants to have one effective place to track all of your information, this is it. After doing 5 months of research and reviews over other products like Sage, COINS, and others, I am convinced this is the top shelf. There are incredible help resources, the implementation team was phenomenal, and they have been consistently updating the software and making it better on a consistent basis. I could go on about other things that I like about it, but the high-level Pro that I have is that it is a product that is well thought out and is mostly mature (see cons) across the board.

Cons:

The service module is the only thing that is not up to snuff with the rest of the product. It still lacks the maturity that the rest of the product has. It is 100% usable and it is effective, but it does not attain the same level of greatness that the rest of the product has. That being said, the last 4 major updates have all included Service Module enhancements, so it is obviously getting taken care of.

Great for Large Scale Asphalt Construction Companies!

Comments: We weren't sure what the best course of action was but ultimately decided to move forward with Vista, instead. After seeing a demo of the product, the decision was a no-brainer. This is a great piece of software, and Vista overall has exceeded our expectations. We have multiple asphalt plants, a concrete plant, trucking company, and asphalt installation crews, so Vista has been a perfect fit. As for the technology, most people are used to the style of windows, which makes for a pretty easy learning curve with Vista. The grid functionality is top-notch as well, being able to switch from an informational view of one item to a list of all items. Viewpoint also offers a cloud environment to host your enterprise system. It's a small fee to pay for peace of mind, and limited IT management on our part. We haven't even taken advantage of everything that it offers yet, and we are STILL thrilled. We can't wait to implement more in 2017, and see what else Vista can do for us.

Pros:

The integration across accounts, companies, departments, etc. We've only scratched the surface and been incredibly impressed. Really, I cant say enough good about this product. We love using the cloud environment as well - access Vista from anywhere via browser, if necessary. Makes it easy to work from home on a snowy day!

Cons:

Nothing in particular about the product, but we've had responsiveness issues with the billing department - some people are great others, not so much. The tech support department could be more knowledgeable about technology, and IT management in general. Fortunately, we don't need them very often. The cloud environment is clunky with printing in different browsers - always a mixed bag. Checks don't always line up right but using the actual cloud app, no problems what so ever.

Worth It!

Comments: Overall its been a great experience. Great customer service and learning tools.

Pros:

Great functionality and end user experience .

Cons:

It can take a little bit to get the hang of, but once you do its awesome!

Viewpoint Vista Review

Pros:

Viewpoint Vista has a plethora of programs that allow you to better facilitate jobs and accounting. It has a lot of very customizable features that enable you to create specific reports or transactions that you need for jobs.

Cons:

Viewpoint has a very steep learning curve. It is not an easy software to understand and can be very confusing and time consuming to use. Many of the programs take quite some time to load and it can be frustrating trying to change information or export information.

Viewpoint Vista

Pros:

Having everything you need to do your job all in one place.

Cons:

It did get slower when we moved to cloud.

Great product, but needs in-house IT support to get full benefit

Pros:

Like the flexibility of the product (ability to customize reports / UD fields / tables) and the fact that Viewpoint is continuously looking to improve it's product. Viewpoint also has a great end user base where we can learn and share ideas together.

Cons:

Support has become an issue in recent years. Viewpoint has grown quickly with new additions (which is a double edge sword), but it's getting more difficult to find long time Viewpoint team members who understand the product and how it works. Many times, it feels as if the team member trying to help is reading thru the documentation and doesn't really know how it works. We were implemented with Viewpoint earlier than other companies coming on in more recent years. We have seen that the implementation process has had more struggles and challenges with Viewpoint team members being changed out or not as knowledgeable during the process. Again, Viewpoint has grown in its product line, hopefully they will be able to expand their team member support base with more knowledgeable and long time team members.

Viewpoint Vista Review

Comments: Once you learn the software and all it's features it's great.

Pros:

The ability to track multiple things and the crystal reports that can be created.

Cons:

The time that it takes to learn how to use the actual software.

Have been using live on Vista by Viewpoint since Sept 2012

Pros:

The best part is the amount of customization that can be done. You are not limited to the fields "out of the box". It was the only software that we tested that allowed us to do that. Also, in accounting I like that you can bring a transaction back into a batch to be able to "fix" it if necessary. The amount of information at your fingertips is also great. What we needed was something that brought Accounting and Project Management together - and Viewpoint does an excellent job of that for us. Also, we have always had excellent support when needed. Now that we have worked with Viewpoint for almost 3 years - I can't imagine what I would do without it.

Cons:

The initial set-up was time-consuming and somewhat daunting, but that would probably true whenever changing software from 1 vendor to another. I honestly can't think of anything I like least. The amount of customization available means that I can change things if necessary to suit how I would like to use the product.

I have used Viewpoint software since 1995

Pros:

I like the fact that with the exception of our bidding software and blacktop plant tickets software, everything is integrated so information entered hits every required module without duplicate entry. The information from our blacktop plant and bidding software can easily be imported into Vista.

Cons:

Viewpoint is sometimes, in my opinion, slow to add processes being used by many of our customers and vendors. For instance, we cannot bill our vendors electronically or add attachments to employee payroll checks sent by email. They sometimes have steps that seem to be unnecessary. For example, when entering cash receipts, if you wish to record a discount taken you must go to a second screen (Payment detail) to enter the discount. You must then check a box that says "remove input restriction". It should not be necessary to go into another screen to make changes and you should not then have to do an additional step of checking a box to record discount.

Good for a broad range of companies

Pros:

They have modules for most aspects of any construction business. There are tools to allow adding custom fields, validations, lookups, and even complete custom tables for those who want to go beyond the canned software. We built an extensive safety program on their custom tables. Being a standard SQL database has allowed us to integrate with other software as well.

Cons:

They are playing catch-up on the mobile side. They've got several components they are working to get integrated into the back end that should provide the needed mobile access.

All-In-One Solution for Our Company

Comments: As the IT Manager at my company, the last thing I need is dozens of applications spread across three offices to maintain.
Vista gives me the tools to combine several departments under on application.

Pros:

Several modules for different uses with different departments. Customization to fit our needs. Easy to find third-party applications like job and time sheet applications that stream in directly to Vista.

Cons:

A bit pricey, but in the long term it pays off. A bit of a learning curve for users, so this would definitely be considered a long term investment for your company.

Vista by Viewpoint - Linear Accounting

Comments: Vista provides us with a solid foundation for business accounting. Once the learning curve is established, the program can be very powerful.

Pros:

This program features some of the strongest features on the accounting side of things. Once you become acquainted, custom forms are the best feature.

Cons:

Document Management is Lacking completely.