Intuit Master Builder

Originally Posted by Unregistered

It costs upwards of $7,000 depending of the modules one chooses and several more thousands of $s in support contracts.

It was developed by another company, I think Omware, and bought out by Intuit a couple of years ago to try and get some of the upper-small to medium construction business market for bookkeeping/accounting.

The program itself is a dinosaur compared to the state of current software development. To me, it was like trying to work with a straightjacket on. It may have been OK for the early 80s but not for now. (But it is also true that construction software is generally very far back in user interface design and general functionality compared to other generally used software.)

For example, it doesn't even have a Check Register where a user can easily see a list of checks written, like Quickbooks or Quicken, and printing checks, bill payments, etc is a 4 step process that is so inflexible that it's like trying to file in a dark file room. That's only a small tip of the bigger tip of a huge iceberg.

The program is so restrictive in terms of keeping books for a construction company (which is one of the few businesses that have dozens and dozens of details to deal with in every turn and every aspect of the work day) that, in my opinion, the business has to change its very nature in order to adhere to an antiquated notion of running a construction company according to the program's developer.

Reporting is inflexible, customization if reports is torture, but they do offer ODBC connectivity (I never tried it during my evaluation) that Quickbooks severely lacks and it will never have (on purpose, of course).

If they just keep on adding patches to the program to justify the overpriced annual upgrade costs, the program wouldn't be worth the investment. If they take the basic open database design and try to develop something user friendly, efficient, functional and useful, there may be a small chance of offering something decent for the construction business.

Try it out for yourself and see what you think. I think they still have a money back guarrantee.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

It costs upwards of $7,000 depending of the modules one chooses and several more thousands of $s in support contracts.

It was developed by another company, I think Omware, and bought out by Intuit a couple of years ago to try and get some of the upper-small to medium construction business market for bookkeeping/accounting.

The program itself is a dinosaur compared to the state of current software development. To me, it was like trying to work with a straightjacket on. It may have been OK for the early 80s but not for now. (But it is also true that construction software is generally very far back in user interface design and general functionality compared to other generally used software.)

For example, it doesn't even have a Check Register where a user can easily see a list of checks written, like Quickbooks or Quicken, and printing checks, bill payments, etc is a 4 step process that is so inflexible that it's like trying to file in a dark file room. That's only a small tip of the bigger tip of a huge iceberg.

The program is so restrictive in terms of keeping books for a construction company (which is one of the few businesses that have dozens and dozens of details to deal with in every turn and every aspect of the work day) that, in my opinion, the business has to change its very nature in order to adhere to an antiquated notion of running a construction company according to the program's developer.

Reporting is inflexible, customization if reports is torture, but they do offer ODBC connectivity (I never tried it during my evaluation) that Quickbooks severely lacks and it will never have (on purpose, of course).

If they just keep on adding patches to the program to justify the overpriced annual upgrade costs, the program wouldn't be worth the investment. If they take the basic open database design and try to develop something user friendly, efficient, functional and useful, there may be a small chance of offering something decent for the construction business.

Try it out for yourself and see what you think. I think they still have a money back guarrantee.

Originally Posted by Ominx

My company, residential developer, has also tried to implemet Master Builder for over a year...and failed. The program is simply to cumbersome. It's not just a matter of it having a steep learning curve, it simply is too inefficient. Have any of you seen the process to simply create a purchase order? Running through different screens which are horribly laid out just to enter in your assemblies, and then on a different screen you must enter your parts, but wait, you have to go so many levels deep to stay organized. After all that, you might be able to spit out a PO...but what if there is a small unique change to an order. Well, that can't be manually changed in most cases. You'll probably have to go 5 screens deep to make it happen.

Bottom line, it's not user friendly. We're going with QBPro 2004 and have already gotten further in a couple of months than the year we wasted with MB.

Oh and the support. The online classes are OK, but the professional training is rediculously expensive. I don't care how much your company is bringing in. I just think $150-175/hr is rediculous. Then again, you can get on a professional support plan for anywhere from $2-10K.

Originally Posted by Grumpy

What's the software name? "Home Builder"?

Originally Posted by Spectatorz

We have been watching this subject since the begining. I have the basic Masterbuilder and understand the problems discussed here. In our research on the subject of software for these business applications we found one:
www.turtlesoft.com/

It looks like it would be good from what we have seen so far and it is not really expensive . At this time we have downloaded the materials and are looking it over.
I hope to share this information with everyone so as to find a solution to our problems.
If you will take the time to look into this and give us your input, we would appreciate it.
Have a Great Day !!!

Originally Posted by hatchet

I would tend to agree with you Grumpy. Highly unlikely they all found this site just to say good things about a company.