Cin7 Core reviews

We've been using the DEAR system for quite a while now and I must say I couldn't be any happier. It was a seamless transition from our old system, and I especially appreciate how well DEAR integrates with our accounting software. This makes everyone's work a whole lot easier. I have contacted support on several occasions with questions that I had, and I always received a quick, thorough, and very helpful response. We manufacture our products as well wholesale and retail them with an online store, and everything works so well together with DEAR that it really helps us focus on building our business rather than focusing our attention on trying to keep up with inventory and ordering. I would highly recommend DEAR systems to anyone looking for a new inventory management system.

-Bob Weiss

One thing that would be useful would be to be able to call for customer service. We have used customer service email on several occasions, and have always had a pretty quick response, however, if we have a pressing issue, it would be nice to have a number to call and someone to talk with.

"Moved over from sage around 12 months ago to Xero and added Dear which answered the major issues I was having with Sage in that the inventory element (sure, that's not what is was designed for) was woefully inadequate for our business.

I have to report that 12 months in that Dear has met and exceeded expectations and added real value to my inventory management and customer order processing. With the recent addition of the B2B portal, and what my customers will be able to do once is it fully operational will really revolutionalise some of the challenges we faced in, for example, letting customers know what is available from stock etc.

Overall, we made the right move and I haven't seen a better combination of integrated applications than Dear and Xero!
Well done and thanks to both!"

Dear is a brilliant and responsive company, although my only gripe, is that there are few updates or communique's relating to bug fixes or developments of the application. Example is the B2B portal, there are many comments about what features are needed and bug fixes, but as yet no commentary from Dear as to which will or won't be incorporated. Like me, many will become less likely to comment f it is not apparent that they are being acknowledged. Come on Dear, at least add a comment!!

Ease of use and intuitivity, as well as youtube guides for most of the products modules.It has been really easy to train new staff onto the platform.

By being brilliantly simple, it is not allowing for flexibility which is very often needed. It does a very basic job of goods in / invoice / goods out but could benefit of some simple upgrades.

Customer Database Re ordering points and inventory

Inventory can be improved, hand held device tracing should be added

Easy onboarding process, had good support and was provided with demos on how to do the various tasks. Keeps accurate stock control and order management that keeps our warehouse and ecommerce store up to date.

Took a bit of getting used to. Sometimes the connection is a bit slow - not sure if it is our NBN internet connection or the platform.

Easy to use. Multiple functions for whole business. Excellent traceability functions. Easy to adjust it to suit your business.

Quite time consuming to upload all current stock to system at initial use

Integration with Shopify and the E-commerce feature

Unable to have more integrations - there are better ways to integrate the e-commerce and I think they should look at this as its very important to scale.

Somehwat ease of functionality integration and deployment

at times customer support is quite difficult to come by but on whatsapp it appears to be quite good if you get the right support staff member

Fantastic support from [sensitive content hidden] at dear support

Easy, User Friendly, Good Customer care support

No customizations. If it is easy to do customizations to report, that would be awesome. (Just like Cin7 omni)

I LOVE the fact that I can invoice before receiving the inventory physically. We work with an overseas company and their business practice is to invoice once the product leaves their hands, however accepting their invoice made my inventory way off in QBO. So glad to be able to maintain what the true physical inventory is and not have to try to keep up with the travelling inventory too.

The feature I would like the least is the CRM. I was really hoping that it would work for our sales team and that they would be able to have access to the inventory information easily. However, the CRM lacked a lot of the capabilities that our sales managers were looking for to help with managing their teams.

User friendly
Good video demonstration on tutorial, easy to understand and follow
excellent aftersales support - swift in response

No direct module to handle goods replacement and warranty process /RMA portions
Not too user friendly or suitable to be used on project based jobs/ activities

The great integration with woo commerce and the easy invoicing and ordering processes plus advanced inventory management capacity.

The zero/ non zero stock can be a little confusing and awkward.

The sales, production and purchasing modules provide an excellent integrated platform for our manufacturing operations. We stock over 300 chemicals to make hundreds of rubber compounds that we use in production of custom rubber products and Dear keeps the complexity under control. I love the continual upgrades on the cloud and the easy access from anywhere. Finally, the standard interface is good but the API lets us implement solutions to meet specific needs at various points in our production.

While the technical support is excellent I find I occasionally need to reach out to them because the online documentation is not well organized.

The reporting module is adequate but often requires off-line processing to get the results you are looking for. They make that easy with excel exporting but it is impossible to create a report that is self-explanatory. For example, you can build complex filters to get specific results but you can not re-title the generic report with a specific name, or include the filter values to explain your data.

I also wish the date fields would accept time information so that we could capture real-time production data in the system--at the moment you can only enter a start and stop date when you create finished goods.

Contains the vast majority of required features to operate a successful e-commerce store. Nice layout, not too bulky, and sticks to what its good at. API is well written which allows you to expand usability with third party apps.

Performance! Over the past 6 months this has gone from bad to worse. The odd hang, became frequent hangs, then time outs on the server. The latest sizeable price increase to allow them to fix this was unwelcome as I already pay for a package that is supposed to perform as promised. This left a little bit of a sour taste. Now though, once again, their system is down, completely!
My team cannot access anything, at all. If a call or email comes through, we cannot see stock, prices, lead times, not even the customer records.
Support say they are working on it, the ETA? Don't know. Great.
I say avoid until they sort out their issues with performance. I will be looking for alternatives as I cannot afford this kind of issue, and paying more for the service they are already supposed to be offering is bad form in my opinion.

The user interface is nice and easy to use.

The bugs! There are so many little bugs that pop up all the time. We have a team of 10 people using DEAR and almost daily there are more bugs that need to be flagged to DEAR technical support and they always blame the user until finally they realize that it is actually a bug.

While thinking, as a Distributor, we have 'out-of-the-box' requirements for managing our inventory and processes around it, the exercise of evaluating our idiosyncrasies in order to go shopping for a new IM system has taught me that there's possibly not the absolute perfect system for any business, but the Dear system is beating the rest as it ticks most of the boxes on my wish-list for an inventory management system. For a complex system it's relatively intuitive and seems to be built with real world functionality in mind. In addition to my list of specific features, I was looking for a system that could automate as much of our manual tasks and work flows as possible - reduce the amount of data entry required and minimise opportunities for human error. Compared to other systems reviewed, Dear excels in this area.

Possible just a COVID thing ...or just a modern day thing, but I remember the days when; if you were looking at making a big commitment to something as important at the system that would manage all your inventory and link to your financials, someone would sit down with you and work through your specifics, helping you evaluate their offering as the right purchase decision for you to make. These days, it's "down load a free version and have a play". I've probably reached the sames decision based on the latter, but it's definitely taken up a lot more of my time to do so. Granted, phone calls and screen sharing sessions are on offer, but I find the time-limited sessions, working with generic databases etc. less beneficially that the old fashioned way. Not a short coming of the Dear System itself and every software company may have the same M.O, but perhaps an opportunity for Dear to differentiate themselves from the masses and win more fans - and quickly?

The software can be used "out-of-the-box" after a minimal amount of setup, and can also be used in more complex installations where bespoke software development might be needed.

The simplicity of the initial setup, the simplicity of the menu navigation, and the speed with which new users are able to grasp what they need to do to accomplish their tasks caused me to take a closer look at this software and I'm glad I took the time to do so.

The multiple warehouse locations field, along with the multiple bin locations field, both available in DEAR but not available in some other offerings, is a basic requirement of a stock management system as far as I am concerned.

Whilst the software might appear complex for first-time users, those with experience of stock systems and business processes should find it a breeze to set up and use for the purpose intended, especially if they are familiar with setting up other software. It's an advantage, but not a requirement, if the person(s) setting it up also have an understanding of business accounts and are able to find their way around creating/editing MS Word mail-merge templates.

I am impressed that I have been able to use the software to accomplish pretty much every task that my clients' have asked of it so far. The ease of integration with other cloud-based applications puts another tick in the box for me.

This is a comment and not a complaint; although the reporting functionality in the 'out-of-the-box' version is adequate there is room for improvement. The limitations can be overcome by exporting the files and adapting them as needed. Those with a more specific software development skill- set (or more time to learn) would be able to achieve a great deal more from the software than is possible using the 'out-of-the-box' version.

Its synchronization with Xero is excellent. In three years we have never had a sync issue. Also within Dear the inventory, sales and purchasing all work very well and the ability to drill through different layers to search products or orders is very good. We use the Product Availability function all the time to confirm status of sales orders v purchase orders and stock availability. We have also recently started to use the Attributes more for both sales orders and products and this has been a further tool within Dear to help us manage our day to day sales process.

What still infuriates me is the way that sales quotes show the sales margin against Average cost. This is hopeless folr any new product as there is no history and it is also hopeless if you receive a part into stock before you post the purchase invoice. Why we can't have the option in the step up to show the margin against either the supplier fixed cost or last purchase cost is beyond me!!!!!! Argh!!!!
We currently have to run all our project quotes through an Excel spreadsheet to make sure the margins are correct. This is really infuriating and as a result we are looking for alternative options for our stock management.

After almost two years with DEAR, we couldn't be more pleased! We needed a centralised inventory system with CRM capabilities that could seamlessly integrate and sync to SHOPIFY, XERO, as well as our offline sales channels. Being in the food industry, we also needed a system that could track the shelf-life of our products, and make sure first expired items were sold first. This is an important feature for us that we did not find in TradeGecko, which we tested out as well before we made our decision in early 2016. DEAR also helps us keep track of our items on consignment (location / expiry date / batch number) as well as create hampers and other gift bundles with ease, thanks to their Bill of Materials function. I particularly enjoy the level of detail available to us, to store relevant information such as supplier SKUs and multiple price lists. The system is sturdy and the UX is straightforward and intuitive, which has made the transition easy for the whole team!

Tamara Agusta
General Manager
Profood Ltd

Occasionally DEAR can be a little slow to load, and customer service is not always as quick as one would like it to be.

We are loving this software, been using 8 months now and it is powerful. We run 5 e-commerce sites, 4 warehouses and sell in 3 currencies and it's handling all well. Support, as mentioned, isn't quite as easy as getting a call but we use their tutorials, common sense, their live chat.
We also paid for assistance with setup as we didn't want to make any mistakes and desired a bit of support from Work Smart NZ, these guys are great too and worth the extra investment if you value your time”

We are currently trying to get the good word out on various sites and we are hoping that you would to take the time out of their day to share it on Getapp:

The .docx invoice templates are hard work to manipulate, some more standardized system (like unleashed offers) would make life much easier.
No great integration with a CRM currently. Also they need a Zapier integration so it can connect to other web apps. We are using email parser functionality to achieve most of this but it's complicated.

The software logic is well thought out and relates to real life usage scenarios in our case. The organisation of the operations in the system are easy to understand and access. Support of the software has been fantastic so far, starting from deployment and thereafter. Whatever we needed, response has been near instant and competent.

The software is browser based and at times it can feel a little slow. Page load speed must be improved as it can be a little frustrating when you need to conduct many transactions in the day. The navigation could also be improved to reduce a few clicks to get to things easier and faster. For example, it is not possible to see next or previous document (SO, INV, PO). You need to come out to the main list and click into the document you want. Simple 'Previous', 'Next' navigation can be added within the document page, which will be very helpful when for example reviewing a number of Sales Orders or Invoices and need to move quickly between the documents. Mobile apps are limited and not particularly practical. Would be great if they could roll out a serious modern iPad app, which can be useful for sales/cs when out in the field to access product and inventory info, pricing, customer profile etc. and able to create a draft quotation on the fly.

Well thought out sales workflow. Really flexible and powerful in ways others weren't to enter sales orders. Takes a little getting used to, but there is a lot in there. Love the ability to price tier for B2B sales. Integrates really well with Shopify and eBay. Need to check out the B2B portal that is available, but haven't gotten to that part yet.
Even though the support is all email based, we have been delighted with the speed of response and solutions to any issues we've had. I'd say on average the response time to new tickets has been in the 5-15 minute range with maybe one that reached 45 minutes. Often I'd wait longer on hold with a tech line with other companies than it takes to get a response from DEAR support email.
Great integration with our accounting.
Easy to implement API for extending the functionality of DEAR.

There are a few things that still need improvement we've run into.
Credit Notes/Memos are terribly hard to figure out and make work correctly if you wish to give the customer a credit to use at a future date not tied to a transaction in DEAR.
DEAR does tiered pricing for sales, but there is no way to have volume purchasing discount tiers beyond manually changing every time a PO is created.
If a small change has to take place during fulfillment DEAR requires you to revert the order back to the very beginning of the workflow process and complete every stage again. Rather than just let you go back one step.
The fulfillment QC process could be strengthened a lot. It's basically based on trust with no verification. Right now it assumes all counts/data entry keyed in are 100% accurate. I'd like to see some kind of barcode based QC verification.

It manages my inventory and order and is cloud based.

When Dear is upgrading its system, customers can find the software extremely slow or not working at all. This can go for weeks at a time causing massive frustration for my staff around the country as well as disruption to my business.
The lack of communication and support from DEAR mean you feel little loyalty to the product.

Nearly every single feature of the software runs like software that is 4 or 5 times the cost runs. With no setup costs and a flexible monthly account, I would strongly recommend any user to try this software if you are thinking about it.

In particular, we really loved the POS and were pleasantly surprised by the functionality.

We are based in the UK and it was very difficult to book in a call with the support team within a reasonable timeframe. Both calls I had within the 2 months of being subscribed, I had to wait 1-2 weeks to be able to speak to someone about an issue. Support on chat was available but this didn't help me to resolve my issues.

This may not be an issue elsewhere in the world.