According to Sara Anderson of Sharpe Enterprises, American Contractor is "the worst accounting software I have ever encountered."

The company purchased the software from Maxwell Systems after a "really impressive" demonstration. A free trial of American Contractor was not available, but Anderson said she and her colleagues figured the demos were enough: "We were told so many things that we wanted to hear. Now, after having the software for over two years, it was the worst investment we have ever made."

Anderson described the scheduling module as "quite spendy" but difficult to use. "You can't modify anything," she said. "You can't even print a schedule to fit on one page! You can't add headers or footers or anything. It is the most unprofessional looking thing I've ever printed."

AIA billings are also tough to work with in American Contractor, since "you have a limit of about 12 characters for the Item Description. I know these sound like little things," she added, "but there are a million things in this software that are terrible."

Maxwell System's customer support did not help either, Anderson said. "If you want help with anything, pretty much everything is considered a 'custom solution,'" and that can get expensive, she said.

Overall, Anderson rated American Contractor software a 0 out of 10.