JobBOSS² Reviews

Excellent system

Reviewed on 09/03/2020

Excellent!

Statements

Reviewed on 16/08/2019

We have used E2 to make a large inventory and manage it better and efficiently.

Entry level manufacturing software for shops willing to change to fit their ERP

Reviewed on 16/08/2017

It's not that our sales volume has outgrown JobBoss, but our processes have. The lack of flexibility and customization are forcing us to work outside of JobBoss (e.g. custom software). The more that happens, the more obvious it is that JobBoss isn't right for us. I always consider JobBoss as a first source for our processes. Most of the time it can do something similar to what we want, but we would have to make serious concessions to make it fit.

Ps. Stop sending "Important JobBoss Updates" that are primarily selling custom utilities.

Long Time User

Reviewed on 18/09/2019

JobBOSS2 is a very user friendly product.

Reviewed on 16/11/2022

We have been using JobBOSS2 (and its predecessor ShopTech E2) for 16+ years. It has served our needs extremely weel and for job shop software that is on the market today, it does its job very well.

E2 Shop System for Manufacturing

Reviewed on 14/05/2019

The E2 Shop system has improved our quoting capabilities, which in turn, increases our bottom line. Our company uses Quickbooks and the interface has been consistent and reliable. And again, on the few times where there has been connectivity issues with Quickbooks, E2's technical support was able to resolve the problem very quickly.

Good tool

Reviewed on 17/05/2019

The system works well in going back to find orders, customer tracking and works for providing packing slips.

We have implemented this for a month now

Reviewed on 05/12/2018

We purchased E2 Shop System in October after months of research to find a manufacturing system that would integrate well with our accounting software that is already in place. There are several little quirks and kinks that we quickly discovered upon deploying the system that just made it a bit more tedious to use that honestly we probably wouldn't have purchased the software had we known this during the demo. The online training classes are not one-on-one and are instead a classroom type of environment, however, with having to stop every 3-4 minutes because the sample system interface is frozen or someone is having an issue understanding the procedure it tends to get a little lengthy and the content of the class is lost. We have actually taken it upon ourselves to pay the additional fee for someone to come in-house and go through what we still have yet to comprehend (yet have not been contacted to schedule a date well over a week of already approving and paying upfront costs for the trainer.) Hopefully, once we are able to sit down with the specialist all will be running smoothly for us and I will be able to provide a better review.

Turned my shop around

Reviewed on 02/01/2019

Cannot live without it now.

Room for Improvement and Poor Onboarding support

Reviewed on 14/10/2022

Dissatisfied and disappointed.

Reviewed on 02/04/2013

We are a custom fabricator of precision metal parts and assemblies. We are very diverse in our customer market base, each of which has their particular needs and associated challenges. We started out several years ago using Excel spreadsheets for quoting that became increasingly complex and customized. The maintenance aspect of the quotes and quoting process became very convoluted and messy. The biggest problem with a Microsoft product system was the ability for any user to accidentally make changes to the quoting sheet for one particular customer and that calculation would carry over to other quotes. We knew that we needed to improve the process of quoting and tracking time associated with each project. In addition, we wanted to add BOM and stock tracking capabilities, so we began to look at all of the options available. We researched JobBoss, Citrux, Syspro, Intuit and Microsoft Dynamics. Each of the software platforms had pros and cons. For us, the determining factors were price per function and the feature set offerings that were specifically designed for manufacturing. We did not want to custom tailor a software package for our shop. We wanted a software that was already set up for the way we do business, all we had to do was populate the fields and learn the basic functions.

Overall, E2 has been a good decision for our company. It has allowed us to scale up and spend much less time tracking order status, employee and machine utilization and keeping track of BOMs without the use of Excel spreadsheets, which we used to use for everything. Excel was a good starting tool for us, but was not sustainable as we have grown. We are much leaner now than before and I feel that we are able to generate and evaluate useful BI data for evaluation. We like having the ability to know the time it takes us to process a particular job through the shop, and the ability for administrative employees to be able to check the status of a job.

We have recommended E2 to two of our supply chain partners since inception. One of the companies uses it and does well with it. The other company never embraced it and made the commitment to fully transition over to it. The moral of the story: It is a good tool, but it is not a five minute process to transition into it. It requires a champion within your organization that will learn it and be willing to get the data transfer set up so that your company can make a hard-stop transition over to using the system and not look back to your current system. Human nature is to resist change and you will have to manage your staff’s desire to keep using your current system because it’s comfortable and quicker, due to their knowledge of the current system.

We have had a few issues along the way that have been frustrating (probably 5 times in 6 years). On a few occasions we have lost some data and had employees that were unable to input data into the system. We believe that the root cause was the system failing in some way while an employee was logging data. For example, If I am inputting data into an order and there is a fault (for any reason: power dip, hardware on my computer, etc) the E2 system sees this a problem because I was in the main database and when the network connection is re-established. We back up our data daily and can always revert to the previous day’s data. This was a fairly easy fix, but the primary frustration was the lost time determining that the system is no longer recording the data that we put in.

Ratings:
Initial Install and data transfer, 7 (The tool to do this has gotten better since we migrated our data)
Training and support, 9 (Support has been good)
Ease of use and how easy to work with, ( Initially, 7. Now that we are comfortable with it, 9)
Any hiccoughs or glitches, (Yes, but minor, and probably in line with industry standard.)
Accuracy of info generated, 9 (You must ensure that employees are logging into and out of jobs accurately. This takes time, but will become a learned behavior. We have a lady in our office view the employee's log twice per day to ensure that they are logged into a job. If not, then they have to explain why)

We would purchase E2 again.

JobBoss - Simple enough but still lots of horsepower for a smaller job shop

Reviewed on 24/02/2017

I came on board with my employer in October 2014. They had been using JobBoss for over 10 years. With my ERP background, I quickly discovered that my employer wasn't taking advantage of many of the available utilities, including the Scheduling module. Within 3 months I had all 30 of our machining centers, plus all of the secondary resources and operations, set up and testing completed. Routings were stripped back and rebuilt with proper resource requirement setups to ensure proper scheduling of work and proper timing and load representation. Shift and holiday calendars were constructed properly.

We turned on Scheduling in February 2015. With the first pass of the global scheduler (running infinite loading and allowing schedules in the past) we came out with a past-due backlog of some 4000 hours. After updating job progress on about 150 jobs, realigning a few things and making some setup tweaks, we realized that we were still over 2000 hours past due. However, we now had the theoretical start and end dates to work with, we could time materials properly, and could graph our loads to see what we were doing to ourselves with our booking practices.

Since then, we have improved our utility of the system across the board. Raw material and finished goods inventories are accurate, so we can now use the Material Planning functionality. Raw material issues due to planning are non-existent. PO's for outside processing are now accurately priced, timed, and generated straight from the job routing. Use of Picks, Transfers, and Extra Quantities have given our inventory transactions full transparency.

I look forward to Unite 2017 when I can see hands-on what other companies are doing to tap this system's potential!

We think this is the perfect software!

Reviewed on 26/09/2019

We can't say enough about the outstanding support and customer service from the folks at Shoptech. They have always been an absolute pleasure to work with - extremely responsive and knowledgeable!

Everything you ever NEEDED to know

Reviewed on 28/08/2019

E2 manages ALL your data from your shop floor through your bookkeeping. The reports have always been the best selling point. Even sorting data becomes easy with the various export methods. You can quickly transfer the report dat to say excell and then again manipulate and massage as need for even more insight. I have always (and will continue to) recommend this sofware to other owners.

Not Pleased with E2 shoptech

Reviewed on 16/03/2019

One of the best

Reviewed on 16/02/2017

I have used JobBoss for the last 6 years and it's great for a shop like ours with custom products. It handles everything from the initial customer quote to turning it into a sales order, defining specific jobs and component jobs all the way through shipping and invoicing.

The various processes you might need are logically organized into modules which make performing specific tasks easy. The downside is the occasional lack of communication between the modules requiring you to complete some information multiple times. The only reason I did not give 5 stars across the board is the inability to look at the big picture (all open orders), drill down to the semi-big picture (a specific sales order), and so on down to the minutest detail. If you are looking at any of these areas by itself JobBoss is a great tool that does a terrific job at helping you manage a project; it could use a little tweaking to help you really manage multiple projects with ease.

Good for Shop Management, Has Some Quirks

Reviewed on 10/05/2019

Great Job Shop Software

Reviewed on 17/05/2019

Although the move from the Professional version to the web based E2 system has had some issues that still have not been resolved I would still recommend E2. The people at E2 are great and are always trying to improve their product and in time I think it will be exactly what we are looking for. I still want to see a Sales/CRM Module and then I'd say it's pretty close to being a complete system.

Works for us

Reviewed on 17/05/2019

The customer service provided by E2 has always been outstanding. I appreciate that they are regularly making improvements and seem to respond to user feedback in a timely manner. This system works well for our needs.

Reviewed on 16/04/2012

We are a small third-generation custom sheet metal fabrication shop that has garnered a reputation for high quality, honest work, and trying to help all of our customers meet their increasingly shorter delivery times. Before E2 Shop System, we were using an outdated custom-written software for the Mac and updating that software into the 21st century was proving difficult and expensive. One day I received a mailer from ShopTech that said ''Are you controlling your shop, or is it controlling you?'' I thought to myself 'Isn't that the truth!!' So I called the number and talked to Greg in sales and after much consideration, we made the leap to the windows-based E2.

It took approximately one year to fully migrate over to E2 once all the new hardware was set-up. I believe it could have been faster if we had an actual IT person. That being said, I'm not trained in IT, nor had much experience with Windows, but E2 was fairly easy to set up. It does take some getting used to, mostly because people are used to other software and have to make the mental switch, but once you figure out how everything ties in together, it's easy. The tech support staff was fantastic in helping me set up a windows server and they connected me with another customer that had done the same thing, which was extraordinarily helpful.

We still use our Macs, but we LOVE E2 Shop System! My father even prefers the quoting method of E2 to the old custom program! It has allowed us to improve turn-around times on jobs and eliminated the constant bother of trying to figure out where jobs were in process in the shop. It has also improved our billing process; simplifying many tasks. It takes about 5 minutes to run the month end pdf reports for the accountant, vs an entire day of sorting actual paper in the old system. Everything is tied together and searching the system for just about anything is super-easy. I have customers call me all the time to look up information for them that they can't even find in their own systems.

Our shop floor employees love being able to see what job they are clocked in on and eventually they will be able to know what job they should work on next. I haven't had time yet to delve into the wealth of data to analyze and quantify the exact benefit of E2, but just from our books, we can tell a marked increase in revenue, and we now can tell the actual real-time cost of jobs, rather than waiting until the next day's import. We have yet to harness it's full potential, since we are so small and focused on production, but there's only one way to go from here....up!!! Thank you SO MUCH to Janelle, Corey, Melissa, Greg and the rest of the ShopTech team that has helped me over the years. You have no idea how fantastic it is to call tech support and get the same, friendly, English-speaking, and knowledgeable people every time.

E2 was easy to learn and the layout follows a logical manufacturing flow

Reviewed on 28/06/2018

E2 makes our manufacturing easy to track and analyze. It is a very simple but powerful software.

Reviewed on 05/04/2012

A.C. Horn & Co. is a custom sheet metal manufacturer (job shop). We will make almost anything from a customer's drawing. We specialize in food processing and packaging equipment. We also have our own line of popcorn and peanut processing equipment. Our owner’s grandfather in Dallas, circa 1907 as a tin shop, founded the company. Our old manufacturing software was complicated and very inflexible, plus was no longer going to be supported by the small company that wrote and developed it. This was a good opportunity for me to recommend to the owners that is was time to change. I wanted software that was more user friendly, menu driven so it would be easy to learn, and more flexible. Also, payroll and time entry had to be clean and a single entry.

Before E2 Shop System, we used a company called Caelus, based in the northwest. It handled payroll also and is very detailed in the accounting area. That was acceptable, but it made our company "accounting-driven", instead of "manufacturing-driven"... we make our money in manufacturing, not accounting... We use the 7.2.14 release. I just noticed that .15 has been released and I will install it very soon. We purchased the software in the fall of 2010, and implemented it on the first workday in 2011. Implementation was a ton of work, long hours, and much trouble-shooting and phone calls to the technical help number. I know changing any software is a monumental task, so in my opinion, the implementation went well.

Everyone on the help desk was helpful, and I especially leaned on the accounting team because that is an area I am not familiar with. Most of my team learned the software fairly quickly, but some who are not as computer literate struggled. I had some issues with a few who tried to "force" the software to do things it was not designed, nor capable of doing. That took some time to sort out, but it helped us learn the limits of E2. I still call the support line (although not as frequently), and it seems the first person who answers the phone is sometimes less knowledgeable than I am. Usually, if I have a real problem or question, it will get kicked up to another level.

The benefits we have realized are in the organization and planning of our proprietary equipment. It has much greater flexibility than our previous software. The system is much more open in the estimating area. Our AP and AR persons like the easier processing in this area. Accounting, however, is still a challenge. I think we are still fairly new users, having 15 months under our belt. We have not even touched the scheduling feature, and only two or three of us are using the quote feature (which is great), so we still have more steps to take to fully utilize the software.

Necessary tool for manufacturing shop

Reviewed on 26/03/2019

We need a system that could fulfill our shop needs.
E2 Shop System is user-friendly while providing multiple functions to our shop.
it really helps ensuring traceability especially when our shop requires AS9100 standard.
If and when E2 system have some glitches, customer service are always easy to reach and can resolve issues remotely.

EAM

Reviewed on 04/01/2019

Overall I would say I am pleased with the software on a daily basis. We have learned to work around the restrictiveness but it is often a repeated topic for us and is what we consider a major flaw, Had we know before purchase how restrictive it is to making changes we might not have opted to buy,

Outstanding Software - Outstanding Service

Reviewed on 05/06/2019

We have been a long time customer and have been very pleased with the software and the incredible support all along the way. Whether it was during implementation or random questions that come up from time to time, E2 has always been there for us.