Arborgold

goodaking

goodaking

Participating member
I’m thinking of purchasing software for my Small tree business. What do you all think of arbor gold and are there any other companies out there that I should consider?

thanks,
goodaking
 
I use Arborgold (last 4 years) and recomend staying with Quickbooks. It will do everything you will need to do. It is a matter of opinion of course but mine is........I wasted about $8,000.00 over 4 years and I am still paying.JMO.
 
NAtree,
How did you waist $8000? Was it through their advertising program please explain. I was considering the $1200 arbor gold version for estimate proposal records and marketing, for easy organization, rather than have to spend a long time learning access or excel. Please let me know what you did and didn’t like about the program. I ‘am also looking into arborsoftworx if anyone could give me some feedback about this software that would be great.
Thank,
goodaking
 
We've been using arborsoftworx for over a year. It has it's good qualities.
Not sure I would go that route though if I had to do it again.
Customer service is less than stellar. It is very expensive. There is a large time (read $) investment in getting all your client info into it. We are looking at expanding our license to five users or going with something else altogether. I started looking into salesforce after Chris mentioned it.
If anyone knows about that it would be good to hear about.
 
We switched from a filemaker pro system for Macs to Arborgold this past March.

It has been a long slow road to where we are now. There are days when I wish we could just go back to what we had before (turns out it wasn't broken), but we have so much invested in it now that we can't turn back for financial reasons.

Apparently, we are moving forward for at least the next year with Arborgold, and I have to admit, it is growing on me, and I still get clients who are impressed with my ability to print out an estimate with a site map in about 5 minutes.

The downside is we went from Macs to PCs. There are three of us in sales that go out daily and we got Fujitsu Lifebooks (I know, I'd never heard of them before either). We got these computers because they are tablet computers, but not one of us has ever used that function, so I would say that is not worth the extra expense.

If you want some real feedback, PM me about Arborgold, and I can give you my number to call during the week. I might have some valuable insights.


SZ
 
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So would you recommend using arborgold?

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I don't know if it is any better than anything else out there. It is a very complex system that runs two programs (arborgold and a phone center). Things get bungled up, and it is probably user error most of the time, but it is kind of scary that we went from a pretty simple system using printed out work orders that we kept stacked in one scheduling pile, and you could just glance at the pile and know that we are two weeks out, or a month plus. Now, everything is in the computer, and retrieval of data, even simple queries like how much you billed last month, takes on a minutia that I don't think smaller companies need. Arborgold breaks everything down into jobs and services and there are umpteen million reports you can look at.

If you are a small operation, I don't think it is worth it.


SZ
 
We are using arborsoft worx. It is very complex and takes awhile to learn. We have been on it for over a year and have still not had it fully set up. We looked into Arborgold and I feel it would be about the same. The down side to arborsoft worx is the customer service is not very good and you have to wait to get awnsers.
If you are a small company I would recommend using quickbooks along with access. Those two programs we used for many many years and worked well. We got to the point were we had tooo many clients and needed to change.
 
I was just looking for something to make estimates more professional looking.I actually like quickbooks and it really works well for our bookkeeping.
 
[ QUOTE ]
NAtree,
How did you waist $8000? Was it through their advertising program please explain. I was considering the $1200 arbor gold version for estimate proposal records and marketing, for easy organization, rather than have to spend a long time learning access or excel. Please let me know what you did and didn’t like about the program. I ‘am also looking into arborsoftworx if anyone could give me some feedback about this software that would be great.
Thank,
goodaking

[/ QUOTE ]


Well...The "cost" the way I add it up is including all the paid employee time wasted entering data or sitting on the phone trying to repair problems as well as the initial cost of the product. Like someone else said, I'm in too deep to turn back now and the $8000 was a low estimate. I went from hand written estimates to printed onsite because you have to enter all the info anyway so you might as well do it all once. This takes longer and the report all this generates is only accurate if you put in the additional time to enter your completed job info which is provided by your crew forman and his info must be reliable or accurate (which I have yet to see) as well as deductions for time lost due to breakdowns or damages. When you look at it from the point of view that all this info can be pulled up at anytime and used to make clear decisions about crew efficiency and sales numbers it could be a great tool. When you start paying for this info and find it to not be so accurate after all, it is useless. The real number I should have used for the loss of money should really have been around $18,000 but whatever it is, I can assure you it won't be calculated using Arborgold. The only real value I have found in it does not make its purchase worth a dime but it will print a good looking estimate, whatever thats worth.
 
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