G2

Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

10/27/2026

Guest users or non-business users of the software, not included in G2 scores.

"Highly Customizable All-in-One Suite That Streamlined Our Distribution Workflow"

4/5

What do you like best about Apptivo?

Honestly, what I like best about Apptivo is how it’s this huge all‑in‑one suite that we can tweak to fit our distribution workflow, instead of forcing us to adapt our process to the software. I’m Supply Chain Operations Manager at Northwood Distribution Partners, we’re 201–500 people, with warehouse teams, purchasing coordinators, sales, and finance all touching different parts of our order and supplier pipeline. Before testing Apptivo, we were juggling separate CRM, purchase order tools, a basic inventory tracker, and a separate help desk for supplier questions. It was messy, and data never lined up cleanly between systems.

The customizability is the real winner for us. We don’t just use it out of the box. I added custom fields to the supplier record pages to log lead time variances, carrier preferences, and quality issue history for each vendor. Our warehouse team needed custom views that only show open pick lists and backordered SKUs, while our purchasing staff sees reorder thresholds and pending PO approvals. We built a simple automation that fires off an internal Slack alert whenever stock drops below our safety level for fast‑moving pallet items. Last quarter, we had a critical component supplier delay hit us hard because our old system didn’t flag low inventory fast enough. With this setup now, our buyers get notified right away, and they can jump straight into the supplier profile, pull past delivery notes, and fire off a follow‑up email without switching tabs.

I also love that the CRM, purchasing, inventory, and invoicing modules talk to each other natively. When our sales team logs a new customer order, it feeds straight into the inventory app. If we don’t have enough stock, it auto‑generates a draft PO for our purchasing team to review and send to the supplier. Once that PO gets marked received, inventory levels update automatically, and finance can pull that receipt over to create the supplier invoice. We used to manually copy order numbers and quantities across three different platforms, and it created tons of typos. One example I still remember: we duplicated a large PO for packaging stock earlier this year because someone retyped the order number wrong. That mistake tied up warehouse space and cash for weeks. That kind of human error is way less likely now with the connected workflow inside Apptivo.

Another big plus is the mobile access for our floor staff. Our forklift operators and receiving team aren’t sitting at desks all day. They can pull up the receiving log, mark items as received, add notes about damaged pallets, and attach photos directly from their phones. Those notes attach right to the corresponding PO and supplier record. Before, they’d scribble damage notes on paper, hand them to an admin at the end of the shift, and half the context would get lost before it reached purchasing. Now we have a clear audit trail for every shipment, which helps us negotiate claims and hold unreliable suppliers accountable.

It’s also helpful for our software evaluation process, since I test a lot of SaaS stacks for the company. Apptivo lets us turn modules on and off gradually. We rolled out the PO and supplier apps first, waited a month, then brought in the customer CRM and help desk for supplier support tickets. We didn’t have to force the whole team to learn everything at once. Training was way smoother.

It’s not perfect, but the fact that one platform covers so many of our supply chain touchpoints, and we can reshape it to match how our distribution operation actually runs, saves our team hours of redundant data entry every single week. For a mid‑sized distribution outfit like ours, that’s a massive win. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apptivo?

To be straightforward, Apptivo has some pretty frustrating downsides that have popped up as we’ve rolled it out across our distribution team at Northwood Distribution Partners. We’ve got warehouse staff, buyers, sales, and finance all using different modules, and a lot of these pain points show up most for our non-technical team members on the floor.

First off, the UI feels clunky and inconsistent between modules. The CRM page layout doesn’t match the purchase order screen, and the inventory module has its own separate menu structure. It sounds small, but it creates constant confusion. We trained our purchasing team on the PO workflow, and then when they need to hop into inventory to check stock levels, they’re lost all over again. Just last week, one of our buyers spent 20 minutes hunting for the supplier lead time field because it lives in a completely different spot than the matching notes section on POs. Our warehouse crew, who use mobile view most of the time, get hit even harder. The mobile interface is cramped, and some custom fields we built on the desktop version don’t render properly on their phones. Receiving staff have accidentally submitted incomplete receiving logs a couple times because a required damage note box was hidden off-screen.

Then there’s the reporting builder. It’s powerful once you figure it out, but the learning curve is brutal. We need regular reports: open backorders, supplier on-time delivery rates, inventory turnover by SKU, POs pending approval. I’m comfortable digging into SaaS tools, but our finance coordinator struggles constantly. The filter logic is counterintuitive, and there’s no simple way to save shared report templates that update cleanly for different users. If I build an on-time delivery report for our purchasing lead, they can’t easily tweak it to only show their own vendor list without breaking the whole thing. We’ve had a few instances where someone ran a report and pulled incorrect data because they mixed up date range filters, which almost messed up our weekly supplier performance review.

Permission management is another weak spot. The role settings are broad and don’t give us fine control we really need for supply chain. We want our receiving team to mark shipments as received and add damage photos, but we don’t want them able to edit PO pricing or supplier payment terms. Right now, the permissions bundle too many actions together. If you grant access to update receiving logs, that same user can accidentally modify cost data. We had a close call a month back; a warehouse lead updated a received quantity and inadvertently overwrote the unit cost on a packaging PO. It took finance hours to track down and correct that error before it hit our accounts payable. We end up being overly restrictive with warehouse accounts as a workaround, which slows them down when they need to make quick updates. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apptivo solving and how is that benefiting you?

For our distribution business at Northwood Distribution Partners, Apptivo is mainly fixing the huge disconnect we had between sales, purchasing, warehouse, and finance. Before we started testing it, every department was relying on its own siloed toolset. Our sales team used a standalone CRM to log customer orders, purchasing tracked suppliers and POs in a separate spreadsheet system, warehouse staff updated inventory on a basic tracking app, and finance pulled all that information manually to create invoices and reconcile payments. Data had to be retyped or copied over constantly, and it was so easy for numbers to fall out of sync. We’d run into mismatched order quantities, outdated stock counts, and missing supplier notes all the time.

The biggest problem it solves is eliminating that duplicate data entry. When a sales rep enters a new customer order in the Apptivo CRM, that order flows directly into the inventory module. If we don’t have enough stock to fulfill it, the system can kick off a draft purchase order for our buyers to review and send out to suppliers. Once our receiving team marks that shipment as received on their mobile device, inventory levels update automatically, and finance can pull that PO receipt to generate the supplier invoice. That whole chain used to require three or four separate manual handoffs. We’ve cut out so much copy-paste work, and the risk of typos or duplicated POs is way lower than before.

It also gives us one single, shared source of truth for every supplier record. Previously, supplier lead times, quality complaints, delivery delays, and claim documentation were scattered across emails, shared drive folders, and individual spreadsheets. Now we store all of that inside the supplier profile in Apptivo. Our buyers can quickly pull up a vendor’s full performance history before placing a new order. When the warehouse uploads photos of damaged pallets during receiving, those attachments tie straight to the corresponding PO and supplier file. That audit trail makes it much easier for us to follow up on freight claims and hold inconsistent suppliers accountable.

Another pain point it addresses is our lack of consistent visibility for low stock and backorders. We built simple automations that send internal alerts to purchasing whenever stock for high-volume SKUs drops below our safety threshold. Before, we only checked inventory levels during our weekly stock review, which meant we’d sometimes catch shortages too late and end up with avoidable stockouts. These automatic alerts give our team a much earlier heads-up to reorder.

For our floor-based warehouse crew, mobile access is a big benefit too. They don’t need to run back to a desktop terminal to log receipts, add damage notes, or check open order status. They can update records right from their phones while they’re on the dock, so information gets logged in real time instead of sitting on handwritten notes until the end of the shift. That cuts down on lost details and delayed updates.

We also get value from being able to turn modules on gradually instead of forcing a company-wide big-bang launch. We rolled out PO and supplier management first, then added CRM and the help desk for supplier support later on. That phased approach made training far more manageable, and let us iron out workflow kinks before bringing more users onboard. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.