Fergus

Pros

CSV uploads for invoices saves so much time from having to manually enter every. single. piece of gear! Having everything on a job number to easily find. Times, materials and anything to do with a particular job is in one place. Being able to Pin notes on jobs for any updates or special information. As long as everything is put on the job number nothing is forgotten. Ability to have a different client and site contact and address. Ease of finding client details.

Cons

We find the health and safety a bit clunky to use - but haven't looked into it really well as our main health and safety is done through someone else... Would be great if PS3s and As Builts could be done using Fergus. We need these for almost every job and we have to do them and upload as files on the job. The gas certs are awesome though. Also, we pay time and a half after certain amount of hours are worked, so would be great to have the possibility for fergus to pick up this cost after certain hours are worked or any work logged for a Saturday as this is a manual cost I need to take into account when back costing.

Pros

It is a one stop shop "power house" that runs our electrical and heat pump contracting business. It integrates seamlessly to Xero which has made it very simple to implement. We like the ability to track staff when required and the fact that it has a full health and safety component also. The customers enjoy the interface through email and we regard the ability of the system to track and record site related information to be very valuable for all users. By adopting this system we are now seen as professional and progressive with in our town. We are now capturing better information about job costs before we send invoices which has helped us to raise our overall profit margin. We no longer have jobs falling through the cracks at invoicing time either. The scheduling features are fantastic, all staff can see what is on for the week, not just those in the office that can see the whiteboard! The workers on the ground have access to client details which allows them to make contact without input from the office, they also have full job history and quote/estimate information which makes their job easier also. The App runs on any mobile platform which solves the android vs IOS debate, we just use the platform that we like. No software to manage is also a bonus, if we have internet access... were in business! This has been the biggest leap towards a paperless office that we've made so far. We enjoy the friendly knowledgeable helpdesk staff who always answer the phone promptly. Awesome!

Cons

Once you have published a quote, you can no longer edit it... if you find a mistake or want to add something extra to the quote. The search engine on electrical items can be abit poor, maybe it could show frequently selected or used items at the top of the search results list. The financial summary has too much information in it, it is so busy. There could be more price options, we would like to bring on another administrator on a 3 hrs per day basis and another electrical worker on a 2-3 days basis, it is quite expensive for part timers. There is no drawing software in the system for quoting, some others such as Simpro, System fox and Katipult have this on-board. (I think these are usually based on Visio). J A Russell don't API to the system like Corys and Plumbing World do, could be easier for us if they did the same.

Pros

We went from a single person operation to 4 people on the road and one office based team member. The old program we were using didn't have enough quite do every thing we wanted and was quite clunky on site. The way in which Fergus flows and easily displays information regarding jobs means there is no confusion on site and when used correctly office staff can collate the data to create invoices easily, meaning we can get invoices out faster and hopefully paid faster. Now with the additional benefit of Fergus offering our customers credit card payment, we have found even less reason for customer not to pay. The schedulling calander on Fergus gives us the best forsite we have ever had to see potential lead times and alsogives us a better look at keeping things ahead of jobs wth regards to ordering materials and organising other important parts to any given job. Our guys on site love it as it is super simple to use for them and realistically cuts down there paperwork too. Time sheets created off all there job data is done automatically meaning the office is not trying to get times off them each week to do payroll.
In general Fergus has made our business run smoother and less things get forgotten about, missed or overlooked.

Cons

The biggest thing that we find as a downfall would only be it is not that simple to see what price you have sold a product for previously. (Well not that we are aware of).
In saying that Fergus seem to be very dedicated to listening to what their customers want and make updates regularly, I''m sure that it will only be a matter of time until they create a tool to help with this.

Pros

Tracking and entering costs (both labor and materials) has made our invoicing and quoting much more accurate. Being able to set up favorite item lists makes quoting much less of a chore than it used to be as items can be just selected from a pre made list and added where needed.

Our wholesalers send us daily CSV files with our purchases which are then uploaded directly to Fergus. The Job numbers are all linked already so its just a matter of clicking a button and the materials are automatically assigned to the job and corresponding site visit.

Pricelists are also uploaded from our wholesalers so prices for thousands of items are available instantly and are up to date. This means jobs can be invoiced quickly and on site if need be.

We also use Xero for our accounting software and Fergus integrates perfectly with it.

Cons

Integration with the Xero employee pay function is the only thing lacking. At the moment all our employee times are entered into Fergus for each job then each week their hours need to be enetered into Xero again for the pay cycle. It would be great if they talked to each other so we didnt have to do it twice.

Pros

Fergus is a User friendly software. Right from the start, from importing & transferring existing data, through to the day to day use. The initial training was great - targeting each area we needed assistance with, to ensure we get the most out of the system. The ongoing support is good with a useful help button directing us to documentation, as well as the helpdesk team and one-on-one with our CS Manager, when needed. Really friendly and approachable team.
Working within a Job is easy through the app or online . We enjoy the flexibility with quoting and invoicing - being able to present these in various formats for individual customers. The Status Board is useful as this gives an overall view of where all jobs are at. It's then easy to drill down into these for a deeper look.
Being able to do variations within a job has been invaluable to us - our previous software didn't allow this.

Cons

Fergus are pro-active in continuing to develop their software, and we appreciate that not every single thing we would like is available, but they do listen and send our requests through to their development team. One small thing is being able to charge out 'unpaid' time on a job, within timesheeting. We can work around this, but it's a bit clunky for us.
It would be good to have a quicker turnaround on the online support at times. However, after mentioning this, we have experienced a good improvement.