When Empire Roofing found that Peachtree couldn't give it the detailed information it needed, the company migrated to ComputerEase. They purchased the software from Nextsystems in Austin, Texas, and spent about $20,000.

Controller and IT manager Jay Wallis reviewed a number of products, and, while they all had some good features, "most seemed very complex, or at least that's how the presentations made them seem. I didn't feel that we would have to completely revise our processes to get the benefits from ComputerEase construction software. In the end, the ease of learning this software and the people I dealt with sold me, as well as the competitive price for this type of product."

"We use it for everything -- job costing, PO's, payables, receivables, etc. It handles it all quickly and we had no problems with it technically or otherwise. It produces accurate information and reports. Our jobs are not usually complex and therefore we don't use some of the functionality that is available."

Over the past five years, the software has enabled Empire Roofing to greatly reduce errors and process orders with greater speed, while also expanding beyond their expectations. "The best that I can say is that we struggled to do $14m in 2002 and thought we might have hit the wall. This year we will do approximately $24m and are continuing to grow."

Wallis would like to see the ability to export to Excel, and import more easily. Occasionally, it can be difficult to find a report or specific function, as the program isn't always as intuitive as he had hoped. "In retrospect, we probably should have set up some things differently and planned to use some functions that we currently do not, but hindsight is 20-20. We could get more detail on job cost, for example, but are the additional steps worth it?"

Users need only average computer experience to effectively use ComputerEase, after receiving the initial training. Getting comfortable with the new system took about two weeks, during which time Wallis admits that things were "tense," but since everything got up and running there have been no major problems and Nextsystems' support has been very good. "Their staff is friendly and helpful, and best of all they don't make us feel stupid when we ask something painfully obvious."

Wallis would recommend ComputerEase to contractors of all sizes, and feels that it does as good of a job as the more expensive programs. He is currently reviewing v6.0 to see if upgrading will be worth the "hassle/benefit" ratio. Overall, Wallis rated ComputerEase 5.0 an 8 out of 10.