Odoo vs. UDA Construction Suite

It is well suited for inventory tracking, shipping and sales work flows. While some customization is needed to make it functional, if done correctly Odoo can serves as a powerful one stop shop for all of a businesses needs. The ease of customization for email templates, both for sales communications and marketing outreach leaves something to be desired. Perhaps our team hasn't explored this fully enough. I have personally found it intimidating in trying to construct a news letter using the email marketing module

Incentivized

If you've never used software before and have low expectations, then you might be able to make it work out.

• The creation of products is extremely simple, I like that it does not complicate you to put a lot of detail, of course if you want to put more detailed information later it allows you to do it without problems
• The fact that I can manage my inventory of my warehouse is very convenient, I only generate my stock report of the products we have in stock and taking inventory is easier
• The management of opportunities in the CRM is also great, because the guys from the sales department generate their opportunity, place what their client is requiring and we, the logisticians, can automatically generate the quote for what they are requesting, and from there they can only download their quote and send it to their clients.

Incentivized

• The beautiful user interface. It looks good.
• Their videos are professional.
• They have webinars.

• Customer service is nonexistent. You will need a 3rd party to assist you.
• The system has an open app for integrating with other programs. These are developed by third parties and can be hit or miss in functionality.
• The system offers great flexibility; however, it is too much and requires coding. For example, changing a Sales order PDF requires coding to modify the document.
• Initial implementation is clunky and seems to require a 3rd party just for setup.

Incentivized

• Their spell checker creates a squiggly line to tell you that you have a misspelled word, but, doesn't allow you to correct it.
• The spell checker lets you add custom words to a dictionary, but, it can only use one dictionary at a time to check spelling. So the default dictionary gets used, and your custom words still show up as being spelled wrong!
• You can't select-copy addresses, in order to paste them somewhere else.
• Using duplexing on my printer doesn't work right. It works for every other software I own, but not in UDA.
• There is a bug in the WIP date range that doesn't pull accurate data.
• "Options" in the estimate show only cost, not margin. So if you show your customer that report, you are revealing cost info, not selling price!!
• You can't import a PDF into bid notes, even though the premise of UDA is to try to make it a single repository for all your information.
• You can't use the arrow key to browse photos in UDA. You need to close, and click into the next one. No inuitive functionality.
• The estimating module separates material and labor, in ways that create a very confusing Scope of Work. You need to select the labor item from your database, then separately select the material from your database. You end up with two line items in your Scope of Work for the same thing. Instead of writing, "Supply and Install a new window" you have "Supply a new window" and then "Install a new window." It's hard for my estimator, and confusing for my client.
• UDA will WREAK HAVOC on your contacts in Outlook.
• It does a terrible job of managing husband/wife or partner/partner situations. You can't mail merge them properly, or, you get forced into combining their contact into into a single contact-- and then how do you know whether the cell phone is his or hers???
• There is no good way to credit design fees against the construction contract, if you happen to use that paradigm for your contracts.
• There is no way to filter contracts by their date created. So, how do you find your newest contacts for entering them into something such as Constant Contact?
• If you try to use integration of QuickBooks(QB) and UDA, your ITEMS list in QB will either get expanded to hundreds or even THOUSANDS of items... or, your POs in QB will get created in a summary form such that they are virtually meaningless.
• The "lead funnel" graphic may look cool, but there is not a good way to actually report on the lead status, track the activities and calls that you make, note significant emails that you write, or keep track of when you send out thank-you cards or spiffs/gifts!
• They might tell you that these things work, but, after spending MONTHS with UDA, I found out that these problems are deal breakers.
• Within their customer service department, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. They do not use a structure such as Zendesk that so many other great companies use. Even though I was paying for priority support, there were often days going by where I could not get a call or email back to assist me with a support request or provide a tutorial on how to do something. Had I not paid extra for support, this would be acceptable. But when paying for "TotalCare" priority support, there are times when the software had me stuck, and I was stuck for a day at a time waiting for an answer. Sometimes no answer ever arrived.

Once you complete the training with Odoo, you have a great grasp of how the system works, and most every feature is intuitive- There is rarely a task within Odoo that I get frustrated trying to figure out- I can typically look through the system and find what I need to do, and if I ever do need support, the Odoo Support team is excellent

Incentivized

Easy - there is NO SUPPORT (like in ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!!!!!). Even for legally mandatory requirements where the system MUST work, they will gladly take a month to get back to you with a NON-answer. We couldn't even get our bank statements correctly into Odoo for 2 months - leading to no reconciliation and the company accounts were a mess (still are!!) as a result - Completely irresponsible. Have not EVEN had an apology from Odoo - they couldn't care less !!

We decided to go with Odoo over Netsuite due to a few factors. Price was a big reason why, Netsuite is the most expensive ERP we vetted. I also did not have a great experience with Netsuite at my last job. I was on the roll out team and it did not work as promised for POS, inventory managing or reporting, it crashed constantly in the middle of using it. Just over all very poor. Considering it is owned by Oracle and the most expensive, you would think it would be able to function on some sort of base level. That company ended up terminating their contract with Netsuite early and going with a different company.

We don't have crashing or error issues. I can complete receives, cycle counts etc and all of my information saves. Visually, Odoo is more satisfying also.

Incentivized

QuickBooks has great quality assurance and while they don't provide support, their software is nearly flawless. Co-construct provides great support and solves problems. In comparison, UDA Construction Suite is full of flaws, and their customer service department is disorganized and overworked.

• In older versions, it was super expensive to make it even work. You had to hire third-party developers all the time.
• Newest versions have better built in functionality.
• Cost is pretty high. Odoo plus developers to support it could bankrupt a small business.

Incentivized

• All my money was wasted. I could not get a refund.
• All my time was wasted. I spent much time on customer support, and even more time "stuck" where customer support could not be reached.
• My staff time was wasted, because it was hard for them to implement and then we ultimately abandoned it.