e-automate vs. Shiftboard

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

It's a great intro into a workforce management tool, but our use of it is basically as a calendar without it being linked to our actual calendars. It's just another tab that we have to keep open throughout our workday. It's great that we're able to see everyone who is working at what time and what channel of support, but I believe that there are visual aids that can be added to it to make everything much easier to read and more user-friendly.

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

• Mobile accessibility
• Cloud-based software
• Compliant with all necessary information security standards

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

• The ability to print a month view of the schedule would be a great benefit.
• The signup list is a great feature, but there are too many steps to make it easy to use.
• The bulk add and delete process works well, but tends to be confusing for users.

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

I never sought out Shiftboard support.

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

We have not used another product like Shiftboard at our company.

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

• Effective allocation to proper shows/projects for our network
• Effectively catches any discrepancies between scheduled hours and actual hours for employees
• Requires significant manpower to maintain scheduling accuracy

Incentivized