George

You may have already made a decision, but here's my 2 cents:

I've been using MOM for 2.5 years, and it's great for out-of-the-box order fulfillment, and the price was nice at the time. Looking back, I wish we had ponied up for a SQL-based system. My #2 candidate was InOrder software by Morse Data: http://www.morsedata.com

1) I believe that MOM is a good value. However, you may have to alter your business policies to fit MOM, rather than altering MOM to fit your business. Certainly, you can pay the MOMHelpers to customize the program, but they are pricey, and pretty much the only game in town.

2) Dydacomp's support and SiteLink's support are OK, just like the other posts mention. I've often given their techies the answer after researching it myself. If you press them, they will get a programmer involved, but not if you're being a jerk about it. SiteLink's support tries to please, but remember that they are limited by the fuctions of their programs.

3) We considered:
* InOrder, which finished #2 (link is listed above)
* Everest, http://www.icode.com/ (too many Indian techies, couldn't understand them, and the system was just OK)
* Colinear, http://www.colinear.com - (I fixed this on 5/18, having mixed up the company names) These people were very friendly. but didn't have an ecommerce option. Recently, they've partnered up with commercev3.com, and now have an integrated package. I would have seriously considered using them, since we are considering using commercev3 for our online site, and importing orders into MOM.
* Oracle had a solution, but it was very pricey.
* avexxis.com, dmasales.com, imssoft.com, rev2.com, rigden.com, terno.com, and zirconsoftware.com were all ones that I reviewed, but rejected.

One guy has a web site devoted to catalog management software, but he charges $90 for the guide. I simply printed off the list of ones he reviewed and contacted them myself. He's gotten smarter, and removed the list. http://www.schell.com/guide/

4) We took SiteLink right up to implementation, and pulled the plug before launching, because it would have been a major step backwards. They have made a lot of improvements to their offerings since then, though.

5) We don't use the integration tool with WorldShip, due to a few problems. MOM exports the daily shipping info to a table that WorldShip uses to pull information from (name, address, etc). However, you have to enter all of the shipments into WorldShip and print all of the labels before sending any more packages from MOM. Why? Because the new info from MOM will overwrite the old info from your earlier process. We use a 3rd party software from HarveySoft, which manages the data by appending the old transfer, rather than overwriting it. HarveySoft cost us about $1700, plus implementation, and ongoing tech support.

I think you should discount the advice from the Microsoft-basher, since he/she doesn't provide you with a viable and cost-effective alternative. I'm in favor of open-source software, but there simply aren't good choices with robust support and teams of personnel working on potential problems.

Have you checked the supplier code on the stock item that you're putting on the Purchase Order? If you have only a drop ship supplier code, or no supplier code, you'll get these blank purchase orders.

I've had the same issue, and resolved it this way.

This is a clumsy option, but it does work. Open your Database Utility (dbuwin.exe), open the CMS.dbf, scroll down to find the order number you need, then use the right arrow key to go to the Last_user field. There you'll see the operator ID initials of the last person to open the order.

There are two pitfalls to watch out for. If you opened the order in the regular MOM interface first, then you'll see your own initials in that field. Also, try not to erase anything in the fields while you're in there!

If other people are using MOM when you're checking, you'll need to put a space, then the letter "s" after dbuwin.exe, to run it in shared mode. Example: C:\dbuwin.exe s

Same here. We just created a customer profile named STORE, and use the shipping method "CP" for customer pickup. Many of our store customers will call in their special orders, and then come in to pick it up.

If a customer wants to build a profile, get a mailer, etc, then we'll take the time to enter their info. If you don't use a separate shipping address, then the Quick Print will include all of the financial info (price per item, extended cost, sales tax, etc).

I'm not very close to Kalispell, but am in the Seattle area. I can tell you that MOM is a great program to use for the price, but you may have to alter some of your business policies to fit MOM, rather than the other way around.

Do you have the training book that comes with MOM? It's a small, spiral-bound book that walks you through all of the basic functions. If not, see if you can get your boss to buy one from Dydacomp. It should have come with the original disk.

From that point, you'll really just pick up skills as you need them. I find that I often have to "trick" the system to get the results I want.

If you have more details about the problems you want to overcome, I'll be happy to provide any input if I've experienced the same issue.