Windward System Five Reviews

Highly customizable software that you can really tailor to your business for an affordable price.

Comments: Reduced IT costs, Improved staff experience and greater overall efficiency of our business practices.

Pros:

I give this review after having tried many different software packages over the last 15 years. Some costing x10 the price of Windard, some costing x10 less. What I'm left with over these years is perspective, and that perspective was hard earned. You will not find a more complete point of sale, inventory control, accounting, crm, etc. for this price range. With the ability to fine tune it to your exact business needs, it's easiest to configure, maintain and operate...especially compared to the "enterprise" software world where your eyes will water from pricing. Its got lightning fastest Point of sale with the absolute best part find search tool I can recall using. The special order management is the best complete solution from any I've tried. If your serious about your Business, you should consider Windard. I honestly think that in the long run it has improved our business, staff and bottom dollar.

Cons:

There is no such thing as perfect software. With that being said, there are issues...but then it's technology. You have to considering that it is a highly customizable product that able to serve an amazing range of business types with thousands of options. What Windward has that sets it apart is a fantastic support team with Canadian staff and an out-of-country team that is admittingly fantastic...probably the best off-shore support that I have ever experienced in IT. Tech support is typically same day, commonly instant or within a few hours of placing a call. If you have an urgent problem, they will find someone for you RIGHT NOW. If you have problems using Windward software...you will most probably have problems using another piece of software. The key with any software, especially if you are new to it, is to have patience and use every opportunity to learn.

Windward Software is an amazing program to help you run your business in every aspect.

Comments: Inventory was a huge issue for us before we started using System Five. We absolutely cannot imagine running our business without Windward System Five at this point.

Pros:

The Support is A1 and the features of everything from Inventory to Sales Invoices, everything is connected and very user friendly. Reports are easy to run, reconciliations, sales and purchase invoicing, ageing, financials are easy to read and all other functions are again, user friendly.

Cons:

No cons at this time. We didn't like that it didn't have a payroll feature when we started with it but now it does.

I wish I never heard of Windward Software

Comments: Our overall experience was extremely poor and detrimental to our business. All our staff were frustrated ( I nearly lost staff), some customers were frustrated, we invested so much money, and have in turn lost so much money. Oh and did I mention the time invested. All that time I spent, all a waste, the time my staff spent which I paid for, such a waste. So much stress that my whole team went through only to end up worse off. Before we went live, in my gut I had doubts due to my experience with Windward staff in the lead up transition period. But unfortunately I have faith in people, and faith that people tell the truth, and they assured me that the Windward System 5 was an investment in my business- to have confidence, to go live and realise the benefit. Oh so wrong. The system just plain and simple had so many glitches and caused more harm than good to my business. Once live, it just got worse and worse. In hindsight, I should have listened to my gut in implementation, written the money invested off as a bad business decision and aborted. By pushing on, I cost my business so much more, and then blindly I stayed for the full 60 days as required by the refund clause, further harming my business, only to be told they were not giving me a refund anyway. Also if you are in a different timezone, that is another thing to be wary of. When I signed up they promised local support as they had two people in Australia. But these staff left and no one replaced them.

Pros:

We are a retail shop with a mechanic workshop out the back. The special order process was a positive, but unfortunately when you think of all the difficulties, costs and time loss from the rest of the system I can't go so far as to say it is a pro. The idea of the detailed security and reports options is good, but due to extensive glitches never realized any benefits. Unfortunately the reports and exports were missing data, which meant reconciliation was problematic, and the security just caused glitches and locked my staff out of the system. Due to this, the amount of bookwork to fix the mess is just huge, this system is continuing to cost me in staff costs and time even though I have left Windward. Ultimately this POS system was one of the worst business decisions I have ever made and I do not recommend it all.

Cons:

The implementation is long and tedious. We worked hard with 'technicians' to ensure quality data was loaded. We had 5 different implementation technicians as 2 left the company, one they allocated to us didn't suit the timezone, one provided intermittent help, & one was finally helpful. Windward waived some licencing fees to compensate for lack of support as we were paying for a licence we could not use. Windward then deleted all my data and we had to start again. The daily technical staff in are in a Philippines call centre, they failed to fix most issues. Due system glitches we had no choice but to leave despite due to it harming our business. A huge amount of funds and time invested. Windaward refused to provide refund despite us doing the mandatory 60 days. Glitches include BUT WERE NOT LIMITED TO: mixing up data across customer records showing machines that belonged to other customers on accounts (nothing to with our data); showing bills and outstanding amounts for other customers on accounts; continuously locking our staff out; full system outage; slowing down sales; daily sales reports inaccurate; export reports missing data. Windaward technicians use a licence you have paid for to investigate their system's issues further undermining your business as you've less workstations. We wired the internet throughout our shop as they suggested, this resolved no issues. We found usability to be poor, search functionality poor, & it would take us many steps to do basic things.

We've been with Windward since 1994, recent years Windward has really stepped up to the plate !!

Comments: One of the most recent benefits is the available training in many different areas of the Windward software program. This is an incredible asset to streamlining and improving day to day business practices for us. When we find out things the program can do for us that for years has just been sitting there not being used, we're like a kid in a candy shop....Excited...Wow!!

Pros:

Over the years there have been many areas of the program that we never took advantage of. One of the greatest things is with all the recent available training on and off line it has allowed us to find these nuggets that have helped us tremendously to make processes within our business so much easier. This had to be one of the best implementations that Windward has made, keep the training coming!!

Cons:

The one thing we dislike about the program are updates. We get very nervous! A few years ago we did an update and it totally messed up the whole program. We had to work offline (paper work) for more than 3 weeks, which was a nightmare after the fact. Though Windward programmers worked for over 6 months to find a fix, they never ever did. So here 5 or 6 years later our Point of Sales Transaction Report figures are still unusable. We recently updated Pervasive and were told it should really speed up the program. Unfortunately it didn't, actually saw absolutely no difference even though it had been several years since we'd done an update, so are looking at other areas now.

This softwear has made our business extremely essential to operate.

Comments: the main function of our business, our retail set up revolves around the software making it easy to operate day to week, to month to yearly. it has been absolutely essential. recording & keeping track of everything form our substantial amount of inventory, along with accounting, reports, staff, ect. our main source of operations for sure. :)

Pros:

that is is absolutely fluent in keeping all of our information organized & keeps me able to do my job as a 1 woman Owner/Operator. without this softwear we would not have been able to stay open for the past 11 years without the ease of Windward System 5, for my retail business.

Cons:

for us a small retail shop, the maintenance & updating costs are quite high & out of our price range on a year to year basis.

Gets the job done. Do not do the updates.

Pros:

Very thorough software with lots of room/areas to store Information and very easy to use. The point and click ability of the software makes it easier to train new staff. Can access the software from anywhere in the world using remote desktop connection.

Cons:

The updates do not seem to go very smoothly. And update me fix one problem but two new problems arise that were not problems before. We have actually stopped getting updates and have continued to use our current version for years. We have developed our own internal ways to use the software to its fullest potential without getting updates. Software support is readily available however very expensive and a lot of the problems that we have encountered do not have the solution. In order to get the solution we have to pay for the entire resource development team and have to be very very patient to see results. The yearly license fee does not benefit our company as we do not complete the updates. So we paid the fee however are using an out of date software program Because we are afraid to update. Phoning for tech-support can be quite challenging when the bill is charged per minute and we are on hold for 80 percent of the call. We are usually on hold while the tech support discusses with superior or development team to solve our more complex problems. At the end of the day the software program helps us maintain our current business but is not helping us grow our business. We are not ready to commit thousands of dollars to the software program that still has many issues even if we were to update to most current version

it has been great and have found it very user friendly and easy to use

Comments: more up to date information and tracking of items with serial numbers, it was easy to set in place policies and see where we lacked and brought in a lot of controls in the company

Pros:

the software is easy to use and customizable. we have found a it works well and have not had too many problems. there are a lot of options in the setup and we are able to change if it does not work. the implementation staff was great and the support is great. when ever I have contacted support they responded very quickly and the webinars have helped make the software better

Cons:

it takes a long time to get a feature added and a lot of pestering, there are a few things in the software that does not make sense with the labels

Lots of great features but maybe too many for a small business

Comments: We can now track customer purchases more easily. Inventory control is faster and easier than before.

Pros:

This program has a lot of features, many of which speed up the tasks we perform daily. Tracking our customers is now fairly easy. Most of the system is Excel compatible which makes invoices and other documents easy to export. Windward's tech support is very friendly and accommodating.

Cons:

As useful as this software is I still find simple tasks that it cannot perform. I have made at least four requests of tech support concerning software functionality that resulted in an answer of "the software can't do that" (and my requests were far from complicated). It's as if the software is so good at doing a million different tasks that it wasn't built to do the simplest ones.

Wondward Software is taking us to the next level of POS sales, service & support.

Comments: An All in One Sales, Customer tracking, Promo & follow up, Bookkeeping & Accounting Software With Great Support.

Pros:

Back office accounting is saving us money by tracking inventory vs sales, as well as less cost with accounting fees by running an all inclusive bookkeeping/accounting program.

Cons:

The occasional glitches, after each windows update, with form display screens freezing up the software.

overall pretty good. As good as others in the market

Pros:

POS screen is very easy for staff to learn. Transactions easy to process. Lots of reports available

Cons:

Update to windows 10 a costly extra. Payroll function lacking. Designing forms takes a lot of work,

Windward and You. The tutorial.

Comments: We have solved issues with double ordering Special Orders, have streamlined Purchase Orders, Receiving, Price Changes, Showroom tag printing.
I am able to compile reports simply, where it use to take days.
Taking inventory is so much faster using data collectors and being able to import the files.

Pros:

Our old system was very outdated and Windward has made it so much simpler and quicker to get our monthly/quarterly reports. Integration between order taking and purchasing has helped speed up the ordering process & stop mistakes being made. Love the virtual warehouse option.

Cons:

What i feel is missing is: 1. Freeform 1 & 2 can be data loaded in. Freeform 1 can be on a report, but Freeform 2 can not. 2. Sales/Upsell warnings can be on a report, but not data loaded. 3. Purchase warnings can be data loaded, but not put on a report. (Invoice Warnings can be data loaded & put on a report) 4. There is no where to search "Non-Stock Special Orders" by number or supplier in history. 5. A report that can show me all items sold per book month with the following parameters. sales clerk name, Invoice #, Date of sale, Customer name, Qty, Item #, Price ea., & Price total. A report that will pull ALL items. (stock, Non-stock). Currently i have to use 2 different reports, export to excel, and then combine them to create the report i need to send to suppliers for their sales incentives (spiffs). Granted this is alot better than the old computer system, but still takes longer than it should. side note: i have seen and experienced so far that if someone requests an addition, that the programs will do ONLY what was asked for. Example: you were asked to increase item #'s and part #'s to 50 characters. That was done, but they didnt change non-stock special orders where you have to manually type in the characters. When i caught this problem and brought it up to tech and the programers, the response was " they didnt ask for that to be done" and "it is what it is". Same with items i listed. can data load, but not put on reports.

Windward- Success for Power Equipment, Construction Supplies and Rental

Comments: We have been using System 5 since 2003. The system has scaled to our operation as we grow. The accounting side is robust and handles all our AP- AR- and General Ledger needs. Purchasing is fully automated. Billing customers can be fully modified with "Types" and "subTypes" to keep the status of orders updated and classified. Our inventory and product locations have been controlled and managed with the Advanced Inventory Control. The system is constantly being improved with fixes and new features multiple times per month. The database is rock solid. After 14 years, we never have had data corruption requiring the loading of a backup. All our employees depend on the info from system 5 to make decisions and give customers information. The ability to customize and provide information to users is endless and grows each year. We have used the barcode function and have 40,000 SKUs barcoded and labeled. We have even barcoded our rental equipment. We rely on this system for everything and for 14 years it has been bulletproof. Because we sell, service and rent serialized equipment, the "UNIT" way of handling things is great. Provides cost, service and income information.

Pros:

We could not run our business without the information and order that the system provides! 1. Ease of use- Everything is in one program 2. Total integration- We don't need to transfer data to another program like QuickBooks 3. Strong Accounting, Control, and reports- Ability to customize GL and P&L format and multiple years. 4. Hundreds of pre-built Reports- We rarely do custom 5. Ability to create custom reports 6. Barcoding and Barcode printing- Couldn't live without it 7. Integrated Credit card Processing-Vantiv- Saves errors and time 8. Moves easily from desktop to desktop - configures easily when replacing stations 9. Weekly online training to learn features. 10 Responsive support staff who find the answers to any questions. 11. Ability to attach pictures and documents. 12. Unit history on serialized items. 13. Automated output of data, pictures pricing and descriptions to our Website

Cons:

Probably not really a con But there are so many features available, it take some time to learn and put them into daily practice. The rest are just enhancements we'd like to see !! First, We would like to see the RMA system simplified. Second, we would like to see the E-commerce platform developed more. We are using it now for our website, but we would like to see more features and search options. Third, we would like to see the Timecard function developed and enhanced. Fourth, we would like to see the offering of more credit card processing options. Fifth, we would like the ability to attach PDF's to items, instead of JPG. But all in all, the system works really well!

This is NOT a Rental Software

Comments: We were running a good rental software program when we were approached by a Windward Software salesman who convinced us that we should give Windward a try. The salesman made us all kinds of promises, which we found out later were not all true. For example: don't believe it if
they tell you that they migrate your data, we ended up doing this all ourselves. On the surface, the Windward Program seemed to be a good rental system. It had a good inventory based set-up, We ended up repeatedly having this incomplete transaction screen popup. When we called for tech support to fix this problem, they would tell us to fix it ourselves, either by editing a single transaction or by p.o.s. This proved to be very difficult, and very time consuming. A program should never do this every day, and if it does the company should take responsibility to fix it, not the customer. This was the most unstable program from any we have used. We spent many days without our program working, due to their unreliable techs. This program was a nightmare for our accounting department. The accounting department had their workload tripled, due to the fact that the daily closing reports were not correct. We ended up creating a worksheet of every transaction for the closing period and transferring the data to make our journal entries for the day. In most cases their accounting techs didn't know what they were talking about, they never really fixed our problems, but instead told us, just reverse the transaction and do it again, the paper work piled up so much that we had to give an employee some time off for stress leave. This software would be a good inventory or p.o.s system , but it's definitely not designed for a rental or accounting system. All they did is add a rental module to an existing point of sale system, if you rented only 1 or 2 machines a day it would probably work, but if your main business is rentals, you would not want this system

Pros:

This software would be a good inventory or p.o.s system

Cons:

it's definitely not designed for a rental or accounting system

I have a 8 user licence. Many bugs and some functionality falls short. As if they did not think the whole process through properly. Financial side is very cumbersome. I am looking for alternate solutions.

Comments: Read all the reviews. This software could really be good if it was finished strong and some further thought was applied to the processes. It seems 80% complete with shortfalls in many areas. Financials are just not suitable for our size of business. It takes 4x the amount of time to complete a task compared to QB. My accountants find this aspect frustrating. They really should offer an integration with QB for those who want it. It feels like they are trying to cover too much in this software. I have some tickets on issues and bugs for over 3 months now and they still have not been completed. Of what I know now, I would not have purchased this software. I am looking for alternate software.

Pros:

The sales aspect is good. POS is acceptable. Easy to find a product and sell it. Kits work well. Reporting is somewhat good. Support tries to resolve issues.

Cons:

Financials - If you are serious about your business, this is not for you. It is not comparable to Quick books. They have flatly refused to integrate with QB. Their financial side scores a 1/10. The Multi currency module is full of promise but has many problems and bugs like display and operational issues. You have to be very careful when dealing with multi-currency. Procurement is quite basic and could have been thought through more. No real science or maths behind ordering so you better know your high, lows, trends etc. Some aspects are good but fall short in some areas. They state they are PCI compliant but fall short on monthly account payments. There is a work around but wastes time. If you do job cards or outwork, this is a challenge and you have to invent your own internal systems. Not sure on stock value integrity? Stock take process could have some enhancements to make it quicker for the user.

Inventory Management

Comments: This software is actually causing us more work than it is relieving. We are having to manually check a lot of our inventory as we cannot trust the system to track it effectively.

Pros:

The upfront interface is easy to follow.

Cons:

Once we moved to the cloud the program became very unstable. Everyone is running a different version. It seems that you only get to upgrade to a new version if you complain about functionality not working. It is slower than a server version as you are logging onto their remote server. Running reports has become cumbersome as you have to run on their remote desktop and copy to your own. We have had issues with inventory which is a critical part of our business. It can take them up to 2 weeks to get critical fixes completed or for you do discuss with a developer because tech support can't help you.

Honest Thoughts

Comments: This system is chalk full of great concepts but it always falls short of our needs. The band-aids given for our issues are never a resolution, just a temporary fix and often more work. System Five does work, it crashes every few months but overall we can continue with business. We will continue with System Five.

Pros:

There are many features that could be incredibly useful. The reports have vast options which we utilize often.

Cons:

It seems every update an equal amount fixed gets broken. We always seem to be chasing down issues and fixing bugs. There is not one week we do not have issues in our system, user or system error. Every feature seems to tap out in functionality. They all have an amazing idea, but when we try to use them there is always a reason it does not work for our system or with our data.

An Amazing Experience with Windward System Five

Comments: Since we have moved onto Windward System Five the improvement to our business have been and still remain extraordinary. System Five has given me the ability to work in an environment with real time information. With complete integration my business can process sales, my office team can work on accounting and financial transactions, inventory can be taken, purchase orders can be processed and more, all while maintaining flawless real-time information so that I can make decisions for my business quickly. In addition, we are able to process sales faster with integrated credit card processing, give a more profession look to our business with custom made integrated gift cards, we can print clean shelf labels right from the inventory record giving a profession look and assuring accurate pricing, barcode inventory items that do not have them, add multiple barcodes to items and a whole lot more.Support for this product is nothing short of impeccable! Windward offers 24/7 technical support from friendly, well trained technicians that work endlessly to keep your company up and running smoothly. The overall performance of this product in astonishing. It truly has the ability to accommodate anything I want to do to operation my business more efficiently. System Five is a very user friendly product that is easy to learn and understand. The customer service and support are friendly, understanding, concerned about your business needs and willing to do whatever it takes to help you run your company and accommodate your business needs. Speaking from one entrepreneur to you others out there, this is a product made for us! It is a fast, efficient, well build program that gives us the ability to run our businesses the way we want, collect information quickly with its wide array of reporting options so we can make better decisions, and free up our valuable time so we can get out there and do what we do best ' run our businesses! For those out there who would give this product anything less than a perfect review, I would like to challenge your business and management skill as the software is not the problem. This product gets five stars from me on all fronts! It's truly the integrity of my business and I could not imaging running my company without Windward System Five. For those of you considering I say go for it, it's the best investment you can make.

Customizable to a variety of business types. Fairly easy to use and learn the basics.

Comments: One software that we can use for the front end of the business and the back.

Pros:

I like being able to customize buttons at the cash registers and change them seasonally as we are a garden center and our products do change drastically with the seasons. Customer support is always very helpful and has fixed most issues that I have had in the past. We make our nursery signs, labels, and a variety of different types of price tags within System Five. No need for another program as we did need one in the past. I have not used them yet but having webinars and a learning area available to us is an excellent way to get more out of our software.

Cons:

Customer tech support is very good, however I think that it is a bit expensive annually. The label and form designers work but do not seem to be what you see is what you get. It takes a little finessing to create a label that fits your media properly.

Windward Software System

Pros:

Nationwide Furniture Mattress Outlet looks forward to continuing and growing our partnership with Windward Software. Windward Software's system allows us to stay on track and be able to organize vital information. We rely on Windward Software to perform every day so we can deliver the best customer experience possible

Cons:

The time it takes to load certain functions is excessive sometimes.

windward system 5

Comments: Overall system 5 is an end to end solution which we count on to mange our business. We would like to see regular scheduled maintaince as part of our annual subscription plan. We have invested heavily in to the software on the years and would.lien to feel we can get value added serviced included.

Pros:

The software is an end to end solution for our business - we like this alot. This last year the software has slowed down which has created inefficiencies.

Cons:

The software performance has dropped as we add more users and increase the date base. The length of time it takes to book appointments has been increasing over the last two years

Don’t, just don’t

Comments: Staff and customer service who don’t care once you have transferred your funds.
Issues will be addressed in a timeframe that will not only frustrate but will cost your company from making money or being able to grow.
This company has a terrible attitude and software package that has become so unstable windows 95 has become jealous.

Pros:

Finding new and interesting and better software after being driven to the brink of insanity from a under performing, under maintained and un stable product.

Cons:

Updates, did I mention updates, they don’t work, they simply fail, it’s like gambling when you update, will the software work tomorrow.... probably not.

Stay Away, poor Company and Poor program full of glitches

Comments: spent alot of resources and time to get their web module to sell online and they discontinued it the next year just as inventory came online

Pros:

Windward is just there for your monthly fees, not to support you

Cons:

glitches in the system for inventory control, does not count correctly stock constantly out

Basic programming and intigration issues.

Comments: Having trouble intigrating Windward System Five, with shipping programs.

Pros:

Easy for the sales people to use, once they are very familiar with the system.

Cons:

There are basic programming errors, such as date changes, Currency type, etc. that do not flow through the je, you have to change existing je's line by line. The control numbers should change what is in the je. When I addressed the issue, I was brushed off and just told to adjust the entries. When you try to use a date range for printing vendor accounts it does not work. Trying to get it to work with other programs has been a problem, and everthing has a price tag associated with it.

Not the right system for our type of business. Probably better for a small retail company.

Pros:

I really don't know what we like most about the software. We have had the system for almost 10 years and it has never worked well for us, even after investing tens of thousands of dollars...

Cons:

Not user friendly. Expensive. Support doesn't know how to fix the problem most of the time. System not capable of performing functions that are necessary for our business. Confusing. Have spent hours and hours trying to get the system to work correctly without success. Hired someone to come help us learn the system better that cost us almost so much money and we weren't any further ahead than before they came.

why I use windward

Comments: When we first started with windward it was fantastic. If we needed support, we called in Australia and it was fixed. Now there is no point in using that phone number! It then seemed the support workers did not know windward very well and I was brushed off or it would take a long time to resolve the issue. I must say it is getting better but not as good as it once was.

Pros:

This system fits our needs with long part numbers. We are not computer people so the support is very important to us.

Cons:

Some times it takes so long to get the support we need. The was such an issue I did think about changing systems. It has got better.