Ventus Software is a business management system for general contractors as well as firms in the mechanical, HVAC, petroleum, commercial food service and banking equipment industries. The vendor's consultants have also built business management and accounting systems for specialty contractors in fields such as drywall, excavation, landscaping, painting and heavy/highway construction.

The Ventus Software suite offers more than 20 integrated modules, which users can select as they need. Core modules include the following:

• Accounting and Payroll, which covers general accounting needs (ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll and purchase orders) and also offers the Quickview dashboard;
• Pick-and-Choose Report Writer, which comes with more than 80 pre-formatted reports, can pull data from Crystal Reports and SQL Server Reporting Services and can export reports as Excel or PDF files, the vendor said;
• Sales Order Processing, which offers customizable data entry screens and wireless barcoding;
• Inventory & Equipment, which tracks and manages stocked parts and provides maintenance alerts;
• Job Costing, which helps users schedule tasks, manage change orders, build reports and compare field estimates to committed and budgeted costs;
• Service Management and Dispatch, which brings together electronic dispatch, maintenance scheduling, service contract administration and work order billing, Ventus Software said;
• eService, which is a Web portal that lets customers create work orders and track service calls and lets subcontractors receive service request notifications and provide updates; and
• Mobile Field Service, which works with Windows Mobile PDAs or laptops and offers customer signature capture, on-site invoicing and optional on-site printing, according to Ventus Software.