AIM reviews

Its really easy to make reports which is good for this type of software

Pluspunten:

I really like how you can easily generate reports, that's important for my business and I believe this software can do the best job of it.

Minpunten:

I don't like that's a little clunky to use, but that should go without saying because this is super complex software we're dealing with here.

Small shop with multiple needs

Opmerkingen: Overall the POS has helped us make large improvements to how we do bussines. In many small ways the software is inflexable and since we have an owner with a CPA he has noted that the accounting side of the software is not as intuitive as others like quickbooks. As we get more familiar with it things are making more sense but the learning curve for the accounting reports is steeper than expected.

Pluspunten:

Customizing the menu system makes it easy to help new users get familiar.

Minpunten:

The bugs that we do have often leave issues that take time to find or resolve after the initial issue is corrected.

AIM Software and POS System for retail sales

Opmerkingen: Positive! Their customer support is exceptional. Their Tech staff are very knowledgeableand patient. In 45-60 seconds, I can be on a call with an English speaking technical representative who knows the Tri-Tech/AIM system.

Pluspunten:

Quickly execute sales, tracking serialized inventory and sales is detailed and quick.

Minpunten:

There are a million features! It was overwhelming in the beginning to decide which ones were going to be essential for our business.

It's a shame - good ideas, bad execution.

Opmerkingen: There are a lot of good ideas in this software, but things like a staff that's not on the same page, and a long-awaited refresh of their base tech keep AIMsi a frustrating software package. We stay because our lesson program is to big to be handled by any other solutions we looked at, but I would advise others to hold off until their promised rebuild is released.

Pluspunten:

Lesson management is good. Inventory management and sales are serviceable.

Minpunten:

Built on outdated technology, which means the system will get slower and more bloated as your business grows. Simple ancillaries (like date lookup) require Googling to find outdated Microsoft files when you replace computers, and support won't have those files available. E-commerce is excruciatingly complex to execute; why must it be this complicated when options like Squarespace and Shopify exist? They don't require the user to learn XML to take full advantage of their features. The PO system is convoluted, the workflow makes no sense. Inventory management could stand to lose some processes to speed things up and make it more understandable. Reporting doesn't make much sense, either. But the most frustrating part for us has been the staff. Calling support is rarely a good experience; it often sounded like someone was paging through a manual to find a solution. Recently, I found out why: support is tiered, and we are on the lowest tier. I've been using this software for 5 years, and no one at TriTech offered us an upgrade. Online help files don't offer much more in the way of assistance. Navigation is clunky, and entries are often incomplete or outdated. We've also experienced the classic "sales promises features that developers say can't be done" routine. The most recent involved running their product on a Windows tablet - sales said it could be done, but later, support said it was only possible using Remote Desktop Protocol (a thing I wish I knew before I purchased the Windows tablet & an additional license). More than once, I've been scolded by sales for "not understanding how [their] software works." They require you to buy gift cards & hardware through them, at a substantial markup. I'm getting frustrated just thinking about this stuff...

Product Review

Opmerkingen: My overall experience has been great. From the beginning the help to set this program up for our needs was challenging but very successful. Josh, our salesman has been nothing but helpful and informative and always replys quickly and is always checking in. That is very important to us, someone who takes the time to email every so often to check in and make sure everything is going well. If we have a question he always responds quickly.

Pluspunten:

The more we use the software the more we learn and love the product. We use this software everyday runnig reports, for our POS, inventory, and much more. We love the button feature to make everyday use easy.

Minpunten:

I find that it is hard to find a credit card company that is compliant with AIM.

Overall great value and awesome tech support

Opmerkingen: Overall I would buy the software again. Great people, knowledge and they absolutely show concern about your business. The software, on a basic level, is easy to learn for new employees. I've seen many positive changes in the last two years and I'm sticking around to see what's next!

Pluspunten:

Easy.......... The fact it can communicate by sending auto calls and text to my customers and helping me to stay in touch along the way. We are a repair shop and this has not only saved us tons of time but this feature has made us lots of money$$$. The POS and customization of the screen and tech support. Tech support is absolutely, hands down, some of the best I've ever experienced. They answer the phone and stay with you until you understand. Very nice people who never make you feel stupid. Also love the fact you can so easily access your data. Other software we've had has limited the backend data to you where as AIM absolutely encourages you to use it. I will say.... a new employee can be taught in under 5 minutes how to check out a customer through the POS.

Minpunten:

Inventory management, pricing and the repair shop module all need some help. All usable and functional. They are just some areas that aren't as polished as other software. Also, if you are a company with over a million different SKU's, beware. The software really is slow. I know! FYI, you'll need own EXCEL and have a basic understanding in order to to manage your inventory as AIM just simply does not have the capability to do so.

A jewel in a difficult and expensive industry

Opmerkingen: We deployed, then 4 years later deployed ecommerce

Pluspunten:

Ease of Use, Cost, Customer Service, Merchant Services relationship.

Minpunten:

Canned Reports are often minimal, but I summarize them in complex Xcel worksheets

AIM by Tri Tech

Opmerkingen: Inventory Control.

Pluspunten:

Retail POS, Service, Rental programs all in one program.

Minpunten:

When you ring up retail items, a rental, & a service ticket at the same time for a customer it creates 3 different transactions for the same payment, thus listing 3 different payments on your deposit report for 1 transaction.

TriTech AIM Review

Opmerkingen: Overall, I am very happy with this AIM. It has made our business run smoother and has opened up some avenues to us that were previously not feasible.

Pluspunten:

We sell firearms, and the built in A&D Book is a critical component to our business. Once setup, this feature makes tracking of firearms incredibly simple .

Minpunten:

The management of sale prices for our products needs to be revamped and is currently both difficult and convoluted to use. In my opinion, this is easily the area of the software that could most benefit from improvement.

Ok for small-scale non-ecommerce shops

Opmerkingen: It was a good starting point, but we outgrew this software within 2 years of starting the company. Our eCommerce portal was functional, but cumbersome.

Pluspunten:

The tracking data on products was quite helpful. Serial numbers were regarded as individual numbers with unique purchase order receiving data that could be cross referenced with customer service records and trade-in information. Backorder protocol for Purchase Orders is the one thing I do miss about this software.

Minpunten:

Local server based. This made it very difficult to process transactions remotely (tradeshows, etc) or work remotely.

One of the worst business decisions I have made.

Opmerkingen: We gained POS software with serialized inventory track-ability from this software, something that we were lacking with QuickBooks.

Pluspunten:

It can handle a lot of inventory and a lot of different skus. The POS module is decent as far as keeping track of a lot of customers and barcodes. If you do opt for this software, stick with the very basic POS module only.

Minpunten:

There are sooooo many things.... First off, the platform itself is extremely outdated. The only people who like this software are companies who have been using it for more than 10 years and haven't tried anything newer. Our IT guy HATES it, and TriTech wants you to spend thousands of dollars on an old-school server set-up because it can't be set up with any sort of cloud system. One thing to keep in mind is the relatively cheap up front cost is just the beginning, as the hardware costs are going to get you BIG TIME when you have to keep going backwards in time and adding hardware, IT, and specialized accounting costs on top of everything else (did I mention our accounting costs quintupled when we started using AIMsi?!). You can hardly ever correct a mistake, and we found this out right away when even TriTech support messed up trying to help us correct a simple mistake early on. Making corrections is tedious if not impossible, and yet the program is so counter-intuitive it's very easy to make mistakes even if you've been working with it for awhile. The accounting module is a joke, and this is where I feel like it was truly a bad business decision. We went live officially in 2016 after practicing for about 6 months, and after 11 months of trying to get off of QuickBooks completely and get on only one reporting software we finally gave up on AIMsi as we started losing sight of numbers and business goals. Bottom line, there are way better options out there than AIMsi.

After ten years, I work with the system reluctantly.

Pluspunten:

You can open the system multiple times on the same computer. In the middle of entering a sale, cust wants to try on a helmet or gloves, or just gets distracted; you can switch to another copy of the system until the customer is ready to continue. When using the computer to work on customer information or inventory, you can switch to another copy to verify or copy something. For instance, combining two customers into one, can copy email and then compare or enter.

Minpunten:

The system is absolutely opaque, not intuitive, and byzantine. To deal with a product, it is impossible to find S/A Maintenance unless you know how to find it. Way too many arbitrary clicks and decisions to find anything in the system. Especially annoying is the inability to go back one level, if you make a mistake in these decisions; you have to go back to the beginning, and you might not even remember which decision was the wrong one. The lack of a training program to teach new employees how to use the system is something I have been thinking about for ten years. The rental module does not lend itself to quick service, renting 100 bikes on a busy day. If you suspend a sale, you can't open it and suspend it again; therefore you can neither edit, nor even reprint it. You can't analyze sales data from a sector of the customer data base. For instance, you can't separate the customers from A to M and compare them to the customers from N to Z. This would be useful to analyze the effectiveness of advertising. We could contact all the customers from A to M, but not N to Z, and then compare the results. There's more, but that will do for now.

Outstanding product and tech support!

Pluspunten:

The product I use has made tracking over 12,000 consigned items a manageable endeavor. In addition to the impeccable tech support I receive, the ability to track each and every product in the store, from intake to settlement, has made this business venture a pleasure. I probably only use 50% of the features, but those I use make my job easy. I can readily identify all pertinent information regarding an item, track notes on the consignor's item and sale preferences, and easily upload all information at the click of a button to my website. A few of the key features I use most are the abilities to associate similar items to one another, to produce reports for each consignor on items sold and still open, to create accounting reports on daily activity, to retrieve a customer's information for mail merge at settlement time, to track my inventory on both quantity and revenue generated to determine my seasonality and busiest days, and to un-publish items from the website once they reach quantity zero (can you imagine doing this manually?). I also enjoy the easy of use in the Aesys admin system. I've been able to manage and tailor the website to suit my needs with little help from the web support team (another great facet of the product). The ability for real-time lookup of shipping costs and credit card processing made the integration of these items a breeze.

Minpunten:

There are times the system will crash if I have the SA Inventory, customer info, receive batch consignment, and the sales invoice windows open at the same time. There are times I need to have these available in the dynamic environment I've created, and the "Swordfish" errors can be a hassle. Also, there are some canned reports in the catalog that don't seem to work, and creating reports with the wizard is not the easiest or the most intuitive.

Small Business Review

Opmerkingen: While the program itself has given us some trouble, the customer support is excellent!! [SENSITIVE CONTENT] have been especially wonderful and patient with us and spent an abundance of time on our issues to help us get what we need and understand how to do what we need to do. Amazing customer service.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Retail software

Opmerkingen: We started as a small company in 2004 using Quickbooks. Then I hired a developer to develop a product for retail, rental processing and inventory control. After a year and $50,000 later that failed. AIM was discovered and did everything that we needed. Those were bad times during all of this. Their software is greatness. the support is 100% perfection. These guys are obsessed with solving a problem and do take care of any needs.
There is a 60 day period that you will deal with using the software until you are proficient with it. After that you will be very happy. The option of a second web hosting company is a real downside and expensive.

Minpunten:

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

Why should you have to navigate between miultuple screens a 10 key strokes to do a simple cash sale

Opmerkingen: When I spoke to the salesman I told him about the system I wanted to replace, and I needed to new system to be just as stream line and easy to use. He said this system was even simpler then what I was used to, BS. You shouldn't have to go line by line and actually type how many of each items you received on a purchase order, it should default as 100% fill rate and allow you to enter the back order items individually. At over $3000 I will accept I got hosed and move on.
If anyone from AIM reads this shame on you, your lucky you're not in my town because I would return it in person.
Don't buy this, it is a POS. And no I don't mean Point Of Sale.

Pluspunten:

It looks very professional It does cost a lot so you think your getting something special The service guys are helpful, but you will be paying for that

Minpunten:

Way to complicated, generating orders through multiple screens. Multiple screens to do the simplest sales. Four different screens just to add a manufacturer/vendor Line by line entries to receive an order Unable to add line items to an order once it has been generated 3 different screens to remove a part number from the data base

Cardinal Percussion Mark Tirabassi

Opmerkingen: AIM over has been good not great. [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
has been the reason I feel we can make it work.

Pluspunten:

I like that it seems customized for the music industry.

Minpunten:

Lang in correcting system issues. Not being able to request a specific Support Tech and the Support Tech not being able to call me. I really think [SENSITIVE CONTENT] is amazing. Super helpful and knows the product. You have a gem and I would highly suggest that AIM take the steps to secure him long term.

Great Functionality at a Great Price

Opmerkingen: Customers for 11+ years. We would not buy another POS product. We have premium support and receive excellent assistance

Pluspunten:

It has the capacity to handle all day to day activities. When used as it is designed, the software works flawlessly. The tech support is great.

Minpunten:

When corrections are needed, some are not easily done without assistance. There are integrated correction options for common errors, making those much less troublesome. Note that terms and button functions are not universal across all modules.

Great Software

Opmerkingen: Aim has been very helpful with helping manage my inventory better than I ever could with other simple solutions. I'm very happy that i decided to use Aim for my Store.

Pluspunten:

The software is great with all the different features that it has and offers. I particulary like the reports function that allows me to generate my inventory, sold items, and sales tax reports.

Minpunten:

The system was very easy to setup and intigrate with. There's a lot of functions that the software offers. You certainly need to take a lot of time during the setup to learn about the functions.

AIMsi has more and more to recommend it as we learn more about it

Pluspunten:

This is a great POS for our instrument sale and rental business. There's just enough flexibility in it without having to do everything freeform. The more we use it, the more we learn about new ways that it can help us. And the support option is great. Their staff is very knowledgeable and has been of tremendous help to us on several occasions. We've used AIMsi for years already, yet we're still finding new ways that it can help our business. The designers seem to have anticipated most of the needs of a shop like ours. Whenever we decide we want to do something new, we find there is an option in AIMsi for exactly that. That's a great sign of a well-designed product.

Minpunten:

There are a couple of features that would be nice to have (ability to refund an initial rental payment in the system, reverse an approval return, etc.), but they're just things that would be helpful to us specifically. The only other thing that we really find irritating at all is that the formatting on the straight-to-email option isn't really compatible with Gmail recipients, so the large number of our customers with Gmail get invoices and the like that are very difficult to read and not very professional-looking. We get around that by printing them to PDF instead, but it would be nice to have it work in one step.

AimSi helps to run our store

Opmerkingen: Have been using this program for about 25 years. It is a great program to run a music store. Plenty of other music store owners to share ideas of how to get the best out of AimSi

Pluspunten:

Really helps with the back room duties (accounting, inventory, planning, etc.). Great point of sale program. Bar coding is a must.

Minpunten:

Getting quality support can be a challenge. Program has so many features that better documentation for using the features would help

Not at all user friendly

Opmerkingen: Auto-pay feature

Pluspunten:

Once you get the hang of AIMsi, everything is trackable. There is never any question about inventory, if or when a payment went through, or who still owes money. The auto-pay feature is also very beneficial.

Minpunten:

AIMsi is way too difficult to use. It takes longer than necessary to understand and get used to. It crashes if you leave it alone for too long, and automatic payments aren't actually automatic - you have to go through a whole process to run stored cards, and you have to REMEMBER to do it.

Review of AIM

Opmerkingen: They have been a very reliable partner is running our business.

Pluspunten:

The easy of use when in front of a customer. Helps speed up the process allowing customers save time.

Minpunten:

Once in awhile I have some issues creating reports. Usually it is just my lack of computer skills causing the problems.

This software does everything

Pluspunten:

It handles almost everything under one roof. This is nice because we don't have to purchase multiple POS systems and record keeping software.

Minpunten:

It can be a lot of steps to complete a task. Version 12 is supposed to be much easier though so I'm looking forward to it.

Best bang for buck

Opmerkingen: I’m happy with the system. I looked at several that cost more and done less.

Pluspunten:

Saves time on the Sale, interactive A&D book linked to sale.

Minpunten:

Manual updates to the system. That’s about it