The good, the bad, but no ugly
Rating: 8 out of 10
January 09, 2025
TH
Vetted Review
Verified User
3 years of experience
- Variety of field options
- Easy to create or customize forms for anyone, don't have to be a computer tech to do it
- Easy access to live support through the chat bubble
- Being able to link multiple services to 1 service note
Cons
- Real-time reporting using classes and terms. Currently if I add attendance today and want to pull a report today of today's attendance, I can not. I have to wait until tomorrow to pull today's attendance b/c of syncing that only happens in the evening. This delays reports.
- Reports: clients with multiple program enrollments (can be either open or closed enrollments) will duplicate (inflate) numbers. There are some tricks to reduce but they are not foolproof and still require labor to weed out duplicate cases.
- Training and set up support at purchase: when we purchased our subscription 3 or 4 years ago, we received 8 hours of assistance to help set up. That is completely unreasonable for people who don't understand how it works. You have to purchase additional training to really get a good understanding of how to use it. That's almost criminal for someone who is investing in the product. I'd like to see Bonterra add 2 seats to Boot Camp as part of their initial subscription. Or at least 1 year of a training package at no cost for the first year. If they want people to be multi contract users, you must invest in their understanding of how to use it. Otherwise they get frustrated and look at other options.
- Using sort in the Terms A - Z doesn't work. You have to select another sort option (like Z - A) then go back and select A - Z for it to sort correctly.
- We purchased Apricot b/c it had the VOCA reporting already in it. As we started to learn about the system and how reports were being pulled we found that reports were not pulling correctly based on VOCA requirements. This was brought to our rep's attention and rather than fix the issue for all users, we created new reports so it fixed it for us. I tried to get her to take this to developers (I sent her emails from VOCA funders with proof of the way data was to be pulled) b/c it meant anyone using the reports was not reporting correctly, but she wasn't interested.
- Although linking services is great for the user, the reporting side makes it labor intensive. If I pull a report for services in a reporting period, example 6 service dates with 20 services provided, the report is not going to give me 6 lines it's going to give me 20, one for each service. It would be nice to get the 6 lines.
- We are expanding our Emergency Food Pantry to include such items as clothing, hygiene products, housewares items, etc. We are trying to figure out ways to track visits, what was taken, etc. It's been challenging.
- Related to the initial set up and training, we had state legislative staff talk to us regarding services and one of their questions was related to our client management system. Feedback these folks had received was that Social Solutions was difficult to use and they were looking for other options. I am currently working with a local organization who is using Apricot and is not happy with it. I've told them they don't understand how to use it and the right people aren't the administrators (currently the IT department). I’m doing a 1 day over view of Apricot to save them from looking elsewhere b/c I believe it can be done. I shouldn’t have to do this, Bonterra should have done this from the beginning.