AIM

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...