Scheduling Systems

Technology Software
1

Anyone heard of (or evaluated) Ungerboeck Software for facility scheduling? We need advanced report capabilities as outside groups schedule our facility. Invoicing, advanced reports, digital signage integration, etc.

1 Like
2

Ungerboeck is a local company here in the Greater St. Louis area. We took a look at their product offering in 2016.

Here's my take:

  • Our needs were first and foremost for managing room requests at the church (across 3 campuses)
  • We typically don't charge for facilities usage (as most usage is by ministries
  • We currently use ACS Facility Scheduler along with Google Drive
  • Ungerboeck has 2 versions of their core product that we considered: 'Community' edition and a more Enterprisey version
  • We felt that starting with the community edition was feasible, but also saw that we would outgrow it (meaning an upgrade)
  • Their software is very nice. They seem to be good at delivering solutions to handle real-world business problems
  • They are currently doing a re-write to make it mobile friendly everywhere. This means the version we looked at had some dependencies on older tools, and consequently worked best from a computer (not mobile-first). Many functions were also assuming you used Internet Explorer as your primary browser
  • vNext (which we saw, but wasn't feature-complete yet) was more modern, fully browser based, and mobile-first
  • The pricing for community edition was a bit of a stretch for us (but not impossible)
  • The pricing for the enterprisey edition was way outside of what we could afford ($$$)

    Essentially, I liked what I saw, but we determined that we would outgrow community edition so we had to base our decision on the enterprisey version.

    Since we're not monetizing the majority of our events (and even monetized events are not much $), we couldn't afford it. I also had some reservations about their ability to be a 'fully open' partner with 3rd party products and tools. When I asked how we would integrate the reservation process to our website and our ChMS, they didn't think it was possible to be fully integrated, meaning we would have a 'data silo' for those that had reserved a room vs those that interacted with our website. We weren't big on the idea of having 2 separate processes and tools used (for either the participant/requester or our staff). One for event registration and regular forms, and another for event reservations and room reservation requests

    We’re headed the route of using a “Room Management” plug-in with Rock RMS. The plug-in is under active development by Central Christian Church, and even though it’s not quite finished, we’ve determined it’s current features plus Rock’s core tools already meets our immediate needs. We’ll have to do a few things on our own (defining workflows and reports) that Ungerboeck would have done for us, but we’ll be using a common toolset (instead of specialized facility software).

3

Thanks Shawn; I appreciate the info. We use ACS but couldn’t get a few events to schedule as needed. We would also like to have the ability to create invoices in a new system. Still looking for a system but (once you get past the basics) they are very pricey…

4

Have you considered https://planning.center/resources?

We are looking at them as a replacement for F1’s ServiceU product and we like what we see in terms of price, features, and ease of use so far.

5

Yes; I evaluated PCO Resources in early 2016. The reports feature wasn’t as robust EMS Lite and it also didn’t include billing component. I’m looking for a system that integrates church calendaring with room scheduling (when an event gets cancelled, it’s removed from the calendar as well as frees up the space for scheduling.

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We use espace from Cool Solutions (espace.cool). Really robust reporting, setup notes and a great approval process. We were on EMS Lite but switched a few years ago for hosted solution that was better for our staff and out volunteer leaders to request and approve spaces.

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Hi Chris,

Does eSpace support billing?

Julie Gentry

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Julie,

What do you mean billing? If it is registering and paying for events, they have an Eventbrite integration. If it is for billing for building use, supplies, staff and things like that, I don’t think so but just because we don’t use it like that, doesn’t mean they don’t.

Chris

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Payments for building use, etc. I’ll check them out; thanks for the info!

Julie Gentry

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@jgentry - Just letting you know, this is on our development radar as far as Space rental, billing, and invoicing. Coming this year! Thanks for checking us out.

11

Julie, plus one for eSpace. We were a former F1 & ServiceU church and moved to eSpace a little over a year ago. We use both the event/room scheduling as well as work orders for the facilities/maintenance team.