ECI Software Solutions offers e-automate, an ERP for office technology companies to automate business workflows and increase contract profitability.
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TripIt
Score 8.5 out of 10
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TripIt is a travel management app offered by Concur, which allows users to organize and coordinate travel plans. Editions include a free version, TripIt Pro, and TripIt for Teams.
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.
TripIt is great for anyone who has multiple trips at any given time. It is also very good at tracking multiple reservations automatically on individual trips. It's not appropriate for low volume trips or only short trips. It is also good for sharing itineraries with others. It's not good for calendar views.
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.
Itinerary Management - TripIt does a great job collecting all of your travel information, including your flight and hotel information all in one location, so that you don't have to deal with multiple vendor apps, emails, or even printouts of that info. It also handles multiple upcoming trips for even easier management and organization
Notifications - TripIt notifies you of changes to your itinerary, such as delays or gate changes, which is great to have that information pushed to you rather than having to constantly look at flight boards for updates.
Apple Watch integration - As an Apple Watch user, TripIt has gone the extra mile to provide a useful watch app for travelers, making your travel information available on your wrist. This makes it even easier to catch changes to your itinerary, and not have to juggle a phone while you already have a passport and luggage to worry about!
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.
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.
I have been using it for a while now and I did renew it every year because it is the best way for me to keep my travel plans in one place with easy visualization
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.
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
pages load fast, notifications are great. up to minute. after deboarding- my next steps are displayed. Syncs with the hotel & frequent flyer rewards programs too.
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.
I have never called their support. That is a great question especially when rolling out into a medium to large organization. Concur is a well-respected company, so I can only suppose their Support is reasonable. I have not experienced their support.
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.
TripIt is designed specifically to help individuals manage their travel info in one place. Before I used TripIt, I had to manually save my travel info in a Google Drive folder, add flights to my personal calendar, then manage multiple airline apps to get flight alerts. TripIt has made my travel much easier.
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.
