DocketManager
Review of DocketManager Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs.
Overview
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DocketManager Features
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Customer Reviews
See why people love DocketManager
Marian V.
Verified UserPrinting · 11-50 employees
Perspective of a Docket Manager Print Shop Administrator
Docket Manager and I have had a great relationship with attempting to improve the systems overall functionality. They have a really great support team and respond very quickly. I use the system day to day for extended number of hours, and by working on it so closely I am capable of locating bugs and issues that another user might have overlooked. These are reported via support tickets, and usually get fixed with a roll-out either later that day or the next day. Docket Manager is a great business that listens to the community, and makes improvements based on the suggestions their customers bring to the table.
- Docket Manager is hosted externally and requires no internal hardware to host
- The software is accessible online from any location
- This allows me to work remotely and support multiple businesses
- Business sales reps are also able to access it from their mobile devices, to check up on order workflow, create a quote on the spot, and send direct emails, with custom generated files, directly from the online system
- The workflow is well designed, from when you create a quote, convert it into an order, as it runs trough production, to when its shipped
- Each section of Docket Manager has a straight forward user interface, that places content into locations where you would expect to find it
- Docket Manager also features an online ordering store functionality
- This allows us to create custom online portals for clients
- We are able to offer them an easy method for re-ordering generic material, or to order custom variable data products
- This system is really great as a MIS and a W2P combo, all in one package
- They keep making improvements and updates do not cost anything
- There is an online forum where Docket Manager customers are able to make feature requests, and multiple of them are always chosen to be implemented into the next release
- The software improves for the community, and there is great communication between the customers and Docket Manager
- At the time of this review, Online Ordering is great at B2B, but not optimized for B2C
- B2C will hopefully be improved within a few versions
- Its capable of B2C at this time, but I think there are a few more features that are required to make it really work
Dean C.
Verified UserPrinting · 11-50 employees
No Pain - No Gain
It has been a hard transition from Franklin Estimating to Docket Manager. With that said it was my ignorance of the pricing rather than any problem with DM. Furthermore I was told that it would take 6 months and they were right on! [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] came to Abilene and walked us through the setup. That was an absolute "must Have" in my opinion. Without their guidance I don't believe we would have made it. I was bothered by having several things in the program NOT work correctly "out of the box". I would work for hours on something only to turn in a ticket and be told "oh that is a programming issue" we will get back with you on a solution or "the program shouldn't do that". This was especially annoying during the time that I was spending 16 hours a day at the office trying to get the program set up. I spent an entire Saturday one weekend trying to get a price list to work on some custom envelopes. I kept feeling like I was doing something wrong. I re-watched videos as I figured that was what I was going to be encouraged to do if I called in with the problem. After giving up and calling in it ended up there was a problem with the programming. I was told that some checkbox shouldn't have been checked in the background of the program. I believe that some of the forward progression of the program (new ideas) is overshadowing some of the common sense solutions (to the existing program) that are being presented on the forum by users. Seems several years is a long time for a fix.
- Reordering is by far my favorite part of the program
- Outsourcing is also a favorite of mine
- Seamless integration of workorder, delivery ticket, invoice
- I dislike that you cannot duplicate templates from group to group
- IE a 5x7, 4/0 could go under invitations or postcards or business forms
- I would love to have the template in each without having to recreate the templates
- That bothers me
- It bothers me that we have to call every month to get help on our sales tax from [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]
- It bothers me that I have to click in boxes that are highlighted
- Some boxes you don't have to click into others you do
- Cannot have "sub" accounts or "child accounts
- We print for several hospitals and several universities and it would be nice to know how much the Hospital is printing with us without having to look at the entire report and add up 15 different departments totals
Switched From
Franklin was not doing enough as we were using it strictly as the estimating module. We were writing up work orders We were filling in paper on a paper schedule We were filling in a production schedule We were writing hand written delivery tickets We were then entering the information into Quickbooks for invoicing. DM is doing the majority of the above seemlessly. I have not figured out how to do the paper scheduling or the production schedule in a way that is clear and concise. We are pushing the jobs through the shop however, I have not found a report or even a custom report that is as easy to read as our schedule.
Why they chose it
"[SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] stopped me at the Chicago show and asked if she could give us a tour of DM. I was NOT planning on stopping at the booth as I was on my way with a check in hand to buy ACCURA Software and 4 or 5 modules. After looking at the program and then going to ACCURA's booth it seemed their program was less friendly. It did have some offerings that in hind sight would have been nice to have with their CSR module such as "child" accounts and more ability to input information on a client or track phone conversations. I went to the hotel that night and came up with 64 questions for [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]. They had an acceptable answer to all my questions. I liked that the company was a smaller company and felt that I could probably get some help when needed. I liked that they were owned by a man that had a printing company for years therefore would understand issues being had by printers. I liked that they company had only recently re-written their program. I liked that DM had a guy from Hagan come into the company or be associated with the company somehow as he would bring more ideas to the table for the program to progress into a powerhouse. DM is a good program. I believe I made the right choice for Conley Printing. Are there things that I wish could be better - Absolutely. Are there things that are working perfect - Absolutely. I do wish I could get the portals going for our customers but I don't know how to do all the coding that is talked about so I am fearful of them."
Andre A.
Verified UserPrinting · 11-50 employees
Great system for a diverse set of needs
Support has been the strongest part of the picture for me. The staff is very knowledgeable and quick to respond. Since implementing the rollout single-handedly, without their support I wouldn't have made it this far.
- MIS/W2P systems for print shops are difficult to evaluate, and the needs of users in the industry are varied
- Biggest pro for DocketManager is the active development, excellent support, and community of users
- DM listens to its users and put resources into implementing feature requests
- Still feel like it's missing a handful of important (to me) features
- It will get there, but until it does, it occasionally feels like using a beta product
- In the interest of fairness, it's still the best cloud MIS that I've evaluated
Switched From
As a primarily Mac shop, PrintSmith for Mac was no longer being developed and was instead being replaced with PrintSmith Vision, a web-based replacement. I did not like the direction the team was going (still using Flash for the primary interface, in 2015, for example).
Jason T.
Verified UserArts and Crafts · 2-10 employees
Pretty Impressive Software
Verified reviewer
- Their support is excellent and every time I have had a question, I got a response in less than a day
- It does take some getting use too but once you do, it make a lot of sense
- I work in the prepress department and the fact that I can see the status of all the projects I am working on without having to run around the shop and ask five people what is going on just saves me so much time
- The setup for some of the items is a bit confusing
- You can create your own invoices, job tickets and other items, but it's a bit tricky to get it right
- Support was very helpful but it took me a good three days to get a custom page made
- It does not have the feature ( currently ) to put preview images onto the invoices or packing list
- We have done a few projects where the floor team had to pack a lot of items per store and it was very confusing to them to know which store got which item because the packing list where just lines of text
- Also, because of this, it causes some confusion with the shipping department or when someone comes in to pick up a job
- Sight minor grip here but it also doesn't know the size of the PDF you put into the system
- If I have a job for a 6" x 4" postcard and I someone mess up the set up, DocketManager will not tell me that the size is wrong
- Yes, I know that's a sight issue, but I have worked on other systems that did this and it was a nice way to check the job and avoid mistakes before production
Switched From
PressWise works well if you do not do a lot of wide format. We are a 100 percent wide format shop and PressWise just did not work out for our shop. The problem was the way PressWise handles layouts for wide format. At the time of this review, you would have to make a special layout for every wide format job. PressWise has a lot of pre-built templates for Offset and Digital and if you are a shop that does nothing but offset and digital, it's amazing. If you are wide format shop, you either make a layout per job or just use PressWise for everything else but layout and get Esko iCut ( or some other software ) for your imposition.
Phillip H.
Verified UserPrinting · 2-10 employees
BLDC Review of Docket Manager
Overall the experience with the product and the company has been positive. Customer service and support have been very responsive to my needs and have been easy and enjoyable to work with.
- Went with DM because of on-line b2b portal integration
- Setup took some time which is to be expected when setting up a system such as this, however, the support was fantastic
- I could call in at most anytime and I got directly to an implementation person who would help me out with my issue
- New feature requests are taken into consideration, thought through and implemented on a fairly regular basis
- Overall quite pleased
- One feature that I have been requesting for a while; the ability to send an invoice with a link to pay on-line without the customer needing an on-line portal to log into
- After choosing DM for their on-line portals, there are a few thing that need improvement in that aspect
- 1
- The ability to list products in a grid-view as opposed to a list-view
- 2
- The checkout process is a little bit clunky especially for a public portal as the client must input their information and then are re-directed to a logon page where they have to then login
- 3
- Booklet pricing is a little confusing, you would think that when you enter in the number of pages for a particular booklet that the number of sheets would automatically calculate based on the type of booklet selected and then further populate the press sheets figure
Switched From
As explained above, the on-line portal capabilities are what really made the difference.
Why they chose it
"More robust MIS."
Robyn C.
Verified UserPrinting · 11-50 employees
Always evolving
Was able to pick it up quickly due to ease of use and natural flow. Being geared to the printing industry was an obvious benefit.
- Still being in the first 12 months of using DocketManager I am still finding new features and short cuts
- What I have discovered in the short time of using the software is it is ever evolving
- DocketManager appears to be listening to the end users and making adjustment and additions for continual improvement reducing the number of clicks
Status options can be selected in more than one location and then show up or don't show up in different screen views or reports
Switched From
I believe the decision was to get to a cloud based platform and then to add production into the offering which we did not have there before.
Kevin H.
Verified UserPrinting · 2-10 employees
Cornerstone of Saving My Company
We purchased the 60 year old print shop we worked at. Small runs, cut sheet, formerly letterpress newly "digital", everything calculated by hand even the ledgers. You can imagine the amount of updating in every respect we needed. As a team of only 4 we needed to streamline everything, get quoting down to a science, and finally join the rest of the world with eCommerce. Enter DocketManager. The first conversation you have with rep immediately sets you at ease. This is a company that used to be a printer like the rest of us. They made this for themselves (something I was looking into oddly) and eventually sold it to others enough that it became their business. It truly is designed by printers for printers. We went back and ran old quotes through the system to test out how things used to be done vs how they're done now. We found 3 or 4 in the prior year that were misquoted. The cost difference from what it was to what it should have been would have paid for DM for several months. Makes you wonder how many more there were. I used "" on issues in the Cons section because it really isn't a deal breaker by any means. The software is pretty darned polished with a couple things like those that are still rough. That said, they are always updating it and most updates are from user requests. For those scared of price, DM doesn't charge enough for the product. They are more than competitive and they actually care about you. I can't recommend them enough.
- How well the ecosystem of the CRM, MIS, and W2P works
- From quoting and proofing to production and payment everything flows really well together automatically
The only two "issues" I have are: The options for making a book, while super open to being tweaked to a fine degree, become confusing and could use a "simple" mode for run of the mill jobs; Customizing forms requires knowledge of HTML, JS, and CSS to do anything to it
Michael H.
Verified UserPrinting · 2-10 employees
Amazing software, great partner to have in our business.
After dealing with a large world wide company and dealing with issue after issue it has been a joy working with the DocketManager team. We plan on visiting this year and taking some training classes offered by them in Canada.
- I discovered DocketManager while telling a fellow printer how much I hated our new Vision upgrade
- He showed me the demo site and I instantly fell in love with the intuitive design and features
- I visited their booth at Print in Chicago
- The entire family was there showing off the program, and I knew then I wanted to be a customer of theirs
- The implementation was easier than the upgrade of our las software
- We have top notch service helping us through the entire process
- DocketManager is software you will not outgrow
- It is constantly being updated and features added
- This software will not work unless you set aside time to implement the software
- We have had DocketManager since 2015 and only implemented the estimating, job tickets and accounts receivable for the most part
- The web portion is super easy, but I need to set aside time to get this implemented
Rory R.
Verified UserPrinting · 11-50 employees
5 Months In
DocketManager is an all in one solution. Online ordering - easy to set up and easy for client navigation Estimating and invoicing - via email (who knew a printer would appreciate that?) Shippo Integration - When you buy something from us we send you notifications like all the big players The list goes on. Overall the team at DM are real people who really care, don't ever change that.
- The support staff at DocketManager is what sets this product apart from the pack
- The interface is aesthetically pleasing and extremely functional
- Critical business information is only a click away
- As with any type of change in workflow, there will be bumps in the road
- We have kept an open mind and DM has forced us to take a closer look at how and why we have been doing things the same way for so long
- Many good changes have come about from this self-examination
Joe F.
Verified UserPrinting · 11-50 employees
VALUE
DocketManager saved my bookkeeper half a days work every day - that's 20 hrs per week, 1,040 hrs saved per year! It pays for itself!
Support - it was extremely easy to get started, and edits along the way were quick, and support went above and beyond to make sure that our daily use actually worked
- only that we it was not available to us sooner
DocketManager
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