NetFORUM Pro Review

I built association databases in Excel back in the dark ages, then FoxbasePro, then MS Access, and have a pretty good understanding of what associations need. Next step was a custom-built database that interacted through the web so members could update their own info and network with one another. That was great...at first...but quickly needed patches and odd customizations, and staff being trained that "although it says X we use this field for Y." By the time I did a thorough search for our next AMS, primarily to get us in line with credit card data protection requirements, I was completely sold on the idea of a customizeable off-the-shelf program. Avectra's product provided us with the most customization along with the best advantages of an off-the-shelf program that would have regular updates and strong support. One of the first updates added member photos to their profiles - a pleasant surprise. Other updates have been equally welcome advancements. It has been nice to be able to pick up the phone when something doesn't work, or we don't understand how it works, and get help. It has been nice not to be the one person in the world who knows our database inside and out, to be able to hand it off if needed and know there was training and support available. I know people complain sometimes about tech support at Avectra, but I think on the whole it has served us very well. We have very complicated multi-choice fields in many categories to capture member data specific to our industry, and the Netforum platform has been great for scaling up with our increasing needs to add custom fields and forms. I loved Avectra for the critical requirements, solid performance, tech support, ability to set up our extensive data the way we needed it, password protected member-web interface, online storefront, event registration, custom reporting. I also loved the less-critical nice-to-haves: web content management built into the AMS, committee tracking, etc. Also loved the integration with our email provider Informz. What we gave up was ease of use from an internal perspective. Building reports was complicated. Some data resided in different tables that couldn't be accessed together into a single report. If there were more hours in the day I'd have spent them learning more to be a more powerful query and dataset builder, but we managed with what I could pull together. The worst thing was that the import to Quickbooks brought in summary data only, total amounts into each revenue account. Prior to Avectra, we did all accounts receivable in Quickbooks, separate from our database (yes, dual entry, yuck). In Avectra, we had single data entry - and better yet our members could make their own purchases - but the specific information of who bought what lived in Avectra, and Quickbooks only had sum-total journal entries. That has been a downside, compared to the old days when a Quickbooks report could show me every dues transaction and who it was for. We managed though. We also came up with a rather complicated method of reconciling the financial batches against our bank statements. It has worked, but not been ideal...somewhat time consuming. I think the main strength of Avectra is the customizeable off-the-shelf aspect. It is good enough to be worth the headaches; definitely not perfect.