Below is a brief comparison
of SimplyPats against other popular PAT Testing software.
Pros
SimplyPats is quick and easy
to understand and use. The price we offer annual phone support
underlines this.
SimplyPats is principally designed for the
small electrical contractor, as such it is quick to download
and print test results. The number of blue chip companies and
local government offices and PAT Testing Companies show that
many other clients find it meets their needs.
It will automatically generate
an invoice from data gathered in the field.
Unique features such as abbreviations allow
the engineer to type less in the field, for example the automatic
replacement of CO HP with Computer Hewlett Packard.
SimplyPats supports the following
PAT Testers Seaward Europa, Supernova, Europa+ and Supernova+
Metrel AlphaPat, BetaPat and OmegaPat. Full data download is
supported.
Downloaded data is automatically backed up
allowing recovery of lost data should you accidentally delete
or change data.
It is concerned only with
Portable Appliance Testing, not with fire extinguisher, emergency
lighting or nurse call systems. SimplyPats Version 5 allows
you to add more detail on each appliance including notes, PAT
Serial Number etc.
SimplyPats is less than half the price of
most of the competitive products. Annual suport is less than
a fifth of the cost of some rivals.
SimplyPats shows all the
test data on each appliance, including the operating voltage,
test current or test voltage and the limits of each test applied.
Some alternative programs either do not show or store this information,
or hide it from view.
SimplyPats is designed to collect as much
data as possible from the engineer in the field for example
the retest frequency, test charge costs, repair costs and fail
reason can all be entered in the PAT Tester. ( this feature
is limited on the Metrel AlphaPat dues to its design). This
saves taking laptops, PDA's or paper to note down additonal
information on the testing.
SimplyPats will install on
any operating system from Windows 95 OSR2 or later including
Windows98, ME, 2000 XP Home, XP Professional, NT Windows Server
2000 and Windows Server 2003.
SimplyPats will run in 640 by 480 screen
resolution and doesn't need the latest computer to run.
SimplyPats has a free program
you can give to your customers so that they can store, search
and print the appliance data you have tested. We do not charge
for this and you can download it direct from the SimplyPats
web site.
SimplyPats can export
data in Microsoft Rich Text format (rtf) and Excel formats (xls),
Adobe Acrobat (pdf) , Web Page Format (htm), Plain Text (txt)
and CSV formats - ensuring you can give your customer the data
in any way they want.
NOTE ON EXPORTS:
The export to word actually
exports in Rich Text Format which can be opened by the wordpad
program on your computer as well as Microsoft Word if you own
a copy of it. RTF format cannot place images side by side with
text so you may find you need to edit the document to get the
desired results. Similarly the Excel and HTML exports will not
be able to place images exactly because of the limitations of
these programs.
All data is stored in ASCII
(plain text) format. Data can be easily imported into 3rd party
software if necessary.
SimplyPats has a spell checking
facility with an electrical appliance orientated dictionary
of over 3500 words.
SimplyPats has a comprehensive
help facility with full search and topic print facilities.
Cons
SimplyPats does not have a lot of the features
other software has, particularly in areas such as test scheduling
and non electrical appliance testing.
SimplyPats has a limit of
9500 appliances per client site although when creating multiple
files you are only limited by disk space on your computer.
Other software has more advanced
reporting facilities with various different report types. SimplyPats
has 5 standard appliance reports but custom designed ones can
be written for your particular needs at a low cost - typically
£15 (ex vat) but dependant on complexity. SimplyPats Version
5 has twice the number of reports.
Other products often have
useful features to keep track of the calibration of your PAT
Tester, SimplyPats Version 4 doesn't. This feature has been
added to SimplyPats Version 5.
Competitive products often
try to show the history of the appliance and the change of test
result data over time, drawing graphs or charts of the changes
in Insulation values for example. SimplyPats doesn't do this.
Other products often have
login screens allowing different users to securely login and
having different access to various parts of the program. This
feature has been added to SimplyPats Version 5.
Competitive programs often
allow you to add a wide range of additional data about the appliance
including the serial number or department or category. Unfortunately
a lot of this data has to be manually entered on the computer.
Other products store the
Serial Number of the PAT Test machine that was used to carry
out the test. SimplyPats Version 4 doesn't, however this featrue
has been added to SimplyPats Version 5.
