e-automate vs. Fourth Procurement and Inventory

If you need a system to place and track sales quotes, sales orders, purchase orders, and service calls then E-Automate is perfect. However, if you want to be able to easily bulk upload customers and contracts or if you want to be able to quickly and easily track contract profitability, customer costs, etc, then you'll likely want/need a secondary or different system to do so.

Incentivized

The product is user-friendly in automating the tasks, managing the master data through central purchasing, and creating custom reports. It lacks certain basic functionalities like a record of wastages, sending automated emails confirming if the automatic tasks (scheduled tasks) have been completed or not, and the ability to automate the nutrition information, etc.

Incentivized

• Sending Invoices out to customers via email or printing.
• Keep track of ordering and inventory.
• Sales Tax reporting.
• Monitoring customer payment activity/setting up and removing credit holds.
• Calculating payments to process each cycle.
• Excellent aging reports.
• I like the fact that when I am looking at one item, such as an invoice, I have the capability to switch to the customer menu rather than having to exit out of invoices and then enter into customers.
• I love the flexibility of the search menus - being able to sort on several factors at once.

Incentivized

• The 'stock management' tab on the home screen is of particular use when keeping tabs on incoming deliveries into the restaurant.
• The option to open and close your stock period is great as you have the chance to edit your stock at a moment's notice.

Incentivized

• Make sales invoices not require serial numbers, or be more flexible with it.
• Make contract invoices have some sort of flexibility in terms of editing. Our end users complain that QuickBooks made it very easy to edit invoices, and in e-automate, for them, it is practically impossible. (I do personally understand why it has to be as it is myself, I'm just forwarding their observation.)
• Make the API actually useful. I spent days looking at the functions and the functions available are not really useful.

Incentivized

• It would help massively to see via Enterprise and menu items what ones are no longer active, to keep the data tidy.
• When you take purchase reports from Enterprise and select to organise them by category, show the name of the category on the actual report download.
• Quick and easy upload/download of supplier products for correcting prices, descriptions, prices in bulk.

Incentivized

Its really the only option for the industry that does enough of what we need for it to function . I'm not sure if there were better options out there if we would have to renew our subscription. With the addition of AI, hopefully something will be able to become more useful.

Incentivized

The user interface may be slightly outdated, but it is very intuitive and easy to navigate. Once you have learned one module within the system it is very easy to apply that knowledge to any other module. It makes using the system much easier, and it makes training another person on the system quick and efficient.

Incentivized

Mostly available, sometimes down for issues but usually there when we need it

Incentivized

Reports are the struggle the most with the information being extracted in a way that you need to copy and paste it into a new document so some of the information is not covered

Incentivized

Sometimes when you need answers quickly, a voice on the phone is far better than having to wait for email support or a callback. I have found this to have delays and feel ECI e-automate should invest more in its support infrastructure.

Incentivized

Too long to get an answer.

Incentivized

I did not participate in implementation

Incentivized

E-automate is much better at understanding the needs of the office equipment industry and provide the necessary tools. SAP Business One has limited features specific to the office equipment industry and includes things that are not useful. E-automate is also priced much better and provides the best value for your investment.

Incentivized

I was not involved in the sales process

Incentivized

Every department we have does use e-automate to some degree with most being successful.

Incentivized

I was not involved in the sales process

Incentivized

• The e-automate will stop working if we stop paying each year. We chose not to go to the cloud and buy the software. QuickBooks and other software are a one-time fee.
• E-automate has very few outside vendors for add-on modules.
• The vendors that do have modules are costly.

Incentivized

• Procurement: Integrating some of the key suppliers with Trade Simple has saved labour hours.
• Integration: GL Integrations have increased the efficiency and quality of data.

Incentivized