WebCheckout Reviews

“powerful capabilities”

Pros

When you're managing equipment and a steady flow of patron transactions some kind of tracking system is absolutely necessary. This handles all the day to day activity really well, from checkouts to returns. It also stores a huge amount of detail for every item, including order date, invoice number, budget number, model, serial number, room location, shelf spot and more. On top of that it tracks usage data and can apply fines when needed to help encourage timely returns. It's a highly customizable piece of software.

Cons

At times, it can take a bit of digging to locate certain information in the system. The good part is that the built in documentation is solid and searchable so answers are usually there. If not, customer service has been consistently responsive by email or phone.

“student tracking made simple”

Pros

One thing that really helps is being able to quickly tell one student from another by their name or student ID and check which items they have checked out at any time without any hassle.

Cons

Something I really dislike is the way some error messages appear when trying to check out inventory. They could be much clearer and more specific about what actually went wrong.

“feature packed tool”

Pros

Getting around WCO felt user friendly right away and it offers a wide range of tools for managing loans, reservations and detailed records for equipment and locations. There are plenty of add on options to customize it to your needs, including invoicing, email functions, SSO, repair ticket tracking and even staff scheduling. The reporting is very flexible, simple to run and covers all kinds of useful data like turn downs, overdue items and usage. Adding new equipment and keeping records updated was also fairly easy.

Cons

We're no longer using the system but over time we purchased several add on modules which made it feel a bit expensive. I can't clearly remember which features were included in the base product versus what required extra modules but the costs definitely added up. I also handled downloading our patron list manually because automating that connection with our system would have cost more. It wasn't a huge problem since we only had around 3,000 clients but it still meant an extra step. There were also quite a few extra fields on our side that couldn't be removed so having a more customizable layout would have helped. Installing newer software releases was also challenging for me because of our firewall and the need to coordinate access for the support team although that was partly due to our own setup.