DEAR Reviews

We've been using the DEAR system for quite a while now and I must say I couldn't be any happier. It was a seamless transition from our old system, and I especially appreciate how well DEAR integrates with our accounting software. This makes everyone's work a whole lot easier. I have contacted support on several occasions with questions that I had, and I always received a quick, thorough, and very helpful response. We manufacture our products as well wholesale and retail them with an online store, and everything works so well together with DEAR that it really helps us focus on building our business rather than focusing our attention on trying to keep up with inventory and ordering. I would highly recommend DEAR systems to anyone looking for a new inventory management system.

-Bob Weiss

One thing that would be useful would be to be able to call for customer service. We have used customer service email on several occasions, and have always had a pretty quick response, however, if we have a pressing issue, it would be nice to have a number to call and someone to talk with.

"Moved over from sage around 12 months ago to Xero and added Dear which answered the major issues I was having with Sage in that the inventory element (sure, that's not what is was designed for) was woefully inadequate for our business.

I have to report that 12 months in that Dear has met and exceeded expectations and added real value to my inventory management and customer order processing. With the recent addition of the B2B portal, and what my customers will be able to do once is it fully operational will really revolutionalise some of the challenges we faced in, for example, letting customers know what is available from stock etc.

Overall, we made the right move and I haven't seen a better combination of integrated applications than Dear and Xero!
Well done and thanks to both!"

Dear is a brilliant and responsive company, although my only gripe, is that there are few updates or communique's relating to bug fixes or developments of the application. Example is the B2B portal, there are many comments about what features are needed and bug fixes, but as yet no commentary from Dear as to which will or won't be incorporated. Like me, many will become less likely to comment f it is not apparent that they are being acknowledged. Come on Dear, at least add a comment!!

A software with great integration with woo commerce. Also easy invoicing and ordering processes as well as advanced inventory management capability.

No problem for me but my wish is that there are videos in DEAR to make it even cooler

Quite easy to implement
Syncs nicely with our current cloud based software
Interesting/complex reporting

The over promising, and under delivering of the software. simply, it doesn't do what it claims!

The inventory is not live with Shopify (during launches there is always a lag, causing major headaches for our team and requires a lot of manual adjustments) - we were promised that based on our volume this would not happen, but it does. And it happens every month, for the past 18+ months

Inability to get the specialist help when we need it. We are always given help by a customer service member, not a technician, which slows down our ability to fix the problem. I understand that you need to protect the technicians time from dealing with simple problems, but we do not receive prompt service or the respect that we know what we are talking about!

We need a quicker escalation procedure to get help more urgently

Technicians only work from the afternoon (we are located in Melbourne) so when urgency issues crop up in the morning, we have to wait most of the working day to fix them

b2b portal is not very robust, we have had a lot of issues with this

the fixed provided by DEAR are not log term fixes, they don't fix the root of the problem, but fix it for the moment, but then issues crop up again and we are in the same position.

You understand the software perfectly after 1-2 weeks of use. It is simple and generally error-free.

The fulfillment module needs work. For B2C sales each item should be scanned individually to reduce picking errors.

Very professional, efficient SAAS inventory management product for the price point. Extensive features and solutions for small to medium size businesses. Integrates seamlessly with many important applications eg, Xero, eCommerce, Shipping and other add ons

Can take a while to get up to speed with DEAR however the available training and help resources are very good.

Seamless integration. Easy to understand. Rahid has been amazing in support.

Templates are a little clunky, other than that, we love it!

Easy to use and get a hang of. Easy to locate the PO and SO

Few updates have glitches but they do get fixed

Complex solutions. All in one software.

Accounting. It will be great if in the chart of accounts there will be starting capital, deduction of capital and adding capital options.

I had a tremendous call with your customer care rep [sensitive content hidden] who was able to walk me through an issue I was trying to resolve via email with you guys for a couple of weeks. His patience and knowledge were very valuable

Some features could be optimized for ease of use, less repeatability and effeciency

Best support I have ever had with any business software. The live chat is full of highly experienced operators who respond very quickly to get you back on track.
Very fast and easy to understand onboarding. Much less help needed than others.
The video tutorials are excellent.
The interface is modern looking.
The process from CO to MO is visual and easy to follow.
The Automation option is worth every dollar.

Not enough Business intelligence information.
Not enough visual information in reporting like graphs and tables. There is a taste of it in the dashboard but thats the extent of it.
B2B Portal needs the option to pick what products certain groups of stores get to see vs others.

User friendly
Good video demonstration on tutorial, easy to understand and follow
excellent aftersales support - swift in response

No direct module to handle goods replacement and warranty process /RMA portions
Not too user friendly or suitable to be used on project based jobs/ activities

The user interface is nice and easy to use.

The bugs! There are so many little bugs that pop up all the time. We have a team of 10 people using DEAR and almost daily there are more bugs that need to be flagged to DEAR technical support and they always blame the user until finally they realize that it is actually a bug.

Contains the vast majority of required features to operate a successful e-commerce store. Nice layout, not too bulky, and sticks to what its good at. API is well written which allows you to expand usability with third party apps.

Performance! Over the past 6 months this has gone from bad to worse. The odd hang, became frequent hangs, then time outs on the server. The latest sizeable price increase to allow them to fix this was unwelcome as I already pay for a package that is supposed to perform as promised. This left a little bit of a sour taste. Now though, once again, their system is down, completely!
My team cannot access anything, at all. If a call or email comes through, we cannot see stock, prices, lead times, not even the customer records.
Support say they are working on it, the ETA? Don't know. Great.
I say avoid until they sort out their issues with performance. I will be looking for alternatives as I cannot afford this kind of issue, and paying more for the service they are already supposed to be offering is bad form in my opinion.

It seems that DEAR is cheaper than other options, and seems to have a wide variety of functionality -- at the very least, it has all the functionality that our company and our warehouse needs.

This product in particular has been so poor that I dedicated a lot of time to find places to review it. I started using DEAR 4 years ago when I picked up my job at this company. My company was small then, and DEAR had not been in use for very long when I got there.

Speed has always been an issue, but it hasn't become a big issue until recently as we've become more dependent on inventory and getting things done in a timely manner. In addition to being slow, we experience almost daily shutdowns of the site where nothing can be accessed. Usually, these last anywhere from a few minutes to 30 minutes, but the other day it went down for over 2 hours! This was during our shipping time when we are entirely dependent on the system, although it should be noted that we are dependent on it for the majority of the working day anyways. We ended up staying late to compensate -- and it was a Friday.

Support was not any help as they always provide empty reassurance that their 'team is working hard to improve and optimize the servers', and don't provide any kind of real fix. I could accept that if it noticeably improved over the years, but it hasn't. Clearly it's not enough of an issue for them to actually address.

Overall, terrible software service and terrible customer service. If they excel at anything, it's making their website look pretty -- although I have my complaints about poor functionality of the website as well.

TL;DR -- Would not recommend to my worst enemy

The software can be used "out-of-the-box" after a minimal amount of setup, and can also be used in more complex installations where bespoke software development might be needed.

The simplicity of the initial setup, the simplicity of the menu navigation, and the speed with which new users are able to grasp what they need to do to accomplish their tasks caused me to take a closer look at this software and I'm glad I took the time to do so.

The multiple warehouse locations field, along with the multiple bin locations field, both available in DEAR but not available in some other offerings, is a basic requirement of a stock management system as far as I am concerned.

Whilst the software might appear complex for first-time users, those with experience of stock systems and business processes should find it a breeze to set up and use for the purpose intended, especially if they are familiar with setting up other software. It's an advantage, but not a requirement, if the person(s) setting it up also have an understanding of business accounts and are able to find their way around creating/editing MS Word mail-merge templates.

I am impressed that I have been able to use the software to accomplish pretty much every task that my clients' have asked of it so far. The ease of integration with other cloud-based applications puts another tick in the box for me.

This is a comment and not a complaint; although the reporting functionality in the 'out-of-the-box' version is adequate there is room for improvement. The limitations can be overcome by exporting the files and adapting them as needed. Those with a more specific software development skill- set (or more time to learn) would be able to achieve a great deal more from the software than is possible using the 'out-of-the-box' version.

Its synchronization with Xero is excellent. In three years we have never had a sync issue. Also within Dear the inventory, sales and purchasing all work very well and the ability to drill through different layers to search products or orders is very good. We use the Product Availability function all the time to confirm status of sales orders v purchase orders and stock availability. We have also recently started to use the Attributes more for both sales orders and products and this has been a further tool within Dear to help us manage our day to day sales process.

What still infuriates me is the way that sales quotes show the sales margin against Average cost. This is hopeless folr any new product as there is no history and it is also hopeless if you receive a part into stock before you post the purchase invoice. Why we can't have the option in the step up to show the margin against either the supplier fixed cost or last purchase cost is beyond me!!!!!! Argh!!!!
We currently have to run all our project quotes through an Excel spreadsheet to make sure the margins are correct. This is really infuriating and as a result we are looking for alternative options for our stock management.

After almost two years with DEAR, we couldn't be more pleased! We needed a centralised inventory system with CRM capabilities that could seamlessly integrate and sync to SHOPIFY, XERO, as well as our offline sales channels. Being in the food industry, we also needed a system that could track the shelf-life of our products, and make sure first expired items were sold first. This is an important feature for us that we did not find in TradeGecko, which we tested out as well before we made our decision in early 2016. DEAR also helps us keep track of our items on consignment (location / expiry date / batch number) as well as create hampers and other gift bundles with ease, thanks to their Bill of Materials function. I particularly enjoy the level of detail available to us, to store relevant information such as supplier SKUs and multiple price lists. The system is sturdy and the UX is straightforward and intuitive, which has made the transition easy for the whole team!

Tamara Agusta
General Manager
Profood Ltd

Occasionally DEAR can be a little slow to load, and customer service is not always as quick as one would like it to be.

We are loving this software, been using 8 months now and it is powerful. We run 5 e-commerce sites, 4 warehouses and sell in 3 currencies and it's handling all well. Support, as mentioned, isn't quite as easy as getting a call but we use their tutorials, common sense, their live chat.
We also paid for assistance with setup as we didn't want to make any mistakes and desired a bit of support from Work Smart NZ, these guys are great too and worth the extra investment if you value your time”

We are currently trying to get the good word out on various sites and we are hoping that you would to take the time out of their day to share it on Getapp:

The .docx invoice templates are hard work to manipulate, some more standardized system (like unleashed offers) would make life much easier.
No great integration with a CRM currently. Also they need a Zapier integration so it can connect to other web apps. We are using email parser functionality to achieve most of this but it's complicated.

on the cloud.
works with Xero
multi user
Log and attributes - allow an audit trails

Reports: do not give enough flexibility to provide an overview of the business
Lack of overal flexibility i.e reports, templates for invoice, PO etc.
Integration with Xero needs improvement.
Need to have 'print all' function i.e multiple select orders, print all invoices or PO.

It has helped us tremendously to manager our inventory and to ensure the right people get the product that they purchasing. It is great that the integrations are compatible with our POS and online store.

It does not let us print individual barcodes per product.

"DEAR are going to really shake up the whole software development industry. Ive never experienced such great service and the product itself is brilliant. Its intuitive and very user friendly. My staff have picked it up very quickly and its improved our whole business process. Standard response times after submitting a ticket are usually in a couple of hours- (It takes me 3 days to hear from my website developers). Best of all, we needed a feature customised for us, and after contacting DEAR, they had the feature available on the platform within a number of days. 10/10."

The only con is that currently, there is no connection to Zapier. Once this happens, then I cant pick any faults with DEAR at all!

Very intuitive to use.
Many detailed features.
Excellent customer support.
Responsive to suggestions.

The way they handle the serial number of unique items of an SKU can be improved. As of right now, the auto-select serial number during 'pick' is prioritized alphabetically instead of numerically (i.e. serial number 11 is higher in auto-select priority as opposed to serial number 2), which is annoying.

DEAR's extensive functionality proves to be an exceptional inventory solution for businesses with complex and established workflows. We at Business Continuum have had extensive experience working with DEAR, and the comprehensive yet easy to use solution has been a selling point for many businesses. After implementation, end users are left with role based permissions, a clean single page view for each function of the system, and an active support team that actually answers your questions and takes on potential changes. A clear road map with regular developments is constantly being updated to improve the system. We have seen businesses of all sizes and natures effectively use DEAR to streamline their processes and gain important insight into their inventory management.

DEAR's complexity requires dedicated time to learn the system - however, the reward is immense. Certain functions and settings require intimate knowledge of the system.

1. Easy to intergrate my ebay, website, payment portal.
2. Perfect syn with all platforms
3. Super fast respond from support team
4. It is very accurately in all accounting things.

RMA is not convient in my business running model. But I believe that is suitable for most of the companies.