Acumatica vs. Viewpoint Spectrum

It is well suited because it appears to have been designed to work across multiple industries, and we've kind of seen that it works well for the construction industry. Still, we've been here at the Acumatica Summit and have seen a lot of other industries being able to use the same product, so they have designed it well.

Incentivized

Viewpoint Spectrum would be fine for small to medium-sized companies. It would be great for transitioning from an in-house paper-based process, especially since it's designed with small construction companies in mind. They're making it even easier for smaller companies by offering additional features that you'd normally have to find in other products. However, companies can easily outgrow this system. We have about 15 years of data in the system, over 300 active jobs, and nearly 1,500 employees. In the past 3 years we've noticed slower performance and frequent locks in the system that require intervention from a system administrator. We moved to the cloud about 2 years ago and this has made troubleshooting even more difficult as we don't have the same access that we did before to resolve performance issues.

Incentivized

• Banking reconciliation: Quick, easy to understand and easy to follow to see where you left off
• Clearly displaying just enough data to answer questions without forcing us to work through copious amounts of detail or extracting data into other programs to get answers
• Billing and payment receipt is particularly helpful in the way that the data transfers into the banking section and is exported

Incentivized

• Dashboards make navigating to the crucial information quick and easy.
• The layout with what we affectionately call the job info bar helps our project teams to quickly get where they need to go in the system.
• Crystal reports are easily managed and integrated with Spectrum, giving us great flexibility in custom reports.
• With a little training, and I mean a little, Spectrum is user friendly. Easy to create favorites/shortcuts for ease of use.

Incentivized

• Remittance advices don't work.
• NACHA file to bank doesn't include vendor reference # which is the vendor invoice number.
• You can't do offsets between AR & AP when vendors are also customers to net the balances due to/from if agreed upon with the vendor/customer.

Incentivized

• Subcontract Kiosk can be glitchy - allows subs to overbill on subcontract billing items
• Document Imaging can be glitchy - often says users do not have adequate security to view/add documents, but they do - if they sign out and back in, it works fine
• At times, support can be lacking - sometimes case responses are delayed or you get an incorrect answer

Incentivized

Because Acumatica keeps updating every year and adapting to all the changes especially with AI capabilities, User interface, interactive assistant and many more. Not only that, there are so many ISVs and VARs that support and integrate with Acumatica that provides you alot of options to innovate your business needs.

Incentivized

It checks all of our boxes at the moment.

Incentivized

I would give this rating because Accumatica is super easy to use. When I on boarded to work it was so easy to move through the various screens. In no time I was able to perform my daily required tasks with ease

Incentivized

Some things in Spectrum are NOT that intuitive, but I think knowledge of the software just comes with time. There are still some things I need assistance with in Spectrum but I'm very comfortable with my day to day items now that I've been using it for years. However, if there is something I don't do often or haven't done before, I don't find the software to be that intuitive, I actually find the logic on some things to be a little weird but it's fine once I know how to do it.

Incentivized

It's always available.

Very little down time. They host our system.

Incentivized

there have been some performance issues

Incentivized

For the most part the product is very reliable. Since we are hosted we sometimes have connectivity issues but I would say that is more our ISP than Spectrum.

Incentivized

We used Acumatica Support directly for the first year or so. Overall it's pretty good, but sometimes the support staff wasn't educated on the customizations we had, nor was I as the Customer as I couldn't remember which things were customized and which things were out of the box, so when there was an error, there were some misunderstandings.

Incentivized

The support has recently changed. Last year, you could call in and get an immediate response. Now that doesn't seem possible unless you have an urgent situation with access to the software, payroll or payables. I have found that using chat or e-mail works nicely for the most part, but sometimes I feel it would be easier if someone from support would jump on our site and take a first-hand look rather than going back and forth

Incentivized

It was on General Inquiries and it's just a complex topic.

Most of the trainers are amazing, but there were a couple who simply read the training guide

Incentivized

Our trainer was excellent and navigated the time zone differences expertly. She gave us test assignments to complete and was available for questions at any time.

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I'd say the partner selection is critically important. I think the software is very easy to implement. It's very customizable to your business. Finding a partner that will work with you to understand your business and your needs is the critical piece to make sure that the system goes along with it.

Incentivized

It is important to have a strong implementation partner. It made the transition from our old system to the new system easier.

Incentivized

The basic difference between Acumatica and similar solutions is their complexity and usability. It is less complex and easier to learn, and it is also based on a low-code platform, which makes it more convenient for the end user.

Spectrum, when compared to Simply accounting, is better. It has more options, and it is easy to navigate. Spectrum meets our needs better. Spectrum, when compared to Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate, is better. Spectrum has better connectivity between its project management system compared to Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate. Spectrum, when compared to CMIC, I believe they are equal. CMiC has a better project management system, but Spectrum has an easier accounting system to navigate.

Incentivized

From my understanding, the P.O. module is not very robust, at least the last time I inquired about it. At the time, it had a one-to-one match, with one invoice for one P.O. and that isn't practical for many businesses. I don't believe it would be an easy system to use for sending out invoices, if we had thousands of retail utility customers. We do a small number of invoices because we sell wholesale power, not retail, so we only Invoice the municipality. Not each utility customer.

You can grant user specific access which is nice. Project managers do not need all the same modules as Accounting. But Accounting does need access to PM modules as well

• We were able to work in one system with customizations we needed in inventory and add all our grants in the same system
• Direct mail invoices was moved to an automated PO system saving time and allowing better financial tracking
• The grant module can be cumbersome requiring flip flopping to program partners etc during set up

Incentivized

• Viewpoint Spectrum has allowed us the opportunity to be proactive in analyzing the costs for a project in time to make a difference in the outcome of the project. It has allowed us defense in supporting our communications with the project owners.
• Viewpoint Spectrum has allowed us to become more productive with its accounting software and the cohesion between the modules. It has definitely streamlined the processing necessary to account for the business.

Incentivized