Item: Viewpoint Vista
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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 $$$

Return on Investment

Accurate Financial Reporting
Accurate Subcontract Change Order Processing directly linked to financials
Learning curve can be high with so much functionality

Alternatives Considered

Procore

We chose Procore after trying Viewpoint Field and Team and found it much more user-friendly, although it was in the early stages of rollout and may have gotten better since then. We also evaluated Timberline but chose Vista as it was more scalable for future use and has cloud accessibility.

Key Insights

Do you think Viewpoint Vista delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Viewpoint Vista's feature set?

Yes

Did Viewpoint Vista live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Viewpoint Vista go as expected?

Would you buy Viewpoint Vista again?

Yes

Usability

I find Viewpoint Customer Portal not great for help and support. Answers are from other users who use the product specifically for their organization and there is a TON of information that is irrelevant to other users. I also find that online support tends to be geared more toward organizations that have their own departments just handling Viewpoint with dedicated IT staff vs smaller firms where the administration is responsible (among many other duties) for Viewpoint functionality. The product itself is pretty powerful but easy to get stuck just using the same functionality without support on new products developments.

Support Rating

Online customer portal is not great as it can be overwhelming and written by other users not Viewpoint support. Any support offered by Viewpoint support team usually incurs a cost. We also had no great luck with custom reports... took an extremely long time to generate and it all depends on support team you get assigned to. There is no Viewpoint created guide book - lots of updates which is great if you understand the product updates and/or someone from support reached out to help with them. Kind of on your own...

Likelihood to Recommend

Vista is specifically suited for construction firms with $10M or higher revenue - I believe it would be too aggressive of a program for smaller companies. General Contracting firms are also a great fit as it is designed to manage numerous subcontractors on a given project. It also allows you to create different companies to handle accounting functions in a variety of ways over multiple projects.

Powerful Tool if you have the staff who can dedicate time to it.

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Vista by Viewpoint