AIM

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing AIM

Reasons for Switching to AIM

Pros

We have been using the contract module side of AIM for our instrument rental contracts to keep track of monthly payments since the beginning of our business in 2004. We pulled away for a brief stint to try another company and it was a disaster. The instrument rental contracts are the bread and butter of our business. If it fails, we fail. If the customer doesn't feel like they can trust us with their personal info because the system fails, we fail. It's a reflection on us. We came back to AIM in 2019 and went all in with the full point of sale system and we've never looked back. We highly recommend AIM.

Cons

We do wish that there weren't so many steps to follow. Seems like there is a huge learning curve to this program. Once you live it and breath it like it do it's one thing. But my employees tend to make mistakes often because they miss a step.
And for example: having to get out of one frame and into another one for the same customer with a different question about their account is sometimes frustrating.
Also. I really wish that an email went out immediately to my rental contract customers on autopay when their card is declined. The ability is there, as they receive an email immediately when the payment goes through, but not when it declines. This would help our collection dept out tremendously if this option was implemented.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing AIM

Reasons for Switching to AIM

Pros

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

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing AIM

Switched From

Pros

I don't have to have multiple systems running to achieve everything we need to do...AIM does it all

Cons

learning curve....set up and learning the system takes time

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing AIM

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to AIM

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Pros

I am able to do in one program what I used to have to do in 3 programs!!

Cons

Weekly updates - some of the weekly updates "break" other areas that were working and you may not realize it until there is an out of balance situation.

Pros

The features to our store that is most impactful is the Rental Module. Our music store thrives from rentals and the use of having the contracts and payments all set up through AIM is so easy and finely setup to use.

Cons

If anything for me it would be the smallest things such as getting the barcodes to be bigger. In essence the ease of being able to fix the barcodes that are being printed on the labels themselves

Pros

It is the app that we use for every aspect of our business. From POS to inventory control we have it all in one place. The straight forward menus and feature with in each module is user friendly.

Cons

I do feel that the system is a little over complicated with so many pop up windows. Also, tranactions seem to have too many steps for simple procedures.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

The team at AIM gave me all the support I could ask for with setting up the software. I can barely turn a computer on and they were able to set it up for me so that I could start using it immediately. Customer support is flawless. The price was well below competing software and still had all the features I could ever use plus some.

Cons

We have experienced some lagging issues, but the team at AIM is working with us to resolve this at no cost.

Pros

Solid database. Features specifically designed for our industry like lesson billing, rent to own tracking

Cons

Crashes daily because it isn't fully compatible with newer versions of windows. Not easy to use at multiple locations. Requires arcane network setup like environment variables because you have to pay for a total number of "terminals." Very clumsy user interface because you have to start from the master look up process for every piece of data you need to enter. Autopays are only semi automatic because they only run when you tell them to and once again you have to start from the master look up screen multiple times to: generate an auto pay list with manually input dates, transmit the autopays, post the autopays, cancel the denied auto pays, print out a denied list. Lesson billing is usable yet clumsy, lesson scheduling is a joke.

Pros

There are many POS on the market today but not very many geared to our industry. It is flexible and customizable. It is so easy to use.

Cons

There are very few things I like least because when we do , features can be implemented. I guess at this point I like least is we have no way to print a claim check when customers drop off their vacuum. That said I created a feature request that they are working on as I type this review.

Pros

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

Cons

Manual updates to the system. That’s about it

Pros

The consignment module works well for tracking and paying consignors (if the consignment items are received correctly).

Cons

The software is extremely complicated to use for users. It takes a lot of time to learn and skill to use/understand this software. There are too many modules and features that are no use to us.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Can be set up for multiple locations
Lots of back-end customizing
Lots of add-ons and modules for customization

Cons

Expensive & hard to set-up
Windows based, so no Mac used
Can set up a server to access remotely but requires you to have multiple workstations as the software is only tides to 1 location
Supposedly there is support but I couldn't get through
Sales team is very active and reaches out to you a lot until you request for money back

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

Integrates POS, AP, AR, inventory, and invoicing, all in one program. They offer complete training and on-site set up, for a price.

Cons

Too much data entry to set up, which they do not tell you. I had to enter: categories (in a specific format, which I had to develop) and tax by zip code (California has over 2700). In addition, their 'conversion' consists of you putting your information in their template, and them writing a subroutine that will insert it into their program. If we had needed multiple stores, or did rentals, then it would have been more complicated. They only have one check template, and if your check does not fit theirs, their immediate response is 'why not buy them from us'. Nevermind that you might have several boxes already printed. Also, entering a customer is a complicated, several step process. For someone unused to data entry or not very computer savvy, it could be a more frustrating experience than it was for me. Their documentation is SEVERELY lacking, as well.