AIM Reviews

We have been utilizing the POS (Point of Sale) System, and it's very intuitive. You go through a couple test transactions, and it's like riding a bike. You can do it so quickly and effectively. We used the testing system and were able to play around it a lot without worrying about mistakes that will mess up your entire system. We have the label printer, the receipt printer, and the wireless scanner, and they have made our little gun shop look SO professional and streamlined. Gone are the days of handwritten receipts! We can now track customers to see what each person buys and can add notes and wish list items! The Bound Book is ATF compliant, and it has made checking the firearms in and out a breeze. We are going to be purchasing the PO module next, so I can't wait to implement that!

I can't really say there are any Cons...I would just say it is a bit of a learning curve and can be a bit overwhelming at first, but the support that is offered is just phenomenal.

There is a lot to unpack in this program, but once you've learned the system it's an all-in-one package & is fast, easy & efficient to use. Integration between our website, payment processing, shipping, etc. make our life easier. The program is constantly updated with enhancements & quality of life updates making the software faster & better to use. Tech support is very responsive to our needs & requests, development has made many changes to the software at our request to better fit our needs.

The Vortx web platform that integrates with AIM comes with a lot of limitations & the custom report tool is difficult to use. The SQL platform version 12 uses is powerful, but the hardware & software startup cost (SQL especially) can be high. There is not a good solution for working with products that are sold in both a physical AND digital format.

The feature set for the rent-to-own business is good. So far as we have been able to discover, there is no other product at any price that supports our business. (If there was, I would be on it like a duck on a June bug.)

The support staff is excellent!

I would have fired an experienced programmer or seriously chewed out a beginner 30 years ago if they designed a user interface that was so poorly implemented. You never know from screen to screen what you have to do to do a "find." Sometimes you have to hit Tab for the program to work, sometimes you have to hit Enter. The mere fact that in a good many places the programmers apparently elected to use the tab key or enter key events rather than the OnExit event is inexcusable. (Click the OK or Save button without first tabbing out of a field and there is a great chance that the changes to the field you were last in were not saved.) Things as simple as standard naming conventions for naming reports are just an example that someone either didn't understand design or didn't care. (The reports aren't in report name order because some inept person decided to put "Print" or "List" in front of the report name, thereby making the lists sort out without rhyme or reason. Having a table of variables to STORE system options is fine. It's even okay for a first release. However, how a system that has been on the market this long without having a user interface on said table indicates a huge lack of caring. The user interface flaws cannot be excused by the fact that the programs are old. The design flaws would not have been acceptable in a DOS or even a CP/M program.

The back end modules are simply sad. The fact that they decided to write the back end all over again in the new system that they plan to release someday indicates a huge lack of judgment. Why the devil would one reinvent the wheel, especially after doing such a poor job the first time around, when one could interface to any of several well-written, mature, user-friendly and well-supported G/L, A/P, A/R, etc. systems and focus on the specialized modules that make me use AIMsi to start with? (QuickBooks immediately comes to mind.) Doing so would save well into six figures of development cost, give one a solid base on which to build, and even give one a huge marketing opportunity by being an enhancement to a widely-used system rather than being a home-rolled thing. It would also give me some hope that the new release would be available in my lifetime. They are simply burning man-years of programming effort and stretching lead times unreasonably.

As bad as the G/L module is, their "Purchase Order" module simply boggles the mind. They make a sad effort to somehow combine P/O and Customer Order Processing while making both the COP features and the interface to A/P damned near unusable. One need only looks at the database design to see that whoever wrote the COP programs had never actually worked on one before. No Order Header and Order Line Item tables? Really? They sort of sludge everything together in something that they dreamed up from scratch. Even the terminology used for field names and labels is non-standard. "Picked" has a very well understood meaning in the COP industry. They have a whole new definition.

I could go on forever...

The customer support was great. It seemed the easiest to use. We are not a big company and this seemed to work best for us.

Tech support is a little confusing. I described below, when you call customer support you talk to a different person. That can cause an issue because each person has a different way to fix the problem you're having.

Does not have glitches or communication errors. Data that has been input stays there forever. Interface has never changed, ever. So if you are familiar with it, there is a comfort factor.

The user interface has very few, if any, task stream allowances or cross linking between data entry areas.
The typical interaction with Aimsi requires starting from the home screen and navigating the "Module" you need, selecting the "Find," searching for the correct customer account, pulling up the relative info about them.
Then...
Restarting from the home screen, module you need to add or edit part of the changes that are needed, "find," find that account again..
Then...
Restarting from the home screen, module you need to add or edit the other part of the changes that are needed, "find," find that account again...

While there are hot keys to speed up this process it is still a very primitive workflow. Newer systems have you choose the customer account first, then proceed to enter new data, while Aimsi requires finding the module, and then the account, over and over again.

Networking your store for Aismsi to work off of one of your local PCs requires above average networking skills. Backups and hardware upgrades are your problem and responsibility. You will need someone on call unless you happen to have above average IT skills.

The interface is very easy to understand and use, and customer support is great. It is a feature-rich program, I only wish we had a newer version.

When printing statements, it prints old accounts with no address. Apparently there is no way to filter the ones with no address out so I have to manually remove them. Occasionally one slips past and they are returned to us by the Post Office.

We have been using AIM for more than 10 years. It allows us to manage daily sales, keep current track of our inventory, and to update, receive, and transfer inventory as needed. The A/P invoice feature makes accounting a much easier process. The software is reliable, and the reports it can generate are tremendously helpful.

We are a musical instrument store that is run by musicians, and it took us all a bit of time to learn to "think like the software" in more complicated processes. The availability of tech support being there to bail us out made that transition easier.

For an all around software, for several different industries, this software is well thought out. We have used this software for many years, and have gone through several of the upgrades. When there has been an issue, tech support is right there to help resolve problems or to escalate to developers to create what we need. The training tutorials are a huge help. The software is very customizable for our needs.

We have not really run across any negatives. Tri Tech is always improving the software. The one downside is not having tech support there on weekends if we have an issue. We have only run into one or two times we have really needed them on a weekend in all the years we have used the software.

The program has tons of features, functions, and reports which is a definite positive for businesses that need to keep track and monitor various aspects of the business. For a larger company that has a wide scale business this program would be a very useful asset.

We are a very small business and this program for us was- and is- very overwhelming to learn and operate. Part of that is our fault for not having the time to watch the tutorials and explore the program to its fullest since we only have a few employees and are only open three days a week. For us, a simpler program would probably have been a better choice but for larger companies this would work great.

They are limited with only one web hosting company that is not good. This company is very expensive and a security liability.

It's very easy to use for all point of sale needs including transacting sales, sales history, band rentals, gear rentals, powerful customer account features, ordering and receiving. We used it to track salesman commissions and it worked great for that as well.

No real cons from a salesman/user perspective. It functioned to meet all of the needs of a small, local music store.

We've been using Aimsi software in our music store for about 10 years now, and we couldn't live without it. It has streamlined our accounts receivable immensley, and made many other facets of our business much easier.

The hsitory search part of the service module has some limitations

User Friendly
Continually being developed and upgraded
A true all in the box solution (point of sale, built in accounting program, built-in gift card program, contact management, B2B and C2B capable, and everything else a business needs to run the front, middle, and back office).

support team has vast knowledge of software

the cost to use this service, would prefer a smaller fee to use this support on a one time as needed order, software is not user friendly