TurtleSoft Pro (Aug 17)

Twenty years ago, the local hippie bank gave us a free marketing analysis. It complained that we used three different names: TurtleSoft, Turtle Creek Software, and Goldenseal. Too confusing, should be just one.

That was soon after we launched Goldenseal 1.0. The advice made sense, but not enough to be worth a total rewrite of printed manuals, website, and everything else. Sadly, www.goldenseal.com was already taken. Otherwise we could have just changed the company name.

The past few years I’ve been calling the next generation Goldenseal Pro, but it’s time to shift gears. Listen to past advice, and abandon the creeks and the goldenseals. Everything will just be TurtleSofts, all the way down.

Once our staff finishes the new interface code, we’ll launch TurtleSoft Accounting, TurtleSoft Estimating, TurtleSoft Payroll, and a few other single-purpose apps. Some of them may have more than one version, with different features and prices. Also TurtleSoft Contractor, TurtleSoft Retail and a few more that combine things for different types of business.

The current full version of Goldenseal will become a mongo TurtleSoft flavor, for the rare souls who need construction estimating, accounting, retail and property rentals all together. For now we’ll call the whole family TurtleSoft Pro. Same features as Goldenseal, and mostly the same interface. But we’ve rewritten about 2/3 of the code.

Some large accounting packages use separate modules: people get the ones they need and run multiple apps. That would make marketing easier. However, using one database to feed multiple apps seems like a recipe for data corruption and disaster. Using a separate database for each app has even bigger problems. So, we’ll stick with the current format, with just one app and one company file.

All versions will use the same database structure, so it will be easy to move from one flavor to another. Just switch the app, and it’s good to go.

Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com

Author: Dennis Kolva

Programming Director for Turtle Creek Software. Design & planning of accounting and estimating software.