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Point of Sale Software and Retail Management Solutions for retailers in Canada and the United States.
Provider
Pacific Amber Technologies
Located In
Canada
Foundation
2001
Open API
Unverified
Deployment
On-Premise Windows, On-Premise Linux
Training
Live Online
Support
24/7 (Live rep)
Retailers looking for a fully functional Point of Sale solution which includes Inventory Management, Customer/Vendor Management, Reports, eCommerce Integration and Multi-Store Capabilities.
Content Source: AmberPOS
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AmberPOS Reviews
Pros
The team support has truly been wonderful. Easy program that can be navigated by younger staff, and flexibility of sales ability work very well.
We have had great support and solutions that fit our needs. Their improvements to the POS program has helped Marquis Wine Cellars get to the next stage of growth.
It is easy to use and intuitive. Support is great (front end sales, telephone IT support, online manual is pretty good).
It's easy to use, has logical concepts, is user-friendly, and is very affordable compared to other systems. The vendor has been excellent with training and followup questions.
Cons
Customer service's reponse: "Just do a physical inventory of your 15,000 items to determine what sold. Half of the month of sales and receiving history disappeared randomly for no known reason.
I believe many of our problems were related to conversion, so if you're a brand new business, it might work. But if you're trying to convert to this system, it's a huge pain.
Realize that many companies which are unhappy with this company will not post negative reviews for fear of affecting their service level. As bad as it is, it can always get worse.
There are far too many options in the Amber online store that lead to dead ends. If you don't sell it, don't have the option available.
"been using this for four years and it is VERY reliable. like all new software programs, you need to adjust to all new bells and whistles"
Overall: We are a unique company with three locations and use retail and layaways. looked at a TON of different software programs and this is the only one that could customize our Layaways for what we needed. Do you have to wait sometimes for answers? well yes, who doesn't? The majority of the time I get through right away. However, when my server went down and I needed them ASAP, THEY ANSWERED VERY QUICKLY! I was up and running withing an ' hours' and it took me over a week to get my server back. (wasn't Amber's fault it was default hardware). We were still able to run the program on computers/registers without a server. (not many software companies can boast that) I have dealt with another retail software program in the past where SQL was ALWAYS BREAKING DOWN (for days) then all of our stores were literally down. This system (AMBER) has a great SQL structure and database. There is no perfect software company but Amber has always been kind, considerate and helpful whenever I called for issues. The problems have always been fixed (some require patience which in today's world- no one wants to wait). the most important thing is to have a stable system AND having someone in your company who can help train those who are computer illiterate. it is up to you to make the changes in your company. there are SOOO many reports to choose from that I still haven't used all of them. the best part is having all the customer history and all this history of purchases, sales etc that you can use. Amber does a great job of tracking individual items, so you can easily see who purchased them. Exporting is great to excel spreadsheets.
Pros: Customer History and product history. this software tracks EVERYTHING that you do with a product.
Cons: glitches that come occasionally with updates.
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Overall: We are a small rapidly growing specialty garden store. We have used a few different POS systems since opening, about 6 years ago. All of the systems we worked with in the past had too many functionality issues for us to keep using their software for very long. Since switching to Amber POS almost 2 years ago, our system has become much more streamlined and much easier to use. We have a warehouse that we use for excess product and bulky item storage. Amber POS can accurately track ALL of our inventory in both locations. When we expand to more store locations, we can add an infinite number of additional stores, using all the existing information. No need to retype anything in! All business information is now kept in one place. It's very easy to find any information needed from product information, vendor information, customer information, to all sales history & reports. The staff at Pacific Amber has been a blessing for our business. They are always ready to help with any issues that may come up. They usually answer the phone on the first call, but if I have to leave a message, I get called back quickly. Try that with Quick books and see how you feel endlessly waiting for help that doesn’t come. We had some issues setting up our old accounting program on new computers we bought. The staff at Pacific Amber even helped us install software from another company! I'm not saying that they are supposed to or expected to, but service like that is one of the many reasons that I am extremely happy with their software and support. They care and it shows. They also got our new website up and running! They advised us which shopping cart software to use, and then integrated it to the Point Of Sale. Now we can upload, update, edit, add and remove products from our online store right from the POS window! When we sell an item online, the transaction can be downloaded into the POS without having to retype any information! I'm sure you can see how much time this can save! We can even sell on eBay though our website and not have to retype in ANY information; it all gets downloaded correctly right into the POS. All in all, this is a great system and I am very happy with it and the staff at Pacific Amber Technologies. I would highly recommend it to anyone who needs a solid POS system, from a single store with a small inventory, up to large retail companies with dozens of stores and thousands of products. This software can handle whatever you need it too.
"Too clunky and customer service is terrible unless you pay "
Pros: It communicates well between 2 stores. You can set up a way to track frequent buyer cards even though it's clunky.
Cons: Getting things set up is incredibly clunky, and it's nearly impossible to predict what will go wrong. They force you to buy a subscription to their customer service help, so at that point, it adds on to the price. And if you don't, you get absolutely no help getting their software to really work for you. Most of the problems we have had are entirely THEIR fault and they still won't help you without the "customer service" package. a) we keep getting a message that says "duplicate entry or something is wrong" and they won't/can't fix it unless we pay. We can't rearrange the order of the point system items without literally going in one at a time and hitting "up up" until it gets to where you want. This takes HOURS. You can't delete one transaction that you've "held" (or "parked" in their terms) without deleting ALL parked transactions. The frequent buyer program/points system is clunky and hard to manually fix anything.. I guess it's trying to prevent fraud, but... for instance, I'm a pet food store... we do a buy 12 get 1 free program on our bags of dog food. If a person buys 6 bags of one food, and then switches to a different line of foods but the first 6 bags might sort of count (like they buy 15# bags, then buy 30# bags) you can't transfer the points from the first 6 bags at all... there is no way to "force" the free bag and deduct points. If you comp the bag manually, the customer gets one more point, not 6 less points. There is no report that I can find that tells you how many returns you've done in 1 month, or from 1 vendor, or from 1 customer, etc.. no way to track returns at all as far as I can tell. Sales per day of the week is also not found. In order to do my taxes each month, I have to run 2 separate reports... 1 to find service sales (non-taxable) and another to find tax exempt sales (like for government orgs). shall I go on?
Vendor Response
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Overall: I run a small business shoe store. The store has been in business for 33 years and coming into 2011 had never had any type of POS/inventory management. I came to SoftwareAdvice.com looking for assistance in locating the perfect retail software for a business that had previously never had as much as a computer. After a couple of months, I was able to narrow my search to Pacific Amber Technologies and their AmberPOS software. Despite being based out of Vancouver and having a 3-hour time difference to me on the east coast, Pacific Amber's customer service was top notch. Since they are a smaller business themselves, they seemed to understand the constraints of time and money and really worked to make sure I was getting everything I needed without spending more than I had to. In the early stages of getting all of the hardware, if they didn't have a product that I needed for a price that worked, they would direct me towards where online I could find it while maximizing my dollars. They assisted me every step of the way, from installation of software, to setup of any hardware, to getting my inventory tracking up and running. When it came time to set up my online store, AmberPOS was once again a huge help. The integration with my physical inventory and my online inventory was synced without much hang-up. As a business that hadn't used any type of inventory tracking previously, or anything digital at all, AmberPOS was relativity simple to teach to my sales staff and owner, all of who had very little computer experience. Most caught on very easily, and I definitely think that AmberPOS's layout and graphics not only make it a nice system to look at everyday, but much more inviting to someone who wouldn't be as comfortable with a system that functioned the same but looked like a spreadsheet. Over the past six months that we have had AmberPOS up and running fully in our store, any time we needed assistance we never had much issue getting in touch with their support team. Usually we could get the issue resolved within 24 hours, and they always checked back in to make sure everything was running smoothly. I cannot recommend Pacific Amber and their AmberPOS software more for a company of any size. The only reason I gave Functionality a 4-star rating is there are still a few minor issues, but whenever those are brought to their attention they are pretty quick to listen and update the software. I'll be sure to use AmberPOS for years to come!
"Endless flexibility and functionality. Great service."
Pros: I love that the system is easy to customize and flexible. The Amber staff is always available and willing to help, and have helped me craft the system to work exactly how we need it to work for the unique needs my retail store has. They are able to remote into our computer and help us create new features or troubleshoot problems in real time.
Cons: I would normally call it a con that I have to sometimes leave a voicemail, but honestly, it's faster than going through 20 different prompts before I can reach a live person. When I do leave a message they call back right away. There are no voice prompts. It's either a live person straight away or a quick call back. And the support staff is a small team, so you can easily speak to the same person every time you call, and they know our account when we call, AND they know and understand their product, which is more than I can say for 90% of the technology vendors I normally have to deal with!
