Vista by Viewpoint-Complex but Excellent at Cost Tracking at the Job Level
We use Viewpoint across our whole organization (minus workers in the field). We are in the Process of Implementing Field Management where …
Vista
Viewpoint Vista
Overview
What is Vista?
Viewpoint’s Vista is a construction accounting software. Vista’s core accounting features include accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, payroll and time management, and cash management. It also provides tools for document management, including document templates and reporting.
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Popular Features
View all 25 features- Direct deposit files (13)8.181%
- Pay calculation (13)7.878%
- Custom reports (15)6.969%
- Standard reports (16)6.060%
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What is Vista?
Viewpoint’s Vista is a construction accounting software. Vista’s core accounting features include accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, payroll and time management, and cash management. It also provides tools for document management, including document templates and reporting.
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SAP Business One is an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for small and medium-sized businesses, The product encompasses functionality around sales, customer relationships, inventory, operations, financials and human resources.
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Sage 100cloud (formerly Sage 100 ERP) business management software offers a broad range of modules designed to meet the many needs of virtually any business. It encompasses financial operations and accounting, payroll, business intelligence, CRM, eBusiness, manufacturing and distribution.
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What is Vista?
Vista by Viewpoint is a construction accounting and ERP software that is designed to help contractors manage all areas of their business. According to the vendor, Vista enables the centralization of information with visibility, providing secure, fully interactive data across the organization.
Job Costing
Job Cost is at the core of Vista. Designed to deliver timely, accurate accounting and operations info on job progress, Vista’s Job Cost provides an extensive library of reports and drill-down inquiries. Enter job budgets and change orders directly in Job Cost, or import from various estimating solutions, including several from Trimble. Report and update job progress in “units” or “percent complete.”
Vista provides access cost information and detailed breakdowns to assure every project is under budget and profitable — with detailed tracking of job or contract items, change orders, labor, equipment and materials, etc.
Service Management
Vista helps service contractors streamline back-office processes, while empowering field techs to perform better service work. Users can manage service agreements, streamline service dispatching and provide mobile construction work order tools so techs can get more done in fewer steps, while the office gets realtime information on their jobs. Users can simplify billing with the flexibility to bill customers as they require.
Vista also offers a mobile work order solution: Vista Field Service. With Vista Field Service, cost data is captured in the field with a mobile device and connected directly to Vista.
Construction Equipment Management
Vista helps equipment managers to better track and understand when equipment usage, maintenance and repairs are costing more than asset replacement. Vista allows users to track construction equipment location and usage, with single-step data entry and flexible revenue rates and category assignments. Users can view monthly calculations of book depreciation with fixed asset schedules, and schedule preventative maintenance for an equipment fleet, with alerts when service or repairs are needed.
HR Management and Payroll
Vista's integrated construction HR management and payroll processes help to streamline human resources management and facilitate complex construction payroll processes. Vista provides an open database structure for maximum flexibility in sorting and reporting data. It can be used to create a confidential virtual filing cabinet of employee data, records and tracking information, with the ability to pull up and adjust records in real time.
Vista automates complex union payroll processes and untangles multi-state, multi-company work, federal, state and contractual construction payroll requirements.
Project Control, Integrated in Real Time
From pre-construction through project closeout, Vista’s project management provides project insight, backed by up-to-date data and workflows. Users can know whether or not a project is on track or behind by viewing submittals, RFIs, and potential issues as work occurs rather than weeks or even months later. The solution helps to manage subcontractors, mitigate risks and complete projects on-time and on-budget.
Vista Features
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Viewpoint for Estimating.
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Vista Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | , |
Frequently Asked Questions
Viewpoint’s Vista is a construction accounting software. Vista’s core accounting features include accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, payroll and time management, and cash management. It also provides tools for document management, including document templates and reporting.
Reviewers rate Direct deposit files highest, with a score of 8.1.
The most common users of Vista are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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We use Viewpoint across our whole organization (minus workers in the field). We are in the Process of Implementing Field Management where we will have even more users inputting data into the system. Viewpoint allows us to track costs, quantities, and so much more from the field. We then can calculate cost and revenue projections at project completion to make sure we are staying on budget. We input data into many different places, and all of that information can feed into one report that gives us a snapshot of how each project is doing month to month. Update - we have implemented Field Management and it has been going well. It takes so much time away from processing payroll in the office, so that is helpful. Also limiting what time can be coded to is beneficial and prevents many mistakes and miscodes.
- Customer Support via Clearview. The ability to research issues we are having and try to resolve them ourselves through Clearview is invaluable. I have often been researching one issue or hang up I was having, and learned a few other things I didn't know through this system.
- Customization of reports - the ability to have reports written in this system to give us access to information all on one report is great! There are so many standard Viewpoint reports as well.
- Ease of fixing mistakes. Being able to bring something that has been posted back into a batch to fix has been wonderful as we are all human and make mistakes. There are not too many times that we actually have to call Viewpoint for support when we cannot fix something ourselves.
- Writing Crystal Reports is not easy. You either have to have someone really knowledgeable on staff or source it out. Sometimes it can be pricey for custom reports.
- Support callbacks. It depends on the time of year, but sometimes it takes a week to get a call back if it is not "Urgent".
- PO Receipts Module. We gave this a try at our company and it has been a pretty big disaster. We are trying to "undo" it all now because it is not functioning how we envisioned. And there is not much information out there on it. It's almost as if it was an afterthought and not developed very far.
- As someone else mentioned, error loops. Trying to figure out what module or program the error was made in, and undo the mistake to keep moving forward can be so time consuming!
February 02, 2023
Good systems to use
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Track cost - accounting - payables purchase orders - projections
- Payroll system is outstanding. Easy to enter time and send out paycheck stubs.
- Issuing purchase orders. Track budgets for individual jobs.
- WIP reports, timely financial data.
- Areas of improvement: equipment program use and trying to find solution through learning.
- Imports: not as easy as the knowledge based leads on.
- Crystal Reports is confusing even after completing the training on the subject.
February 02, 2023
Vista by Viewpoint - A one-stop-shop
Vista by Viewpoint is being used as the primary Accounting and Job Costing software for the entire organization. It solves the need for record keeping, vendor payments, Human Resources, payroll, Billing & Collections, Cash Management, Inventory, Purchasing, Service, GL, Job Costing and Project Management. It also serves as the solutions for managing subcontractors, vendors, customers. Also, it is our main document management resource.
- The one-stop-shop mentality has been the number one reason our organization continues to utilize Vista by Viewpoint.
- We also appreciate the continued effort to become a more efficient platform with a shift to providing more resources for the field.
- Lastly, we appreciate the customer support. It has come a long way in the last 10 years; however, their support has remained in line with their growth.
- There are times, where I had a question on how to set something up because Vista is very customizable; however, it's considered billable time; so I end up having to figure it out on my own in order to avoid the added expense.
- Sometimes I think there are too many forms in order to get something set up. There seems to be a lot of open and closing. It would be nice if some of the processes were consolidated into one form.
- Sometimes the sales staff can be over the top. I probably get at least 3-5 sales calls from Viewpoint every month for additional features/products that they are offering.
- In-Person Training
Yes
Yes very smoothly, although we implement our own updates.
February 02, 2023
Accounting and Job Cost Powerhouse
Vista is currently being used by our Accounting, Admin, and Division team leaders. Division leaders use the Job Cost and PM modules for project accounting. The implementation of Keystyles has allowed us to provide all of our employees access to information inside Vista such as earnings, W2, personal information changes, timecard entry.
- Job cost accounting.
- Payroll.
- Project Management.
- Web-based platform.
- Mobile applications.
- Document management.
February 02, 2023
Vista by Viewpoint Review
Vista if a powerful ERP system that allows our company to manage the demanding needs of the construction industry. Vista helps us track subcontracts and change orders easily. The reports are easy to understand and modify to our needs. Vista has made it easy to track the progress of jobs in one report.
- There is great flexibility with Vista. We are able to easily customize reports, fields, and tables to fit our needs.
- The end user help website is a great tool to learn more.
- Paperless. We have been able to go paperless. There is no longer a need to pull documents from a file to create reports.
- Can be difficult to learn. There are a lot of fields and screens that need to be set up.
- Help and support can be difficult to research.
- There is a lot of room for errors if you do not understand the program.
Yes
There is minimal downtime with it only being a few hours to update.
December 22, 2022
I don't like Vista
We used it for construction project management
- submittals
- open new pages automatically
- starred projects so you can easily find the ones you use frequently
- The accounting side needs a facelift - it is very ugly
- I hate having to open so many pages to do one change order
August 19, 2022
User-friendly and versatile!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Vista by Viewpoint in our accounting department - Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Cash Management, General Ledger, Payroll, Human Resources, as well as Equipment Management, Inventory, Job Cost, Material Sales, Project Management, and Purchase Order. We have found Vista by Viewpoint to be user-friendly and very versatile with the ability to create user defined fields.
- User defined fields can be created in all modules.
- The ability to sort and filter when viewing grids of information.
- The import feature made converting our existing information very easy.
- The Clearview website is available to answer many questions and for training as well.
- The suggestion box is awesome if you have ideas for improvements.
- It would be nice to have a simple export to Excel.
- We would like to see an app available for individual remote time card entry on a phone. Vista is working on one but we have not found it usable yet.
June 03, 2022
Honest Review - Not Happy
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Vista as our ERP. Our operations team also uses the product for project management. It is used at our corporate level for accounting and payroll. Each branch uses it for purchasing.
- Purchase orders by Job. You can manually upload large POs rather than typing them out line by line.
- Reporting. Vista comes with many valuable reports. You can also create custom reports and design anything you might need.
- AR/AP transactions are easy to create and track.
- Security setup. There are many places to remember to add/remove and update securities. It would make more sense to have one place.
- Standard Reports: depending upon the tables that are pulling data, the financial numbers can be different. You must really know what you are looking at and for to understand what the report is including.
- Customer Support: Many times it takes several responses back and forth before the issue is escalated or resolved.
December 08, 2021
Powerful Tool if you have the staff who can dedicate time to it.
Our company uses Vista for Project Management and Financials. The ability to coordinate both project management and accounting and the link between the two has greatly reduced accounting errors and reporting is much more accurate. We utilize both modules on a daily basis and rely heavily on reporting functions. The products are generally used by upper management, accounting, and project-level managers.
- Reporting functions
- Accurate link between project management and accounting
- Payroll functions
- online customer portal help. Very hard to find specific answers due to the overwhelming amount of information
- how to guides - these are generally provided by other users and are more specific to their own organizations.
- help with updates - responsibility is on the user with little support help unless you want to pay $$$
December 05, 2021
Good for Accounting
We use Vista by Viewpoint for project costing, payroll, invoicing, etc. As a construction firm, [we use] Vista by Viewpoint tracking project costs, subcontracts, and change orders. Having all of this data in custom reports helps track the costs effectively.
- Custom reports
- Financial accuarcy
- Managing change orders
- Hard to learn to use
- RFI, Submittals, Drawing logs
- Not being able to integrate with field operations
November 24, 2021
Viewpoint is a benefit for construction
We used [Vista by] Viewpoint on a day-to-day basis for the day-to-day work. From using it to keep our invoices for accounts payable up to date and to keep our vendors and subcontractors records and provide [an] efficient payment schedule, to using it enter in time for each of our employees out in the field and in the office and making sure hours are recorded and employees paid.
- Maintaining records
- User friendly on step by step entry
- Interacting with different departments
- Ability to modify to meet company needs
- Provide a responsive support team for immediate issues
- Allowing more controls for users
April 27, 2021
Vista by Viewpoint DCM Opinion
Vista by Viewpoint is our main accounting and project management software through our finance, preconstruction, and operations departments. We utilize it to create and issue purchase orders, change orders, subcontracts, billings, and use it for reporting on the overall health of our projects in the system. This system is used daily to monitor job costs as well.
- Unlimited Capabilities
- Robust Program
- Reports for everything
- The training needed is extensive to utilize all aspects of the program.
- The portal itself is very Windows 2000
- The help offered when encountering a problem is not always quick
April 05, 2021
Superbly Splendid
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Vista by Viewpoint is used across the whole organization, it has addressed everything from onsite accounting to field processes. We just implemented Viewpoint One (HFF) and are extremely satisfied on what it can do, what it allows us to do from the office to the field.
- Project Management
- Accounting Financial Controls
- Human Resources Applicant tracking
- Service Management
- Mobile Service Management
- Bring back Resource management
March 25, 2021
Couldn't be more pleased, unless you add chocolate.
We use it for payroll time entry and keeping hours worked matched up with job numbers and pay rates. Also use it to monitor fuel type used and for which piece of equipment or vehicle. For meter entries to keep up with when maintenance is due on equipment/vehicles. Since we use it with the cloud it addresses all sorts of business issues such as things getting turned in on time and not getting lost.
- Time management for the foreman. They enter who is on job and what time. All on their iPad and we upload. It saves everyone time and its correct every time.
- Receipts can be sent via phone or iPad and we can upload them to the system and attach them to their PO with no issues and makes it so easy to track and keep the budget under control not to mention hold everyone accountable for their spending.
- Surveys and updated info requests can be emailed out, completed and returned via the cloud. Makes updates so much easier.
- My only complaint and its nothing big. When entering vendor invoices it automatically goes to the invoice date which is the second line instead of defaulting to the first line (G/L date) so while entering invoices its not as smooth because I am backing up one with every invoice entry. Again not a big deal.
- I really don't dislike anything about it. At times it can be a little slow which could be our server and not the system. There have been times when I have entered faster than it could upload and it causes me some errors. More of an issue of my impatience than anything else
- Trying to get the correct report, or get a report that fits my needs can be a little trying at time.
March 25, 2021
Vista is the best fit for our business line!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Vista by Viewpoint is the accounting, project management, equipment management and human resources management system in use by our family of companies. The various components of the Vista system provide a fully integrated system for keeping all of our operating companies and support departments up to date with the current information on our projects and people. The integration between Vista and the other Viewpoint One components we utilize provide a touch point into the system for nearly 100% of our employees in areas ranging from managing project data and finance to employees managing their own time entry and personal information updates. Vista has allowed us to fully integrate almost all areas of our data, finance and personnel management and remove more than 75% of the external processes that have been used in the past.
- New employee on-boarding and personnel management
- Full spectrum accounting management (AP/AR/Payroll)
- Project management from contract award through project close-out
- Data security management, reporting and anlysis
- Equipment full lifespan management for costs, revenue and location tracking
- User Database allows for built-in customization capabilities to fit the most unique business requirements
- Additional web based functionality is needed in some areas to better support remote operations and low bandwitch sites
- Improved analytics capabilities to preclude the need for using 3rd party solutions for analytics
- Improved support for SSRS reporting capabilities in the Viewpoint Cloud environment
March 19, 2021
Viewpoint is good. Always looking for better.
We use it across the whole company for any numbers and reporting data. It helps integrate all of our departments and allows us to view different metrics for our company as a whole when properly integrated. Viewpoint is our main ERP system for the accounting department and all 3rd party software flow and export into Vista.
- Simple design.
- Reporting.
- Integration.
- Consistent reports and errors.
- Errors and crashing.
- Not very intuitive.
March 18, 2021
Viewpoint definitely worth a look (view)!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It is our main enterprise system used across all departments. We use it for payroll, HR, accounting, project management, and billing. It handles numerous HR functions from on boarding to employee benefit enrollment. Project based analytics are reported using Vista as well as expense reporting, timesheet and time off requests. Invoice a/p approval and performance reviews are also handled using Vista.
- Project Job Cost Reporting
- Contract Progress Billing
- Integration of project management functions with the back office.
- Functional reporting within the software uses Crystal Reports. This requires a special expertise for customization and limits reporting flexibility
- Lack of single sign on for some of Viewpoints most recent web-based tools/functionality
- Implementation and customization of the product is challenging and requires some work.
March 18, 2021
Solid Construction Software
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Vista is used across our company. Our accounting department uses it for payroll, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. Our compliance department works with our projects on purchase orders and subcontracts. Our project teams use Vista to track production and cost projections. It is fairly easy to work with for our office employees but our field employees find it a bit of a pain to work with. We are currently looking at outsourcing an app/ software for production tracking in the field.
We do love how customizable it is using user defined fields and customizing reports, however this may need to be done with an outside consultant.
We do love how customizable it is using user defined fields and customizing reports, however this may need to be done with an outside consultant.
- Useful canned reports
- Custom fields and buttons are extremely useful
- Almost everything can be easily corrected if any errors are made in entry
- Response time of VP support
- Vista by VP Help can be much more detailed
- System can sometime be glitchy
March 15, 2021
Vista Review: Great Reports and Document Management
We use Vista for all aspects of accounting and project management. This includes tracking of all project-related costs (subcontracts, purchase orders, change orders, etc.). We also utilize many custom reports to sort through our vast amounts of data. Our management teams utilize PM modules to help facilitate managing all project documentation from submittals to RFIs.
- Document management
- Data management with custom forms.
- User interface upgrade. It still feels like your in Windows 98.
March 12, 2021
In the right environment, Vista is a solid solution
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Vista is our company wide ERP. We utilize almost all the modules of the core product such as Accounting, HR, Job Cost, Project Management and many others. In addition we have purchased several of the add-on integrated solutions to compliment the product such as Team, HR Management, Field Management and cloud hosting in the VEC environment. Through Vista and the add-ons almost every person in the company uses it daily or weekly.
- Job Cost module is strong, many controls yet still user friendly and functional.
- Certified payroll is done particularly well.
- The cloud hosting solution has been a positive experience, eliminating much of our on-premise cost and headache.
- PO module can be very 'sensitive' and problems/issues are hard to resolve.
- 2-way communication with add-on solutions versus 1-way, can create out of sync data between Team and Vista PM.
- Work Centers are horribly clunky and customization of views and grids doesn't work, especially for Service.
We use Vista to track job costs, billings, productivity and other user-defined data points. We use something called regions at our company that drives a lot of JC reporting for us. That is defined by a user-defined table and user-defined fields. This ability of Viewpoint to allow major customization to their product to allow us to run our business how we want to is very helpful to us.
- Customization is as easy or as complicated as you like. You can get to the SQL tables/views if you want or go through Viewpoint to create customization in their software.
- It's faster than competing products.
- Their support team is fantastic. I use live chat and knowledge base daily and I always get answers.
- Sometimes Vista has some bugs that should be worked out before general release so be careful when upgrading
- Their TEAM platform is confusing
- The interface for their product feels outdated
March 10, 2021
Vista Reports: Functional and Robust!
Vista by Viewpoint is being used across our entire company. Our accounting department uses it for accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, financials. Our purchasing department uses it for the purchase orders, our human resource department uses it for safety training tracking, onboarding, and record keeping. Operations use it for work orders and fleet management. Equipment services use if for fleet management and maintenance.
- Lots of useful reports out of the box.
- Ease of use and navigation.
- Ease to modify existing reports to fit your needs.
- Support can take some time to get back with you, but they are currently working on that.
- The knowledge base is a real mess, unorganized, and it's sometimes hard to find the answers you are looking for.
March 10, 2021
Vista by Viewpoint Review
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Vista by Viewpoint (VP) across all departments. It has created a lot of efficiencies and collaboration. We came from a 2 system environment which created a lot of duplicate work. We also use VP Team.
- Collaboration
- Staying Current
- Single Source
- Maybe more resources to Microsoft Azure
March 10, 2021
Vista (and Keystyle) review
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Vista is currently being used mainly by our office staff, but as we implement Keystyle and Viewpoint Team, it's moving across the entire company. Viewpoint itself is very customizable. We've added plenty of additional fields and some tables. Keystyle is amazing. Keystyle is allowing us to go more and more paperless, while also pushing documents directly into Vista. Team we've just purchased, so I can't go into that much, but it should be extremely helpful for our field.
- Customizable -- endless user defined fields and tables can be added, among other things.
- Paperless -- eventually, but it's definitely helping!
- Expense and invoice review process can be done from anywhere, anytime (formerly Keystyle)
- Speed of major updates and fixes could be faster. Every 6-9 months for major updates is longer than I'd prefer.
- Clearview, aka their knowledgebase, doesn't search very easily.
- Crystal hasn't been updated in eons, which clashes with one of our other programs (FAS Asset Accounting).
- Expensive! Great software, but it's expensive.
December 30, 2020
Vista by Viewpoint Review
Vista is being used as our Construction Management Software across the entire company. Last June we also purchased Keystyle which was then purchased by Viewpoint. We use all Modules except for the Service Modules and the Resouce Modules. We use Viewpoint to address the majority of our business problems, we have put a lot of customization into Viewpoint. We have 500+ Custom reports along with many user-defined modules/tables.
- Track Jobs - the PM Module allows tracking of a job.
- User Defined Database - My sell on Viewpoint was how easy it was to add custom fields/tables and even create custom procedures for areas where Viewpoint did not have a module for that.
- Equipment Tracking - Equipment Tracking is done very easily in Viewpoint.
- Safety Training - Viewpoint tracks/compiles training however the reports are basic. We need to be able to see training by looking at a job and the employees on the job for certain training classes and seeing if the class is expired, missing or current. The entire safety training could use an overhaul.
- PM PO Change Orders - this needs to be added into the PO Work Flow for the PM Side. There is not a way to do a change order and keep it in the PM PO Workflow.
- Employee Info - A picture on the HR Resource Master would be great, then allow to print badges from there and also assign each employee a QR Code so the QR Code can be scanned for training or to get a list of the person's training.