Month: October 2022

Testing & Support Videos (Oct 28)

Our staff is moving on to the final testing phase for the new accounting software. There still are bugs and gaps, but it keeps getting harder to find them.

Software testing is boring. You have to try all possible paths that might cause problems. That soon gets tedious. It’s not easy to pay close attention to small details for hours on end.

This isn’t just a problem when building software. Construction (and most everything else) also suffers from it. You take something apart, and put it back together very, very carefully, and damned if there isn’t a screw or a washer left over. It’s even worse for abstract stuff like estimating or accounting. Too easy to space out and make mistakes.

That’s why computers are so helpful for such tasks. They don’t make math errors, and they don’t get distracted or forget. Of course, computer software isn’t magically perfect. It’s a long, slow slog to build it carefully, then debug and test, test, test it.

Programmers aren’t good at testing their own code. They’ve already looked at the output too many times during the construction process. For many years, brand new TurtleSoft employees were testers, instead. It was a way for them to learn the app and move up to tech support. Newbies also did random things and made mistakes, just like users. Sadly, they only had a few productive weeks of bug-crunching before boredom kicked in.

Our tech support needs have diminished. We won’t hire testers for TurtleSoft Pro. So what’s the solution?

For two decades, our staff traveled all across North America to give hands-on classes: first for our Excel-based accounting/estimating software, then for Goldenseal. I taught 90% of them. Every class turned up at least one bug. It was embarrassing to have them pop up in front of 20 people. On the other hand, at least we found the problems, and fixed them soon after. Discovery is always the hardest part. The class format was like having fresh eyes: it worked even for bugs in code written by the teacher.

TurtleSoft won’t have hands-on classes for the new accounting software. There’s a better option now: YouTube videos. No need for anyone to travel. Users can access them for free, any time. Hit pause if you need it. Watch twice. All that’s missing is coffee and donuts at the break.

Video production also solves the testing problem. It’s a chance to kill two bugs with one stone.

Next week we will start making short instruction videos, for every possible thing you might want to do in the new accounting software. That means running every part of the app a few times, and figuring how best to present it. Along the way, it’s a chance to find and fix any lurking bugs or missing features.

Most likely there will be a few hundred videos. It will take a week or two to get the routine down. Then we probably can make a few a day, upload them to the TurtleSoft channel on YouTube, and link from the website. Tech support will be up and running even before the software is out.

Accounting and estimating videos will also be good marketing. Magazine ads worked best for us in the ’90s, then SEO in the ’00s. This decade, social media will get the word out. YouTube is a good start. The main down side is that competitors will run ads on our channel. But maybe we can get paid for each click.

Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com

 

 

Abandoned & Delayed Features (Oct 21)

We plan to abandon or delay a few Goldenseal features, when we update to the new accounting software. Please let us know if you adore any of them, and don’t want to see them go.

Import and Export: Export in the File menu saves data to a text file. It can move the entire company file, or parts. Import reads text, and adds records to Goldenseal. The commands helped us to save sample data before version 1.0. They also came in handy for everyone when the file format changed in 2001. We haven’t used import/export since then. Probably ditto for other users. Rather than take a few weeks to update the interface, it seems better to just retire the commands. Instead, you can make a report, then click Save As Text.

Fonts: Goldenseal uses an ID number for fonts. That is how Mac OS 9 managed them. It worked OK when choosing from a dozen basic fonts. These days, PCs come with hundreds of font families. There’s no good way to number them, so modern systems refer to fonts by name. They can swap in something similar if the requested font is missing. We will add modern font-handling and Unicode in a future rewrite of Custom Layouts. Until then, all text will be Arial. Maybe we can add a hack to offer a few more fonts, but it’ll be better to wait and do it right.

Date/Number Formats: The first release of TurtleSoft Pro will ignore most custom formats for dates and numbers. That’s another thing that needs the new Custom Layouts. Qt is good at international formats, and we can take advantage of that. They also have an auto-translate feature that may let us release versions in Spanish, French and other languages.

Payment Receipts: Goldenseal 1.0 came with an optional transaction to print sales receipts. It was an extra step in between Sales or Billing Records, and bank deposits. Then we added receipt printing direct from the sale or project bill, so Payment Receipts were disabled in 2005. Records in that class will not be imported into TurtleSoft Pro. It may cause error messages if you work with ancient sales records, but the removal won’t do anything worse.

Web Visits: TurtleSoft used these for a while to track raw traffic to our website. It showed the truth about pay-per-click ads: 99% were bots or third world click farms. After that, logging wasn’t worth the effort. Web Visits will disappear unless we hear otherwise.

Multi-User: The first release will only be single-user. Networking needs a total rewrite, and it’s too much to tackle now. Multi-user will be a high priority once the basic version is out.

Time Tracking: I’m pretty sure this feature didn’t survive the update to Mac OS X. It’s only practical over a network, so it won’t be in the first release. Employee time tracking will be much more useful when you can log in from a phone app. Once we have a few of those set up, it will come back.

Chart of Accounts: The very first accounting interface for Goldenseal had a screen full of account icons. You could drag money bags between them. It was cute, but awkward to actually use. We renamed the window to Chart of Accounts, and exiled it to the top of the View menu. Its code is a tangled mess, from a programmer who wrote spaghetti. This is the last of his work that hasn’t been rewritten or removed. Unless we hear a whole lotta love, it’s gone forever.

Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com

 

 

 

 

 

Posting (Oct 14)

Turtle Creek Construction computerized in 1986, soon after the Mac Plus came out. Microsoft Excel was our go-to app for almost everything. It worked great for construction estimates. Less ideal for job cost accounting, but good enough. We even used it to print invoices.

TurtleSoft began in 1987. Retail has more data and less math than construction. We soon found that Excel wasn’t the best tool for selling estimating software. Luckily, we discovered FileMaker. Together, the two apps met most business needs. Problem was, they didn’t talk to each other. Neither app could do it all on their own.

Goldenseal accounting software happened because we needed a better way to run things. It was frustrating to enter everything twice.

From the beginning, Goldenseal was built for our own software business, as well as for construction companies. We made it look like what we already used every day. Breakdown tables copied Excel, mostly. The rest of the interface came from FileMaker. The look and feel were different enough that we didn’t get sued.

The biggest addition was posting. Enter material purchases, and Goldenseal posts them all over the place. It creates instant payouts or adds to Accounts Payable. It updates job costs, T&M billing for projects, and current prices for estimating. It adds things to inventory. That’s what was missing from the Excel/FileMaker combo.

Almost all Goldenseal business transactions do some posting. They also link to related records with a button, a menu or a double-click. Connections make the data more useful.

Posting is what our staff has been working on the past few weeks. Most of the code was already OK as is, but some was affected by design changes.

TurtleSoft Pro is less like FileMaker, now. Our staff has learned many new interface tricks since the 90s. But, some of the improvements affect the posting process. For example, Goldenseal pops up a bank transaction window when you pay for a purchase. That’s not so easy in the new single-window interface. We finally decided to skip the extra window. Often it was just distracting. The PAID watermark already lets you know it’s done.

Bank transactions changed, and that affects almost everything. It’s not just that we merged the former cash, checking, credit card, loan and savings accounts. The old app also used different layouts for deposits, checks, payments and transfers, plus even more layouts for breakdown tables. Now, everything shares the same layout. It’s simpler, but different.

Action dialogs also do a lot of posting. Reconcile, Pay Bills, Deposit Funds and Job Costs work well now. We’re currently testing Project, Sales and Rental Billing. Last on the list is Write Payroll.

Payroll was the last thing we added to Goldenseal accounting software. That and estimating took a few years to get completely right. Likewise, they will be the last things to be finished in TurtleSoft Pro. The basics are already done for them, but their quirks may take a few weeks.

Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com

TurtleSoft Pro Pricing (Oct 7)

As we inch towards a release data for the new accounting software, it’s time to figure what it will include, and what it will cost.

Support is an easy decision. Instead of paper manuals, the new app will have web pages, built-in help info, and YouTube videos. No phone calls: tech support by email only. That’s the norm these days.

Pricing will depend on size. The code can build a range of apps with different features: from a simple, cheap checkbook app all the way up to the full Goldenseal equivalent. Most of our income probably will come from the small stuff, sold in app stores. Pricing for those is just a marketing decision.

It’s more complicated for run-your-whole business software like the current Goldenseal. On the Mac, there’s only one competitor: Quickbooks Desktop, at $349 a year, or its web version with monthly pricing. For Windows there are plenty of choices. Nearly all have a monthly or annual fee.

The software business has changed. Nobody wants to sell apps outright any more. A steady revenue stream is so much better: it’s called Software as a Service. Relying on new software sales bit TurtleSoft on the ass during the Great Recession and after, so we understand the reasons.

The problem is, there’s no polite and simple method to make people pay regularly. One approach is to run everything from a server. For that, users need a constant Internet connection. It also has the risk of outages, data breaches or lost data.

If users run the app locally, it needs a dongle, or some other way to shut down the software. That shuts down their business. TurtleSoft would prefer to stay on good terms with users, and not do that. Besides, there are plenty of better features for our programmers to work on, rather than a kill switch.

We’re still chewing on this very basic decision. It would be nice to find some middle ground, but I don’t think one exists.

Some current Goldenseal users have already paid for the update. We also promised a free update to recent buyers. They get the new app, period. So the only other question is, what will it cost for other long-time Goldenseal users?

This rewrite took ages to finish. It’s long overdue. On the other hand, the new design is better than Goldenseal. On the third hand, it’s different. That may annoy die-hard users who like the old interface. We still hear from users who never left our original Excel-based estimating software, retired in 2000.

We sold Goldenseal (and previous apps) as a one-time purchase, and we may continue to do so. However, software does depreciate, just like any other equipment. It seems reasonable to figure that into the price equation.

For upgrades, it probably makes sense is to give a partial credit for the original Goldenseal purchase cost. Then subtract something per year. Then add back what was paid for updates over the years.

Comments are welcome. The release date is still months away.

Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com